The Real Story Of Bruce Lee's Infamous Fight With A Stuntman

In one controversial scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, Brad Pitt’s stuntman character beats up legendary martial arts master Bruce Lee. So you’ll understand why Lee’s family considers the sequence insulting to the actor’s legacy. But the truth is that Bruce Lee really did once get in a fight with a stuntman on set. And the real story is even more dramatic than the one in Tarantino’s epic.

On the set of The Green Hornet

The real-life brawl took place in 1966 when Lee was in the middle of filming The Green Hornet. This was the show that gave the martial artist his first taste of Stateside fame. After all, American viewers had never seen anything like Lee’s distinct fighting style before. But behind the scenes, there were a few issues.

Issues with stuntment

While audiences lapped up Lee’s performance as Kato in The Green Hornet, Lee was apparently going too hard on the stuntmen he worked with. According to one performer, the martial artist often left his peers practically beaten up after their scenes together. So the producers brought in “Judo” Gene LeBell, a stuntman who’d developed a reputation as “the toughest man alive.”

What triggered it all

LeBell has said that he was instructed to stand up to Lee and give him a little taste of his own medicine. And that’s exactly what he set out to do. So, one day on the Green Hornet set, LeBell apparently approached Lee and made a grab for him. And as you might imagine, Lee wasn’t overly happy about that.

Inspired Tarantino

This brawl between Lee and LeBell is part of what inspired Tarantino to shoot the fight scene in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. And after many people spoke out against the sequence, Tarantino has come out to vehemently defend it. So how accurate was the director’s depiction of the fight?