Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Bruce Lee Imitators

Bruce Lee.... arguably the greatest martial artist of all time. When holding a title of greatest anything, you're bound to be emulated by thousands. Popular media utilizes emulation of icons all the time. From Elvis we got shotgun wedding preists saying my new wife is a hunka hunka love making, to Elvira turning all undead females into the next items of necrophilia. So it was only natural that when we got Bruce Lee, we got Bruce Leroy, along with the millions.... and millions!.... of impersonators that soon followed. So it would only make sense that some of these impersonators would of found their way into the world of gaming. So we look at the best of the best that want to be the best but can only do that by pretending that they are the best. Do any of these guys fall short of the one inch punch? Lets find out!

Alright... now I'll bet that no one has ever heard of this guy, or this game. With good reason! This guy sucked as a Bruce Lee imatator. His strength is mediocre compared to the rest on the list and his defense is laughable. I mean seriously, how can a tiny little bird or even a stick... a friggin stick!... harm you if you're suppose to be like Bruce Lee? It is these flaws that give him a spot on this list! I can't tell you just how bad this game is, but it does make me laugh. Supposedly the only saving grace of this game was its large character designs.... but I highly doubt that makes Wang seem tougher. If you think that seeing Bruce Lee getting his butt handed to him by flaming sperm and stereotypical 1980s asshole army guys is entertaining, then by all means play this game. To sum up Wang... think of that one kid in high school that thought he was cool or funny but was still ignored... then you at least have an idea of who Wang is.... not to mention that his own name is a friggin inneundo! Like I said... this guy makes me laugh alot.

Alright... now we hit the real contenders! Maxi is by far a bad ass in the world of SoulCalibur. Everyone is throwing around medievel weapons of mass destruction that are bigger than the friggin stage, but not Maxi! He is definitely style over substance. His range with the nunchucks isn't the greatest, but his combo ability and mix up game with his kicks make him one deadly Bruce Lee wannabe. But unlike the legend himself, Maxi is a bit of a pansy because he's always seen solving his problems with his nunchucks. I mean seriously, Bruce would put down the chucks, pick up another weapon, or just beat the hell out of you with his bare hands. Maxi is just a one trick pony! C'mon Maxi... it's time to leave your comfort zone and be a man for a change.

What can arguably be the first representation of Bruce in a fighting game, Kim held many of his original source's moves, only much flashier.... with fire! Now admittingly I rarely played a World Heroes game, but I've seen people play it before. Kim was defintiely a combo whore with some cheap moves. If it wasn't for the crappy animation of this character, I could say that he deserves higher on the list. But that's what hurts him the most. His moves were top notch though. From a flying kick that lights him up in a flaming dragon head, to an unworldly ridiculous super move that turns him into a rotating circle of punching doom, I'm sure that Bruce, if he were alive, would at least nod in a pleased manner and give him a B+ for effort.

Liu beats out Kim Dragon for two specific reasons... number one, he's more popular, and number two, he was once a zombie. Liu Kang isn't exactly a Bruce Lee rip off to the letter, but you can see where he was influenced by the legend. When Liu first made his appearance, he had the style of Bruce from Enter The Dragon and possesses the flying kick that Bruce made popular. The only thing that keeps him down is the fact that he uses fireballs... cheaply I might add. But as I said before, the shining light of all this is that he died and came back as a zombie. Now if only the real Bruce could do that... actually take that back, he'd be impossible to kill. Could you imagine being flying kicked from zombie Bruce and then eaten alive? Scary, yet cool thought.

Well if there's one thing that happened after Bruce became a success, it's that white people wanted to be just like him. They always fell short though... I mean look at Chuck Norris for example. Everyone loves him, but the fact still remains that he got his ass whipped by Bruce Lee. But Jacky decided to change that up and learn Bruce's style, taking it to a definite form that can be respected. Now I've already written a walkthrough on GameFAQs on Jacky with my professional opinion on him, so I'm going to avoid all that here. Jacky is best sumed up as a combo whore. Other than keeping extremely true to the style that Bruce made popular, that's where the comparison ends. I don't remember Bruce being a race car driver, nor do I remember him having a hot blonde sister either. Maybe that was his alternate secret lifestyle that we didn't know about. Could you imagine Bruce Lee dying his hair blonde? That's just a weird site to behold!

And we reach yet another obvious character for this list. Seriously though, how could he not manage to get on this list? If I tried to keep him off, he'd of come to my room, knocked on the door politely, and then proceed to kick my teeth down my throat to allow me the convenience of both eating and crapping out of my ass. So here we are with Fei Long. While I stated that Kim Dragon was arguably the first Bruce Lee imitator in a fighting game, Fei Long was definitely the first popular Bruce Lee imitator in a fighting game. From his loud cries to his standard Jeet Kune Do fighting style, Fei was a blantant rip off of Bruce when the idea was put down on paper. Capcom, with fear of backlash from the Lee family, turned Fei from a simple Bruce Lee knock off to a Bruce Lee that deserved a spot on the X-Men. Fei took a turn into the unbelievable when he started using fire in most of his special moves. This is what keeps him from reaching a higher spot on the list. One would say that he, at the very least, deserves a higher spot. To that I say, it's not all about flashy gimmicks. Granted Fei's is a bit more flashier than those that proceed him, but Fei really lacks substance in my opinion. He doesn't have much draw as a character as a whole. On the plus side, he does make for a formidable opponent, much more so online thanks to SF II HD and SF VI. I do give Fei credibility when it comes to the ass kicking department. If there's one thing that Fei does right, it's keep Bruce's good name going. I've seen people online absolutely demolish not only their opponent, but their hopes and dreams of their future endeavors as well. So all in all Fei is good, just not great enough to place higher.

