It seems like it was an unspoken rule that Bolo Yeung was to forever remain a pariah in the world of mainstream martial arts movies after the death of Bruce Lee. It’s similar to something that Jackie Chan said about the person responsible for the death of Jet Li’s manager, Jim Choi. Apparently, the identity of who ordered the hit is an open secret in Hong Kong but no-one has the stones to say it publicly. I believe that it was Ng See-Yuen since they were competing to put out remakes of the same film. In the case of Bruce Lee, if you were going to kill him then you would need someone as muscular as Bolo Yeung, provided that you surround Bruce with enough people that Bolo can’t be defeated.
This may seem like sacrilege given all the nice things that Bolo has said about Bruce, but Bolo had fallen in with the bad crowd when he lived in Hong Kong. Bolo was friends with a group of martial arts actors who were affiliated with the Chinese mafia a.k.a. the Triads. There are different Triad gangs who work in the Hong Kong film industry, but it was the 14K Triad that Bolo would come to be associated with due to his friendship with Michael Chan Wai-Man. Bruce wanted to sue a 14K film company for embellishing his involvement with one of their movies, Fist of Unicorn. This starred Bruce’s childhood friend, Unicorn Chan. The 14K company was called Star Sea (“Xinghai” in Mandarin but “Sing Hoi” in Cantonese).
By the time that we get to Bruce’s Hong Kong funeral, Bolo Yeung wasn’t invited to actually attend. This is why we only see him outside of the funeral parlour in archive footage. This is strange since not only was he in Bruce’s Enter the Dragon, but the funeral was organized by the film company who was responsible for the making of the film in Hong Kong: Golden Harvest. This is why stuntmen were hired to be security guards inside the parlour. In fact, the funeral happened on the day before the Hong Kong premiere of Enter the Dragon. To this day, there have been no photos of this premiere. Bolo’s lack of presence is also strange because you would think that he would have been hired to be the bodyguard of Bruce’s widow, since he often visited Bruce’s house.
Golden Harvest filmed so much footage of Bruce’s funeral so that they could later put it into a film documentary called Bruce Lee: The Man, The Legend. The documentary had already made money by then because the footage was licensed to other companies – not just television stations, but film studios. One such film company was 14K’s Star Sea, who used some of the footage in a featurette about Bruce Lee that was attached to a film of theirs called The Chivalrous Knight. Bolo Yeung didn’t appear in this movie but he would later go on to appear in many movies featuring Bruce Lee lookalikes. When I say many, I mean well over a dozen Bruceploitation movies. He mentioned in interviews that no-one could replace Bruce Lee, but Bolo’s actions speak louder than his words.
He obviously derived pleasure on hitting Bruce Lee in his many forms. It’s perhaps because of this that Golden Harvest never invited him to appear in movies that exploited the Bruce Lee connection whether it be the 1974 Chuck Norris movie, Slaughter in San Francisco, or even the 1977 attempt to complete Bruce’s The Game of Death. In 1975, Golden Harvest made an action movie that was a different kind of exploitation i.e. exploiting the fact that the Queen of England was going to visit Hong Kong in early May of that year. Titled A Queen’s Ransom, the movie starred Jimmy Wang Yu and George Lazenby. Bolo Yeung appeared in it, but the fight between himself and Angela Mao is nothing more than a scuffle i.e. she trips him up and disarms him. The queen of Kung Fu movies saves Queen Elizabeth II.
On the other hand, Bolo gets to fight Jimmy Wang Yu but it feels like a consolation prize since Jimmy wasn’t much of a martial artist. In spite of the international success of Enter the Dragon, Golden Harvest only cast Bolo in two movies during the seventies: A Queen’s Ransom (released in 1976) and Mr. Big (released in 1978). In spite of having achieved recognition by working for the Shaw Brothers film company in the early seventies, Bolo was not invited back. Before his death, Bruce was going to do a movie for Shaw from September to November of 1973. This is why there are some magazine interviews that Bolo did where he claimed that had Bruce died six months after July 1973 then Bolo would already have been working with him in America.
