There are many Bruce Lee biographies out there, from general bios (such as Matthew Polly's Bruce Lee: A Life) to those that are much more narrowly focused (e.g. Rick Wing's Showdown in Oakland about Lee's fight with Wong Jack Man.) This book is somewhere in between in that it is theme-focused (Lee's fights and matches,) but it does offer insights from Lee's childhood through to his death as they pertain to these fights and sparring experiences. The book explores all of the known real-world scraps and matches, as well as some of the more telling sparring sessions. Fights range from Lee's adolescent skirmishes as a punk kid through the challenge matches with extras on the set of Enter the Dragon as an astute (if still quick-tempered) master. When I say that the book includes sparring sessions, I'm not talking about every time Lee sparred, but rather those exchanges that offered particular insight into Lee's prowess, such as his last ever sparring session with his old Wing Chun teacher, Wong Shun-Leung (a senior student of Ip Man's) as well as those with athletes at the top of their respective combative sports.

The point of the book is to challenge a belief -- widespread at times -- that Lee was a blow-hard offering banal quasi-mystical Eastern philosophy and martial insights that were based only on a few Wing Chun lessons from Ip Man. In contrast, the book paints a picture of a broadly experienced fighter who was obsessive about his betterment as a martial artist. Lee was an innovator and trained with great endurance and intensity. The book portrays Lee as a martial artist of such speed and athleticism that even World Champion competitors were left in awe.

While reading, one does have to question how objectively the information is being presented. After all, Little is definitely a bit of a fanboy and he's clearly taking a stance on Lee's prowess. Furthermore, the fact that (at one point, I'm not sure about presently) Little was the only one with full access to Lee's archived notes suggests his message was sufficiently on point for Lee's family to feel comfortable with him. That said, I felt there was enough admission of Lee's weaknesses and mistakes as well as a willingness to present competing statements when details were in question that I believe this is an honest attempt to get the details right (within the unavoidable constraints of memories of events being decades in the past and being seen from multiple perspectives -- psychologically as well as geographically.)

I found this book to be fascinating from cover to cover, and well worth reading. In addition to the stories of the fights, the author discusses the lessons that Lee learned along the way. Even in winning, Lee was sometimes dissatisfied with his own performance, and this drove him to adapt and to develop new training methods. I'd highly recommend this book for those interested in the martial arts or who love a good biography.

Thanks to the movie “Enter the Dragon”, Bruce Lee became a household name and helped spawn interest in the art of kung fu. However, he had long been involved in martial arts long before he appeared in movies. This book by John Little is an excellent read about Lee’s involvement in the sport as a student, teacher and fighter as well as an actor.

The book’s synopsis states that Little spent over 30 years researching information on Lee, including eyewitnesses to his fights. There are two that are especially important in understanding the development of Lee’s mastery of martial arts. One is what can be best described as a boxing match between schools in Hong Kong in which Lee’s small school only had three fighters, but one of them was Lee and he used martial arts techniques not seen by any other boxer to gain the only win for his school.

The other comes later in his life, after he has immigrated to the United States and that is a fight with Wong Jack Man, another martial arts master, in a match that was supposed to be in secret as unlike the other fights portrayed in the book that are in a controlled environment, this one was on a rooftop and a no-holds-barred atmosphere. The attempts to keep it secret were so deep that reading about the means of getting to the rooftop were almost as exciting as reading about the match, which was an important milestone in the growth of the Bruce Lee legend.

His success in his business for teaching martial arts is also described in detail as well as his fights. No matter the topic, Little does a masterful job of describing the life of Bruce Lee through his real-life fights and encounters. Anyone interested in the life of Lee or martial arts will want to add this book to their library.

I wish to thank ECW Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The summer of 1988 was the fifteenth anniversary of Bruce Lee's passing.

I pinpointed that particular time in history because - for me - it was when I was first introduced to films starring the Kung Fu expert.

One of my American cousins, who was staying with us at the time, took my sister and I to the video shop to rent out some cassettes. I cannot recall what my sister and I chose, but I sure do remember my cousin came home with The Way of the Dragon.

I loved that film. So much, in fact, that I watched it a second time before we had to take it back to the video store.