Jann is just more than a Bruce Lee Imitator, he's a Bruce Lee fan. In one of Jann's endings from the past DoAs (I forget which one) he's seen as a kid watching Bruce Lee films. This inspired him to get vengenance on those who use to pick on him and cause misery in his life... that and hold a steady paying job as a bouncer. One thing that gets me is that unlike his hero, Jann has no problem beating women. His mentality is that they are weak and belong in the kitchen... making him meatloaf. This is shown most prominently in the fact that Lei Fang is constantly trying to defeat Jann at the DOA tournaments, and losing to him. And does he feel sorry for telling Lei what the five fingers said to her face? Hell no! He just moves on to the next opponent... most likely a ninja that beats him all the time. Whatever the case though, Jann is definitely a high flying, Bruce Lee imitating, bad ass.

And now we hand out the bronze medal. If there's one thing that I can say, it's that this guy deserves the gold for biggest asshole in the entire line-up. He appears in a boxing game and uses his feet! Not only that, the bastard can meditate and regain his health after you were able to stop him for one friggin moment and land a punch. Dragon Chan is a very obvious nod to the legend. His style of clothes, his hairstyle, his fighting prowess, everything. It's just funny to me that he decides to put all that to use in the boxing ring rather than on the streets beating up drug dealers. Hey we all have to pay the bills somehow. I've heard plenty of stories of people being stuck on Dragon. Even with a handy dandy guide provided on GameFAQs, people still have trouble getting past this guy. I've seen him be defeated, but that was only by top pros at the game. My friend had to come over and prove to me that there really was an end to this game. Other than being incredibly hard and incredibly cheap (I mean everyone even agrees that this guy is the beginning of where the difficulty curve spikes upward at a 90 degree angle) Dragon Chan does hold a small candle of likability. His quirky sense of character and blantant style of fighting that is completely against the rules gives him a small place in the corner of all our hearts. No one can say that they wouldn't of loved to use someone that can just literally kick the crap out of Mohammed Ali, and Dragon Chan has no problem forgetting the Marquess of Queensbury rules.

Jones Damon... Mr. Jones to you! If there's one thing that I can say that just makes me smile when I see this guy is not so much the fact that he's a Bruce Lee imitator, but a clever Bruce Lee movie homage. We all know that Bruce left China to pursue his dreams in America, and he did it in grand style. That didn't sit right with many people back in China, or so the legend goes. Bruce was tragically taken early in his during the filming of Game of Death. This is the movie that helped trademark his signature yellow tracksuit that many people and characters like to use. Jones isn't shy about this fact either, as he uses a rendition of Bruce's tracksuit for his own. Going deeper into this, this was the movie that he fought one of his prized students Kareem Abdul Jabar, the basketball player. Jones' very look is embroiled in the likeness of Kareem in this movie. Jones is obviously taller than most of his opponents that he uses a crouch like stance to stay at eye level with the average sized fighter. He even sports the sunglasses that Kareem wore when he fought Bruce. The only thing taken out of proportion is his afro. Yes Kareem had a small afro, but Jones decided to make his much much bigger. It's nice to see that a character can be entertaining and rather than base it off of someone cliche like everyone else, they make something else out of the material left behind by the legend. Definitely, Jones is a diamond in the rough when going through Bruce Lee imitators.

Yeah yeah yeah... I know.... he's the obvious choice for first place. But that's what's so great about Law. First I want to say that I tried my damnedest to keep Law from reaching first. No matter who I had on the list, they just couldn't hold a candle to him. Marshall Law has been carefully crafted over the years, with each game coming out making him more and more like the legend himself. He's a master of Jeet Kune Do, wears the exact same clothes that Bruce did in his movies, and had a son that equaled his greatness! The only thing that Marshall Law has that Bruce didn't, is the goatee. I want to say that this was just to keep copyright infringement law off Namco's back. To be honest, I actually think that the spirit of Bruce Lee wasn't satisfied and some how came back to inhabit the mind of someone at the Namco company and passed his essence into the character. Law is something so much more than an imitator, he's an exact copy. You have to show a bit of respect since the people behind the Tekken games did everything to make a character that looks and feels just like the source material they were using. When you look at Marshall Law, you can't help but to see the greatness that Bruce himself left behind. When a character can do you justice once you've passed on, that has to say something about yourself. So the next time you're taking on Marshall Law, pause the game for a moment. Give a moment of silence to the legend himself that you see before you. You can't help but to be slightly taken in by the sight of Bruce himself standing in front of you.... and then you can unpause the game and proceed to defeating him in order to move on to Heihachi.

So as you can see, the obvious choice won out in the end. It's a bit disheartening in my opinion, but you can't argue with simple math. There are many that want to be just like the legend himself. Hell to this day Bruce Lee will and does inspire people to strive for their goals in life. He was not only a strong martial artist but a man of philosophy as well. He held many traits of what it meant to be a truely disciplined person in mind, body, and spirit. Those that try to be like him, most of the time come up short. The ones that do make it up to the same plateau as Bruce himself, I can only ask if it is nice to be up at the top.

List by Sanctuary Remix (10/13/2009)