It makes sense if Shaw barred Bolo for killing Bruce, because even Bolo’s friend Michael Chan Wai-Man was allowed to make many movies for them from the late seventies to the early eighties. The Boxer’s Omen, released in October 1983, is a surprisingly rare exception but then that movie was released during Shaw’s decline. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The embargo being lifted means nothing when Shaw shut down their film division a couple of years later. The Boxer’s Omen is proof that Bolo wasn’t against going back to work for Shaw Brothers.
When Jackie Chan collaborated with Michael Chan Wai-Man on Golden Harvest’s Dragon Lord in 1981, Bolo could have been given a role. Michael’s other 14K friend, Fan Mei-Sheng, had previously been cast in Jackie’s The Young Master when that was made in 1979. Bolo wasn’t in that movie either despite the stunt casting evoking the memory of Bruce Lee’s movies i.e. Tien Feng from Fist of Fury (1971), Whang In-Shik from The Way of the Dragon (1972) and Shih Kien from Enter the Dragon (1973). Triad buddies Michael and Fan later acted in Jackie’s Project A II (1987), so there’s no reason why Bolo couldn’t appear in that movie either. His presence would have added gravitas to the already greying Michael, whose best days as a fighter were behind him.
When Jackie made movies with Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao from 1982 to 1988, Bolo was never invited to have a fighting role (not even when Sammo and Yuen made movies without Jackie). It would have made more sense for him to be cast as the main fighting adversary in Dragons Forever instead of Benny Urquidez. After all, 1988 was the year of the dragon. Coincidentally, the aforementioned Fan Mei-Sheng appeared in a 1985 Mickey Rourke film called Year of the Dragon. When it came to the world of mainstream martial arts movies in eighties Hong Kong, Jackie, Sammo and Yuen reigned supreme. Second to them were the female stars of the day: Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan and Moon Lee. Bolo wasn’t even in their movies. There were many modern actioners that he could have been cast in.
One of the standout stars in the eighties was Donnie Yen, but he never worked with Bolo either…and Bruce Lee is his main idol. In the eighties, Donnie made enough contemporary martial arts movies to make people wonder why Bolo wasn’t cast. One could presume that Bolo was too musclebound to do the fast-paced kickboxing style, but being musclebound didn’t stop Michael Woods from working with Donnie on four movies that were made before Bolo left Hong Kong for Hollywood. A performer’s personal speed never really came in to it because of the camera’s undercranking, which is why a newcomer to martial arts like Matthias Hues looked decent in No Retreat, No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder (1987).
Another major fan of Bruce Lee is film-maker Wong Jing. He has made many movies containing homages to (and actors from) Bruce’s movies, but even he never went out of his way to cast Bolo. This is saying something because he has worked with many actors who work for the Triads. It’s not like Wong Jing was too much of a man of scruples to work with low lives. He has even worked with Michael Chan Wai-Man many times. Even if Jing didn’t choose to work with Michael, the latter could easily have fought to have Bolo cast in a Wong Jing movie (especially when Jing was making Shaw Brothers movies in the early-to-mid eighties). Something is not right here.
Come to think of it, it’s weird that none of Hong Kong’s top fight choreographers worked with Bolo. Casting aside movie stars Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, the number of top-notch choreographers could still be counted on one hand: Yuen Woo-Ping, Ching Siu-Tung, Liu Chia-Liang, Corey Yuen Kwai and Tony Leung Siu-Hung – the latter two worked on Ng See-Yuen’s American martial arts movies. When Ng set up shop in America with his Seasonal company, he could easily have sought out Bolo. Besides the Bruce Lee connection, Bolo was the villain in an English language movie not made by Seasonal i.e. Cannon’s Bloodsport starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. The latter had already worked with Seasonal in 1984 for No Retreat, No Surrender.
After the success of Bloodsport in 1988, Bolo reprised his role in an English language Japanese movie called Bloodfight (1989). Bolo’s final Hong Kong movie was Blood Call (1988) but his final Chinese movie in general was a Mainland production called Magic Force from Highland (1990). When it was revealed that Bolo was going to be in another U.S. movie starring JCVD, the people behind Magic Force from Highland decided to re-release the movie with new footage featuring Hong Kong actors. The result was retitled Mega Force from Highland, and released in 1992 on December 24. By 1992, Van Damme was officially a mainstream movie star. When Stephen Chow became Hong Kong’s biggest movie star in 1990, he was in a position where he could pull strings as a Bruce Lee fan.
