Jeet Kune Do - Mixed Martial Arts

Jeet Kune Do (JKD) is the name Bruce Lee gave to his combat system and philosophy in 1967. Originally, when Lee commenced researching numerous fighting styles, he gave his martial art his own name of June Fan Gung Fu. However not wanting to form another style that would share the limitations that all styles have, he instead gave us the process that created it.

JKD as it survives today - if one wants to view it "refined" as a product, not a process - is what was left at the time of Bruce Lee's death. It's the result of the life-long self-defense skills development process Lee went through. Bruce Lee stated that his idea isn't an "adding to" of more things on top of each other to form a system, but rather, a winnowing out. The metaphor Lee borrowed from Chan Buddhism was of consistently filling a cup with water, and then emptying it, used for describing Lee's philosophy of "casting off what's useless". He also used the sculptor's mentality of starting with a lump of clay and hacking away at the "unessentials"; the final result was what he said to be the bare combat necessities, or JKD.

One of the theories of JKD is that a fighter should do whatever is critical to protect himself, regardless of where the methods come from. One of Lee's goals in Jeet Kune Do was to break down what he said were limiting factors in the training of the traditional styles, and seek a fighting contention which he suspected could only be found in the fact of a fight. Jeet Kune Do is presently seen as the genesis of the modern state of half-breed martial arts.

The idea of cross-training in Jeet Kune Do is like the practice of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) in modern times - Bruce Lee has been considered by UFC president Dana White as the "father of mixed martial arts". Many consider Jeet Kune Do to be the precursor of MMA because of its syncretic nature. This is especially the case with regard the JKD "Combat Ranges". A JKD student is anticipated to learn varied combat systems inside each combat range, and thus to be valuable in all of them, just as in MMA.

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