Martial Arts Movie March Madness: The Winner

And so, it ends. In all honesty, there weren’t too many surprises in here for me.

You see, over the last few years, I’ve had the privilege to speak with hundreds of martial artists. All over the world, all sorts of styles. Different ages, different backgrounds. Different goals and experiences. And they (mostly) had one thing in common.

Bruce Lee

It seems strange that more than 40 years after his passing, Bruce Lee is still our most iconic figure. He’s instantly recognizable and, possibly, still our greatest martial arts ambassador.

When we set out with the Martial Arts Movie March Madness project, I was confident that Enter the Dragon would come out the winner. It’s iconic, it’s broadly quoted. Most everyone has seen it. Except for one of our editors, who shall remain nameless.

There were some surprises along the way, sure. But not with Enter the Dragon. Which we wrote about so often that, internally, it had to be referred to as EtD. Or, when we couldn’t even handle using the shift key, etd.

Imagine writing about a movie so often that capitalizing an acronym feels tedious.

And this is the degree to which we still feel about Enter the Dragon and Bruce Lee’s collective body of work.

But, this process didn’t finish without a bit of drama. And we owe you, the readers, a bit of an explanation.

When we started out, we were undertaking a different style of writing and reader interaction. And while it had some successful elements, it wasn’t entirely successful. We found that engagement for these votes, at each stage of the “competition” dwindled a bit. In the end, we didn’t have as many people voting as we’d started with. We have ideas for how to improve things next time, but I digress.

We actually ended up with a tie, based on reader voting. Bruce Lee tied with Ip Man. I’ll confess, I was shocked. As I contemplated, though, I realized that, in a sense, they’re very similar movies. The icon, Bruce Lee, vs the man famous for teaching him. The icon himself, alongside household martial arts names versus one of the modern era’s best and most famous actors. Two movies, two men, that have a lot in common. But each is likely more powerful to a certain demographic.

I’ve observed that the initial martial arts movies someone watches become their standard. The ones that hold the power and the interest for them. I suspect the votes cast for Ip Man were cast by younger readers. But that’s simply speculation.

And all this led to a significant discussion among the editors. We kicked around different ways to handle this tie. What would we use as our overtime? In the end, we voted among the 5 of us. It was not a unanimous decision, but we all felt comfortable with the process.

And thus we crown Enter the Dragon as the Greatest Martial Arts Movie of All-Time. The winner of the 2019 Martial Journal Martial Arts Movie March Madness competition. Thank you to everyone who read, shared, supported and voted. Look for a more streamlined, entertaining version of this competition next year.

And if you disagree, tough. That’s how this stuff works. Let’s see if it can hold that title in 2020.

But I would like to hear what you thought of the process; please leave a comment below.