In fact, Stephen almost made a Bruce Lee biopic with Wong Jing in 1992 – the same year when Universal Pictures were making Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. Although Jing’s project fell through, Stephen has made many movies that contained actors from (and homages to) Bruce’s movies. As you might gather, Bolo Yeung was not cast in any of them. Granted, he had moved on to American martial arts movies but Bolo expressed a desire to play a good guy, which he could easily have done in a Stephen Chow comedy. In eighties Hong Kong, Bolo progressed as an actor by moving from fighting roles to comedy roles. While he did progress, Bolo got to play a heavy most notably in a movie starring Bruce’s son.
In Legacy of Rage (1986), Brandon has a fight with Bolo that is so brief to the point that you can call it a quick beating. Michael Chan Wai-Man was also in this movie, which Sammo dropped out of choreographing at the last minute despite it being produced by one of his companies. Interestingly, the man who ended up as the choreographer was co-star Meng Hoi, who acted in Fist of Unicorn circa 1972. Before 1986, Meng worked with Michael and Bolo several times as he had done with Fan Mei-Sheng. Oddly enough, Michael and Bolo appeared in a 1988 romantic comedy that Sammo produced: One Husband Too Many. At this point, I should mention that Sammo once got into a fight with Michael at a nightclub in the seventies.
I should note that Legacy of Rage was made in the same year as Bloodsport, but Brandon Lee had already left Hong Kong before Van Damme arrived. They should have done a movie together. Michael Chan wanted Brandon to do more movies in Asia but didn’t like his rebellious attitude, especially during one meeting with Japanese investors. Back to Bolo’s progression, he had appeared in some of Sammo’s movies where he only acted instead of fought. In the nineties, Bolo mostly played bad guys when he went to Hollywood. Ironically, one of his American movies involved going back to Hong Kong i.e. Van Damme’s Double Impact (1991). This made it easier for Van Damme to talk to Hong Kong film directors about the possibility of going stateside.
It’s precisely in the nineties where Bolo slipped up in terms of what people knew about his relationship to Bruce Lee. In the September 1990 issue of Martial Arts Illustrated, Bolo claimed that the last time he saw Bruce was a few days before he died. In the August `92 issue of Impact, he claimed that it was ten days. This would have been in the penultimate week of Bruce’s life. Bolo said they discussed practicing Kung Fu but he sensed that Bruce was in a bad mood. In the September `91 issue of Inside Kung Fu, Bolo claimed that he was one of Bruce’s most serious students and training partners during his final days. This wasn’t something that Bruce’s widow, Linda, had commented on in either of her books.
If Bolo hadn’t seen Bruce for ten days until his death then there’s no way that he could have dined with George Lazenby in Bruce’s final week, especially since the official story is that George only met Bruce during his final week. Bolo was digging himself a deeper hole in the December `94 issue of Impact by claiming that Bruce and George had a meeting over dinner at the Choi Yuen restaurant. They asked Bolo to come along but he couldn’t understand what they were saying because his English was worse back in those days. Speaking of English, stuntman Bill Shaw revealed in an interview for the BZ Films site back in 2013 that Bolo likes to play down the quality of his English.
During the making of Shootfighter 2, there was one time when Bill Shaw was in the lunch room after lunch was finished. He said: “The room was empty except for John Salvitti & I, and some of the stunt fighters were at another table. Bolo & his interpreter came in and sat at the other end of our table. Then as the stunt guys were filtering out, the interpreter got up to run a quick errand. Bolo picked up a Chinese newspaper to read, when a couple of the local stunt fighters we recruited had walked up to the table and tried to talk to Bolo. As usual, he quickly got confused and didn’t understand, so they politely smiled, nodded and left.”
At this juncture, I should note that John Salvitti is a friend and colleague of Donnie Yen. Anyway, Shaw continued to say: “The room was completely empty now except for us and Bolo. After just a moment, he put down his paper, leaned over toward us and asked, in the best English I had ever heard him speak, “So, where do you guys go after this?” Our jaws dropped as he just smiled and we had a nice little conversation. The rest of the shoot, however, Bolo continued to speak in his broken English. That is, whenever he spoke – which was rare. I always took that moment in the lunchroom as an honor – as Bolo’s approval and his gesture of trust in us.”
