2. Hai Tien Vs A really tall guy in very short shorts (Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey)
I know what you are thinking; "The film is called Game of Death dumbass!" You're right, I am a dumb ass. However, while the heavily edited fight between Bruce Lee and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from a Game of Death is by far the better known version of this fight, it is the re-created version in the documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey that actually follows Lee's notes and storyboards. The film version was cobbled together with out-takes, scenes from other movies, body doubles and even at one point a cardboard cut out......really. The only original footage was the footage at the end of the film in the pagoda and for a long time that was all the general public knew about. In actual fact, Bruce Lee had shot a lot more of the film than we were led to believe, 3 complete fight scenes in fact as well as other sequences with James Tien and Chieh Yuan. John Little's documentary restored this lost footage and edited it according to Lee's hand written notes. The script was also restored so aside from one line of dialogue we get to see almost 50% of Lee's vision. Let me tell you, it is a much, much more satisfying film even in this form than the crap they put together in the 70s. You see, Game of Death was Lee's labour of love through and through. The whole film was centred around his martial arts philosophies and techniques and featured a host of real life martial arts masters for him to defeat using his unique, formless style. What makes the fight against Kareem so entertaining, ground breaking and stunning is that the ultimate opponent in Lee's Game of Death is basically a bigger and stronger version of himself. Both fighters are fluid and formless fighters, not restricted by style and perfectly expressing themselves. It may sound like a session of group therapy but this is the key to Lee's martial arts. Technically the fight isn't the most ostentatious on this list but it is by far the most iconic. From the stunning silhouette of Bruce Lee's 5 foot 7 inches next to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 7 feet 2 inches to the yellow catsuit, the whole scene pops out like an Andy Warhol painting on steroids. Still, while it doesn't reach the film making heights of others on this list, no one can match Bruce Lee for his perfect form and blindingly fast choreography. I mean, these guys had to slow it down because the cameras couldn't capture it properly and the rushes looked under-cranked.