In the weeks, months and years that followed that introduction to Bruce Lee, I looked out for other films of his to loan out and - as they became more readily available - purchase for good.

My interest in martial arts movies expanded as I morphed into my teens opening the door for modern stars like Jean Claude Van Damme, Cynthia Rothrock and others.

The interest I had in Bruce Lee and those stars didn't expand beyond wanting to see their films. Well, not until I reached adulthood.

A few years ago, I found myself looking out for trailers of Bruce Lee films on YouTube and came across a number of videos that - for want of a better term - threw shade on Lee.

The critics I stumbled upon disputed nearly everything about Lee's background and claimed that his fighting style, and moves, were tricks of the camera.

They claimed that Lee was a gimmick. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I was left with a sour taste in my mouth because it was more than Lee's reputation on the line. One of my childhood memories was also tarnished.

I spent years questioning whether I had been suckered in by 'legend'. I needed something to counter and I believe I have found just that in Wrath of the Dragon: The Real Fights of Bruce Lee by John Little.

Little's book covers Bruce Lee's entire life, but it's done in a way where the lens is focused on the real-life fights Lee battled along the way.

Bruce Lee was the product of superstitious parents who feared their young boy would be taken away from evil spirits. To thwart the threat they believed in, Lee's mother and father dressed their son in female clothes and even enrolled their child in a girls' school.

Starting off the narrative with this piece of trivia made me question whether Bruce's journey to - what was then - the masculine world of martial arts spun-off from his first years on this planet.

Wrath of the Dragon's concept appears to be make a strong case against those critics who point to the fact Bruce Lee had never fought in a tournament environment to prove how great his skills really were.

With that in mind, I was particularly interested to see that - of all the real fights Little researched extensively since becoming a Bruce Lee fan from the age of twelve - Lee doesn't appear to have lost in any.

But, the critics keep pointing out that Lee didn't fight in real competition.

Or did he?

In an early part of the book, Little writes about a schools boxing tournament Bruce was a participant in. Lee obviously didn't use Wing Chung Kung Fu - the art he was two years into studying at the time of the boxing meet - in his fight with his rival, Gary Elms, however - it's safe to say that his combat skills were good enough on the day.

Lee defeated Elms in the three-round bout and did so against a formidable opponent who entered the ring as a dominant champion in their weight class.

Yes, it wasn't a kung fu battle, but it - to me - worked in favour for those who would like to argue that Lee would have performed well in a regulated contest in front of an audience.

Little's coverage of the school boxing event was amazing. I was surprised how much the author was able to research considering how long ago it took place. Little not only relayed the Lee .vs. Elms fight, he was able to give out the results for all of the other contests to highlight how Bruce and his classmates were deemed the underdogs to the other schools.

Even though I feel Bruce Lee's boxing win is important to highlight his skills in a regulated combat environment, a kung fu fight - which appears in the book's tenth chapter - is very significant.

It saw Bruce Lee accept the challenge of Wong Jack Man with the pair fighting behind closed doors with only a handful of eyewitnesses.

The 'Rumble in Oakland', as Little titled it in the chapter, resulted in Lee forcing his foe to 'yield'. Despite being victorious, Lee had to do so by chasing his backpedalling opponent and this - Lee realised - affected his energy resulting in Lee learning from the experience and improving his technique.

Little closed the chapter by noting that 'Neither Wong Jack Man nor Bruce Lee could have imagined that this encounter would be held up as one of the most significant fights in American martial arts history'.

Yet again, I was amazed at the amount of detail John Little was able to uncover about the 'Rumble in Oakland' especially because of the limited number of witnesses.

I was naïve to assume that Bruce Lee wouldn't have had his detractors during his lifetime. That made it even more stunning for me to read that he had his challenges while working on the set of his own movies.

Little was able to write about some extras on Enter the Dragon coming out during days of filming to lay challenges to the main star. Naturally, Lee won those encounters.

The book closes with John Little piecing together some words from Lee's contemporaries, and others who were inspired by the late star, to echo how important he was - and still is - to martial arts over fifty years since he passed away.

I felt fulfilled when I finished reading Wrath of the Dragon because I learned so much about Bruce Lee's life. My faith in Lee not being a fraud has been redeemed. And it's thanks to Wrath of the Dragon.