Back to Donnie Yen, he came to prominence in the eighties by working with Yuen Woo-Ping. Ironically, one of Yuen’s younger brothers had worked with Bolo on a 1985 movie titled Lucky Diamond. This brother, Yuen Cheung-Yan, would later work with director Tsui Hark on a 1991 Jet Li movie called Once Upon a Time in China. Tsui had previously directed Bolo in All the Wrong Clues (1981) and Working Class (1985). This makes it all the more baffling that Tsui didn’t cast him in the wirework-laden Jet Li movie or even in Jet’s The Master – a Chinese language movie filmed in America circa 1990. This featured Jerry Trimble, who remembered working on The Master at the same time that he worked with Bolo on Breathing Fire.
Unlike in her Hong Kong movies, Cynthia Rothrock got to fight Bolo Yeung in a U.S. movie. It was a straight-to-video thriller called Tiger Claws (1991). After Shootfighter 2 (1996), Tiger Claws II (1996) would be his final film for a long time. By the way, Bruce Lee’s friend Chuck Norris never did a movie with Bolo. Not once in his entire career did producer Ng See-Yuen ever work with Bolo Yeung. When the former’s Seasonal company turned Jackie Chan into a star with Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), they could have cast Bolo as the restaurant bouncer in Jackie’s Drunken Master (1978). It would have been an example of a comedy fight cameo. The muscle man role in Ng’s Tower of Death (1981) would have been perfect for Bolo.
In 1976, Ng produced a Bruce Lee biopic called Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth. It contains a dramatization of a theory that Bruce was killed by five men armed with machetes. In Wong Jing’s 2011 memoir, he spoke of how another Bruce (Leung Siu-Lung) was surrounded by eight men armed with machetes. Bolo Yeung appeared in a 1978 film, Mr. Big, which featured a scene where the same scenario transpired. Now you know what I meant in the first paragraph when I talked about Bruce Lee potentially being surrounded by a gang of thugs while being forced to participate in a duel.
There is a Chinese interview that Bolo did where he talked about Lee encountering a problem: if you are walking in a narrow alley, and there are people in front and behind with machetes, how do you deal with it? The solution was to use four times the speed to attack the people in front, and then turn around and attack the people behind. Make of that what you will, but it should be noted that Bolo did several films with Bruce Leung in the seventies. Golden Harvest’s Broken Oath would have been a perfect opportunity to have them work together alongside Sammo, Angela Mao and Yuen Woo-Ping.
Pop Cult Master 
lol I heard Linda kill him, Raymond, Betty, the 14k, the rival triad of 14k, Shaw, The Illuminati.. I’m forgetting someone? Now Bolo.. haha how? His only chance was grappling, and at the same time the gang don’t mind giving space to Bruce to move. We would have seen Bolo’s face in the funeral damaged by nails at least, Bruce would have used eye attacks during grappling too, or Bruce was drugged up so wasn’t a fight.
I think Bolo was just underrated…he just had a few minutes in ETD to shine, and he wasn’t an actor, probably they saw him just as a villian bodyguard. I always thought how Robin Shou wasn’t a star in HK? Some people don’t have luck.
Wong Shun Leung saw his body and thought.. epilepsy, not a beating, he thought he was sick in the previous days.. maybe it was just the drugs.
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Yeah, you forgot the American mafia. Knowing what we now know about Bruce’s use of hardcore drugs, killing him while he was in a stupor would have been the best bet. Bruce was sloppy with his handwriting when under the influence. Strangely, I’m reminded of a 1979 Bolo movie called Writing Kung Fu.
When Kung Fu movies evolved from bashers to shapes, Bolo stepped up his game to the point that he perfected the no-looking style. Ironically, Jackie Chan’s dad appeared in a movie that Bolo was in: Kung Fu Cook (1980). It stars Bruce Tong, who appeared in two 1980 JC movies: The Young Master and The Big Brawl. This Bruce worked with Bolo a fair amount of times in the seventies. Bolo proved to be fairly agile if you check out his bamboo fence fight with Blackie Ko in Master Killers (also 1980).
