The transcript below is from the video “Bruce Lee: Father of MMA?” by Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee Enterprises (YouTube Channel; Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, here posting video clips from my father’s movies, VLOGs about my father’s art and materials from the archives all in an effort to perpetuate Bruce Lee’s legacy):

Shannon Lee answers many questions, and gives her opinion on whether JKD is MMA, if it is fair to call Bruce Lee the Father of MMA and other related topics.

Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter, American actress, martial artist and businesswoman):

Some of you commented to our latest video that we posted on my blog and some of the comments were about Jeet Kune Do and MMA. You know we were just at the UFC Fan Expo with the Bruce Lee Foundation and there was somebody at the beginning of the tape that said, “Bruce Lee’s the father of MMA.” Then there was this debate that sort of went back and forth about Jeet Kune Do and MMA and how Bruce Lee didn’t do MMA, and how could he be the father of MMA and his Jeet Kune Do/MMA.

Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter, American actress, martial artist and businesswoman):

So I wanted to just talk about that. Dana White, who is a friend of mine, is often quoted as saying that Bruce Lee’s the father of MMA. So, Jeet Kune Do is not MMA. However, my father did believe in freeing yourself the trappings of one style. He did believe that you had to be a complete fighter. So, a no-commit fighter. That in order to do so, you needed to be able to defend against any attack. My father did study some grappling.

Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter, American actress, martial artist and businesswoman):

He had some experience with some grappling and he did value grappling because we needed to know how to defend against if you ever were brought to the ground. With Jeet Kune Do, the idea is not to get taken to the ground but once you’re there, you need to know how to defend from that. He did have some versatility with grappling. But this is why I feel it’s okay to call him the father of MMA because he was the first person to say that the best style is no style – that you need to free yourself from style.

Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter, American actress, martial artist and businesswoman):

That you can’t be a complete fighter from top to bottom if you’re only entrenched in one style because there is no style of traditional martial arts that covers every single possible scenario from ground-up. So I think it’s fair because he was espousing the style of no style and a freedom from traditional arts and the need to be a complete fighter to call him a father of MMA was what he was doing MMA.

Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter, American actress, martial artist and businesswoman):

I think what he was doing was actually his unique expression, that Jeet Kune Do is his unique expression and it was not a mixture of this art and that art, and this other art. It also had a very strong philosophical grounding and the physical moves had a very strong philosophical basis. So that’s my spiel basically. Jeet Kune Do is in my opinion not MMA, but in my opinion, Bruce Lee can be called the father of MMA. Remember that.