There are far too many sources in the book with the same stories. If there's corelation like that, then the legend has to be true.

Wrath of the Dragon: The Real Fights of Bruce Lee by John Little will be published as an eBook on September 5 2023. The physical copy will be published here in the UK on November 14 2023.

My dad is a massive Bruce Lee fan and so I grew up watching his films, later on reading several biographies. It was great to read yet another perspective, to gather small bits and pieces I might not have known before. I definitely think this is a must for any and all Bruce Lee fans.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher ECW Press for an advance copy of this book looking at the life of a martial arts icon from the battles that he fought, and the lesson that the legend took from them.

Bruce Lee is one of those people that everyone feels they know, and yet so much about him is lost in the fog of myth and legend. A man who was both a martial arts master and teacher, a movie star who brought a genre of film into the mainstream, a cultural icon for different people and different reasons. A man who even his death, something that should be so bureaucratic and simple to tell is one of confusion and speculation. A bad heart? A reaction to pills, or maybe a removal of sweat glands? Ninjas and Triads? Death cults? Ascended to the door between worlds to fight the endless war between the elder gods and the subjugation of Earth? The last one is my pet theory. Even events that have plenty of witnesses, friends, foes or indifferent have grown in legend. Most of these legends deal with Bruce Lee' actual fighting ability. After his death it was accepted that many would downplay these skills, for ego, for jealousy, for money. Some fights were spoken in whispers, Lee not wanting to discuss them, many grew in stature as battles to the death, many were acts of a man who was still working on his rage. The truth was something undiscovered, until now. John Little, considered one of the experts in the training, writing and life of Bruce Lee has in Wrath of the Dragon: The Real Fights of Bruce Lee tried to pierce the veil and get to the truth of the battles that the Little Dragon, fought, and get a better grasp on the complicated human that was Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco in 1940, the Year of the Dragon, not 1941 as school records once had his birth listed as. Bruce Lee's father was a famous Cantonese opera star and was working in New York at the time, later returning to Hong Kong in 1941. Bruce's parents were afraid that the family had a curse after losing their first born son, and he was dressed as a girl, and even went to a girl's school until the age of nine. Bruce was an angry child, prone to fighting and pranks and soon his father asked a friend, the famed martial arts instructor Ip Man to train Bruce. Bruce Lee took to the martial arts with a passion, working, training, asking questions, pushing his body, even as he kept fighting in school, on the streets and on the screen as a burgeoning actor. Bruce was sent to America where he continued to train and learn, and getting into fights, but this time of a more competitive nature, facing challenges to his teaching, his attitude and sometimes because of his anger. Bruce Lee learned from everything, and soon he was sharing with others, and the world with what he learned.

John Little has done a tremendous amount of research, trying to find and separate the truth from the numerous, numerous stories that seem to hover around Bruce and his work. This could not have been easy. Everyone seems to have a story about a situation. And all of them while sometimes making Bruce look great, contradict each other in so many ways. There was a incident in Las Vegas, was it with Vic Damone and his bodyguards, no it was Sammy Davis, Jr.'s bodyguard and it was an accident, no it was Frank Sinatra's bodyguard, and it was real. Little does a fantastic job of trying to get to the bottom, proving this was probably wrong, this account was told 20 years later, in what happened. However this book is more than a tale of the tape for Bruce Lee. Yes there is a lot of fighting, but there is a lot of growth, from an angry young man, to a man who could see things that others couldn't both in fights, and in thinking. A man who trained his mind as hard as he trained his body. A fascinating book about a man whose real story and ideas will probably never really be told, as the legend is printed far more than the truth.

Recommended for fans of Bruce Lee, the martial arts and its history and for training tips. This is really a very interesting book about a man who just kept striving to be the best he could be at whatever he set his mind to. So also readers of self-improvment books might also enjoy this. And finally fiction writers might find this interesting as it gives ideas on how to train for not just combat but just train in general. Writers could use this as motivation for characters. This is the first that I have read from John Little. I can't wait to read more.

My husband is a Bruce Lee superfan. Our first date was to a drive in movie of Enter the Dragon! I found this book very interesting but he has rated it excellent!!! John Little has given us some different perspective on the life of an athlete who still dominates his sport so many years after his death.