Robin Shou had a Conan Lee type of mentality. In Bey Logan’s BL book, he wrote about working with Robin on a 1993 movie called Guns & Roses: “Robin was, to be honest, kind of hard work. He considered himself a superstar, and could never really understand why nobody else did. Early in the production, Shou decided to get his Jackie Chan on and do his own stunts, jumping off the roof of Birmingham’s Dudley Road hospital. And straight into the casualty ward, after he broke his ankle on landing. This meant we had to shoot around him, with his injury doing nothing to brighten his disposition.”
Wong Shun Leung observed that Bruce was swollen all over with clenched fists and feet – something that wasn’t in the official report by those who went to Betty’s apartment. You can see the non-dubbed version of his interview here.
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I don’t know why you wrote that about Bolo (in your reply). Who gave the order in this hypothesis and why? He was in jail in the past? I think Kelly and Saxon and others weren’t invited in the movies of those people neither.
The American Mafia?
I think we need two or three people saying what Logan said about Robin to confirm, better if they don’t know each other.
Chatgpt says the clench fist and feet is commonly seen during rigor mortis.
I suspect on Raymond.. but maybe because the use of drugs was needed to be hid (to get the insurance money) but they complicated things and everything is weird.
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You mentioned that Bolo was underrated, but he was given ample amounts to shine as the seventies progressed. He improved as an actor, and he proved that he was more than just window dressing. As for John Saxon, he didn’t want to be typecast as a martial arts actor whereas Jim Kelly was game enough to star alongside Tan Tao-Liang in The Tattoo Connection. According to Bolo, Jim alienated the stuntmen by hitting them for real during production of that movie (so no more HK movies for him).
We’ll never know specifically which Chinese person gave the order to have Bruce bumped off, just like how we’ll never know which stuntmen have been arrested for committing crimes. There are some people who believe that Bruce was killed by the American mafia, but these people aren’t really BL historians.
On the subject of Bey Logan, there was a 1992 interview that he did with Bolo (for Impact Magazine) where he actually raised the following question: “Even though you’ve made many fine martial arts movies, you’ve never played in a major scene with Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao or any of the other major Hong Kong martial arts stars. Why is that?”
It takes somewhere between six to eight hours for rigor mortis to set in, which leads to another issue – Charles Lowe claimed that Bruce was already dead before it was half 6 in the evening. Charles was fed up of waiting for Bruce to show up at a Japanese restaurant, so he called Bruce’s house at half 6. A person who responded told Charles that Bruce wasn’t there and that something happened. According to the doorman at Betty’s apartment, Raymond left by himself around 4 p.m. yet the parademics were said to have arrived several minutes before quarter to 11 p.m.
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What did Bolo say to Logan? Maybe he just suffered bad gossiping, and maybe that can include him doing drugs with Bruce, or providing him with drugs. You believe the letters? Since when you suspect on him?
The doorman? He is in that “Death by Misadventure” documentary too?
So Lowe said he had a reservation right? In the restaurant? (before 6 is too early to have to dinner I think) The dinner with Lazenby was a change of plans it seems. Bruce didn’t tell him yet, he was with Betty since 1pm and takes a nap at 4. Raymond leaves thinking he wants to be alone with her, Betty knows he is dead at 5pm. Raymond finds out, they give the news to Bruce’s house (four Bruce students were there?) This is the story if they are innocent. Why would they have Bruce body in the apartment till almost 11pm? They were scared to give the news? Even if he was killed.. why wait? So the doorman saw Bruce entering that place.. walking?
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The letters speak for themselves.
Bolo’s response was: “It’s simply because I’ve never been invited to! Maybe the roles in their films are not suitable for me.”
I’ve been suspecting Bolo for two years now since I purchased every magazine interview that I could get my hands on.
It sure sounds like Lowe had a reservation since they were meeting on a regular basis.
For Bruce to have been taken to the hospital several hours later suggests that there was a lot of cleaning to do so that it didn’t look like a crime scene. Under these circumstances, it would have been easy to make calls and make favours. There was a lot of corruption in the police force, and even Dr. Langford wasn’t above committing perjury.
