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Scot who’s taught Bruce Lee’s jeet kune do fighting style all his life on the actor’s legacy

  • Tommy Carruthers’ life course was set the day he saw Way of the Dragon aged 14. He taught himself to fight like Lee, and has taught it to the world ever since
  • Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Van Damme, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, they couldn’t tie Bruce Lee’s shoelaces, he says. He hopes to see films with real jeet kune do in them

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Scotsman Tommy Carruthers (right) has dedicated his life to keeping Lee’s jeet kune do – the original mixed martial art style – alive. Photo: Cheok Gwan Kai

Tommy Carruthers’ life changed in a darkened Glasgow cinema back in 1974.

“I saw Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon and that was the turning point in my entire life,” the Scotsman, now 60, reveals.

Over the ensuing 45 years, Carruthers has been keeping Lee’s teachings alive as one of the few instructors to have mastered the fluid jeet kune do style of kung fu created by Hong Kong’s “Little Dragon”.

“It’s about presenting martial arts but in a high standard that he would have been proud of,” Carruthers says of his mission to continue championing Lee’s simple but spectacular fighting style. “That’s the best thing we could do to preserve and enhance his legacy.”

Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon. The film inspired a teenage Tommy Carruthers to learn Lee’s style of martial arts. Photo: Golden Harvest Group
Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon. The film inspired a teenage Tommy Carruthers to learn Lee’s style of martial arts. Photo: Golden Harvest Group
“Everybody else after Bruce Lee died, whether it be Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, [Jean-Claude] Van Damme, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, they couldn’t tie Bruce Lee’s shoelaces. He’s still way ahead of everyone.” Though the spotlight has never moved far from Lee – who died in Hong Kong from a cerebral edema on July 20, 1973 – there is a fresh focus on him with the long-awaited world premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood .

The maverick American filmmaker chose the Cannes Film Festival for the grand reveal of his latest opus, starring the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, and set around Hollywood at the time of the notorious Tate murders of 1969 committed by the notorious Charles Manson cult.

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