The film career of Jet Li very nearly didn’t happen. In 1979, when director Cheung Sing-Yim had cast the first ‘Shaolin Temple’ film, he had done so using Chinese Opera performers, with the aim of teaching the actors how to fight. He realized soon into production that this was clearly not working. At the risk of…
Tony Jaa, the Thai actor most famed for his role in Ong Bak – a Thai martial arts film that gained a cult following for is brutal and aggressive display of Muay Thai in cinema – is perhaps one of the most underrated martial arts movie heroes of all time. A stunt-man turned actor, Japanom…
He’s Amazing, but quite possibly a total crackpot! Steven Seagal, the self-described Alpha Male, was born in Michigan in 1952. His parents Patricia and Samuel were a Medical Technician and a High School Maths teacher respectively, with a mixture of German, Dutch, Irish, Russian Jewish, English, and Mongolian Heritage. He was a frail child, who…
This is the story of the greatest samurai who ever lived. A samurai who faced many duels but never lost. The samurai who fought and beat the best martial arts expert in ancient Japan and the one samurai who lived to see the truth in avoiding death rather than facing it head on. Tsukahara Bokuden…
Aggressive, joint-breaking and animalistic, Silat – the Indonesian martial art that often uses knives – has made an appearance on the silver screen and, according to some, may have given birth to the greatest martial arts fight scene ever filmed. Look back to 2011 and the world saw The Raid: Redemption hit the box office.…
Perhaps no rivalry in cinematic history is as legendary as the one between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. What a marvel it is that two of the greatest action heroes of all time were contemporaries! But after some three decades of being neck and neck in the Hollywood world, who ultimately had a greater, more…
Andy Hug is one of the great modern martial artists of our time. Born in Switzerland, Hug shoed amazing talent at sports, playing football at just six years old, he was selected to join Switzerland’s 16-and-under national team. By age 11, he took to martial arts much to his grandfather’s disdain. Hug would never know…
Perhaps the greatest and best-known martial artist of all time wasn’t a wizened old man in ancient China or Japan, but a warrior, film actor and director, and writer in the 20th century. Bruce Lee, whose real name was Lee Jun-fan, was a cultural symbol, a driving force in the representation of Asians in cinema,…
Ninjas are some of the most feared and mysterious warriors in the history of warfare. Silent, deadly, and skilled in a variety of covert, unconventional methods of fighting and infiltration, they have captured the public’s imagination in many ways. They have made their way into pop culture as invincible assassins, and wielding deadly weapons. Sometimes,…
Who comes to mind when you think of deadly hand-to-hand fighters? Famous martial artists like Bruce Lee? Legendary MMA strikers like Chuck Liddell? Perhaps they were good in their own fields, but nothing trains lethality in close quarters combat like actually having to fight for your life on a regular basis, in a deadly environment.…