It takes a corpse somewhere between 10 to 12 hours for it to smell in a very hot climate, so there was plenty of time to act fast without arousing suspicion. Waiting till 11 p.m. meant that there would be less people outside – most people are in bed by that time. The doorman wasn’t even interviewed in court, let alone the documentary.
It’s more likely that Linda used Bruce’s car to meet Rebu Hui, hence why Bruce would have been in Raymond’s car.
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In the M. Polly book it says Bruce goes to the apartment in his car from Golden Harvest’s studios. Raymond arrives later.
How do you know about the doorman then?
I heard Bruce had people in the police, family.. high ranking.
Cleaning.. but in Bruce house they know he is dead, what cleaning is that? Why they would know? Maybe he had an overdose and they didn’t know what to do.. they tried to hide that.
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Whenever the official story of July 20 is told, Bruce and Raymond are at the Lee home before they set off for Betty’s. It’s possible that Bruce may have gone from GH to his home like a pit-stop where you decide to drop something off at the last minute. If The Game of Death was a pretext to hide the fact that Bruce was having sex with Betty at her place then it wouldn’t make sense for Raymond to be there at all unless he wanted to see the damage for himself before doing damage control. Besides cleaning up blood, there’s also the issue of…
A) If you believe fatal overdose: getting rid of drugs and paraphernalia (along with waiting for Betty to come down from a high before the police arrive).
B) If you believe death during sex: eliminating traces of sex including Betty cleaning herself and tidying her hair.
C) If you believe murder: removing Bruce’s knife belt and broken furniture. There’s also the issue of changing his clothes if they’re damaged in a suspicious way, including blood from one of his opponents.
Tom Bleecker’s book mentioned the doorman’s claim about Raymond’s departure when quoting the inquest whereas Marcos Ocaña’s death book revealed the entire inquest.
William Cheung’s father was a policeman. According to BL expert Roy Cullen: “When Chow was told of Bruce’s death, one of the first people he went to was Ip Chun in order to pull some ‘favours’. I remember being on a long drive with Ip Chun and one of his students when he told me about the events surrounding Bruce’s death which made a lot of things make sense (that was around the late 1980’s so quite a lot of stuff now known weren’t in the open then but a lot of it still isn’t public). Before anyone asks, I promised Ip Chun I wouldn’t repeat it which I won’t but I expect one day someone either discloses it or Ip Chun discloses it.”
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No blood, Wong saw the body. If he was killed, it was poisoning. If it was poisoning, Raymond devised that with the help of a crazy Betty. I think the triad would just shoot you in public.
How he was sure that guy was the doorman? It’s important to know if he saw Bruce entering the place, and at what time Raymond entered.
Ip Chun was his connection with Cheung’s father? He could have needed the police to hide the drug consumption too.
When Jackie Chan and his friends made movies in the 80s, kinda a lot of time had passed, and Bolo was in a lot of fake Bruce Lee movies (getting killed) before that.. maybe that had something to do with it, like lost respect.
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The news editor of an English language publication had told one of the authors of The King of Kung Fu that guns were less likely to be used in murders. The editor said: “Everything here’s done with axes, machetes and knives.”
Besides, gunfire would attract too much attention.
We’ll never know how prosecutor Joe Duffy acquired that info about the doorman, just like we’ll never know why Chow needed more than one favour from Ip Chun. Cheung’s father is only one of more possibilities.
Deng Sheng (who can be googled as 鄧生) is a police chief who was not only a Wing Chun guy but the chairman of the Chinese Martial Arts Association in Hong Kong. When Bruce was challenged by Lau Tai-Chuen, Deng organized the time and place for the challenge match. Bruce didn’t want the fight to give publicity for Lau, so he told Deng to make it a secret event. According to Bolo, Deng didn’t keep it a secret, so Bolo found out about the fight during the making of Enter the Dragon. Bolo asked Bruce if it was true, Bruce nodded and told Bolo to keep it to himself.
Deng must have been corrupt because he was under investigation by the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in 1978, and fled to Taiwan.
The `80s casting situation with Bolo is really weird because he still appeared in Sammo’s movies but he wasn’t allowed to fight. I would have liked to have seen him fight Jackie in Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars instead of Dick Wei. Besides the fact that Dick was overused at that point, the fight that he had with Jackie pales in comparison to what they did in My Lucky Stars and Heart of Dragon.
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But they shot Jet Li’s manager.
Supposedly the triads loved Bruce, offered him to kill Bob Wall, and I think somebody in the production of ETD said the guy who challenge him and lost was killed iirc.
That Deng guy probably wanted to bet, I know that story, but I don’t know why you are telling me that.
I think if Bolo killed “Roper” and had a fight with Bruce he would have been bigger deal in HK. I think Bob Wall also was not called to be in those HK movies neither. You have to think that with Bruce alive.. Bolo’s life would have been better, he is a close friend to the number 1 star in Asia, who would be a big producer. Bruce wanted him in G.O.D and probably in Hollywood. Bolo would have been very psychologically damaged to kill him, and I don’t know who would approach him with the idea.. trusting he would not tell his friend Bruce. There have to be other real killers to hire, not a legit bodybuilder, with the sacrifices they made, I don’t see it.. a killer has to be somebody that is garbage.
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Bob Wall was not a regular worker of the Hong Kong film world. Had he been a resident of Hong Kong then that would be a different story and debate altogether. By comparison, Chuck Norris was invited to do one more Hong Kong movie, but that’s because he had the appeal of being the final foe that Bruce fought in The Way of the Dragon.
Guns were not as widespread back in `70s Hong Kong, or Bruce would have been killed earlier for the following things…
1) Punching a Kung Fu man in the face on live TV when said Kung Fu man wanted Bruce to punch his stomach.
2) Defeating challengers, some of whom had to be medically treated (like the man who climbed over the wall outside Bruce’s house).
3) Threatening Lo Wei with a knife.
I don’t buy into the whole “Bruce was too liked by the Triads to be killed” argument that Michael Chan Wai-Man endorsed. That doesn’t change the fact that Bruce was being challenged by stuntmen. Not all stuntmen share the same feelings; not all Triads share the same feelings. That’s why there was a lot of conflict between stuntmen that spilled out into the big brawl on the field in Enter the Dragon. I wrote an article called “Tripartite” where I explored how Bruce’s life and death were affected by the relationship between three communities of Hong Kong society i.e. the police, the Triads and the martial arts world.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised that it never occurred to anyone to test Bruce’s ability to fight more than one person at a time. Being Hong Kong’s number one movie star didn’t mean that he would be above needing to pay protection fees. Lo Wei was Hong Kong’s number one director with The Big Boss, but even he (a gangster) had to pay a Triad in order to use the park that we see in Fist of Fury.
I don’t know what you already know about Deng Sheng and things in general. Even if I did, I want the average reader (outsider) to be clued up on things.
You have to take what Bolo said with a pinch of salt. We never see any photos of him with Bruce outside of the context of Enter the Dragon. Nobody else has corroborated the story of their friendship or Bruce being his teacher. Having said that, Bolo told Bey Logan that he had trained in many styles. Remember that Bruce wasn’t the most generous of choreographers.
The whole thing about Bolo going from a student to a killer reminds me of a Kung Fu movie where Sammo Hung played a man who was desperate to be someone’s student but the master doesn’t know that the man has been sent to kill him!
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I’m saying it was good to him being a friend of the number 1 star, much better if Bruce was alive for him.
Well you should ask Linda if Bolo was close to Bruce. Why Bolo would lie with that when somebody can say bullsh!t?
Punching a Kung Fu man in the face? I didn’t know that.
Not the most generous choreographer? I don’t know what you mean. The letters seems to suggest a problem with Bruce’s health related to drugs, and Baker being worried.. and you suspect on Bolo. lol
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I don’t want to rehash things that I’ve already said in this article and other articles, so I’m trying to keep it brief (your comments as well as mine). When you watch Angela Mao and Whang Ing-Sik in Hapkido, you will see that Bruce did them a disservice when he directed their fights in his movies. On the City on Fire site, Paul Bramhall wrote an article about how Enter the Dragon proved that Bruce was a selfish choreographer.
https://cityonfire.com/enter-the-dragon-the-most-overrated-kung-fu-movie-ever/
When Bolo was interviewed for books and magazines, these were English publications where no-one in Hong Kong could counteract what was being said. As for the American side, Linda and those connected to Bruce weren’t exactly going out of their way to purchase every single magazine that contained an interview about Bruce so as to find discrepancies or overall falsehoods.
This was before the internet culture really took off, so fans and readers in general were either slow or inattentive to pick up on things. Back in the `90s, you would need to have read every single interview from different magazines (U.K. and U.S.) in order to prove that someone was being inconsistent. Even if someone collected everything, what were they going to do to Bolo? They can’t sue him. Even if someone accused him of lying, they would need to have proof or they could get done for libel or slander.
Bruce didn’t send any more letters to Baker since late March `73, and the last letter sent from Linda to Baker while Bruce was alive was in mid-April. This would suggest that Bruce had to score local drugs to compensate for his lack of faith in Baker after Baker’s friend got busted (not to mention the May 10 coma). You need to think who was going to procure Bruce the drugs in Hong Kong.
There was a time when I would have been willing to give Bolo the benefit of the doubt that he was too busy raising his son (who was born on July 3, 1974), but his filmography doesn’t really reflect this. By the time that Bolo finished acting in 1996, David Yeung was old enough to take care of himself.
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So you edited my comment, huh?
lol Don’t pay attention to that dumbo Paul Bramwhatever, doesn’t know sht.. prefers Iron Monkey.. get the f out of here (I just read a bit after that, some parts) doesn’t get that Mao is an actress and in ETD she was needed in a different role. I don’t know what Bruce’s choreography has to do with Bolo and Bruce’s death.
You found something in the interviews? I told you.. maybe Bolo sell him drugs.
English is not my native language btw, and is not good, probably you notice.
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If you remember, your take on Bolo is that he was just a bodybuilder, when really he was just underused. It’s not like ETD was his first film. Also, it’s not like Angela Mao was playing someone who couldn’t fight.
In Impact Magazine circa 1992, there was this exchange…
Bey Logan: “Why do you think Bruce Lee died?”
Bolo: “It’s very complicated. I think it’s something that you can’t dismiss with two or three words. Again, in my book, I’ll discuss the whole matter more clearly. To some extent, I know how and why Bruce Lee died.”
Notice that Bey said why instead of how. Murder is more complicated to explain than drugs.
In the February 1990 issue of Black Belt, Bolo said: “Everybody wants to know how Bruce Lee died. Some people don’t believe his death was natural; some think it was murder.”
In this issue, he talked about wanting to work with Sylvester Stallone. I think that Bolo would have been a better choice for the villain in Demolition Man instead of Jackie Chan (who Sly originally wanted) and Wesley Snipes. In the September 1990 issue of Martial Arts Illustrated, Bolo implied that Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted him to play the T-1000 in Terminator 2. He also claimed that Eddie Murphy wanted to work with him. Coincidentally, Ed mentioned in an interview for Playboy that Stallone used to be one of his friends.
Back to Bruce, there are people in his life who either believe he was murdered¹ or simply heard he was murdered².
¹ Fan Mei-Sheng, William Cheung, Robert Lee, Doug Palmer, Joey Chen, Ed Parker, James DeMile, Tom Bleecker and Malisa Longo (who heard it from a Chinese producer named Yeo Ban-Yee).
² Whang Ing-Sik, Charles Lowe, Robert Clouse and Ng Choi-Fan. In a book called Bruce Lee Conversations, Whang said: “There were a lot of rumors, one such rumor was that somebody beat him to death. Since we worked with the same company, I was very uncomfortable about these.”
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I was saying.. killers probably would not do things like bodybuilding. Lol Mao probably has her most realest fight she ever filmed in ETD, that’s what would happen to a woman against a group of men.. trying to escape while giving some strikes is their only chance.
That why/how don’t tell me anything. What Bolo said in the book? Explaining drugs is very complicated too (they have to admit all the lies) they needed the insurance money, and even smoking weed in HK was bad.
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Like Robert Lee, who also announced a book project in the `90s, nothing happened with Bolo’s book.
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