Shannon Lee has martial arts coursing through her veins. The daughter of martial arts icon Bruce Lee has a podcast that focuses on continuing his legacy, and she recently invited ONE Championship Chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong on to speak with her.
Sityodtong talked about his upbringing, his time on Wall Street, and how his passion for martial arts brought him back home to start what would become the world’s largest martial arts organization.
Lee’s philosophies and stature as a global figure influenced how the ONE co-founder thought about martial arts as he grew up.
“It’s unbelievable how far ahead he was of his time as a martial artist but also as a human being. As a philosopher, I don’t think the mainstream fully appreciates that. He was a very philosophical man. You know, a lot of deep wisdom. He had just a lot of incredible thoughts about life and the meaning of life,” Sityodtong expressed.
For Sityodtong, one quote of Lee’s stands out among the others. It is one that resonates with him to live life every day and accept challenges.
And he thinks about it when dealing with the challenges of martial arts.
“I have so many of his quotes in my head – ‘Don’t pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a hard one.’ There’s so many incredible quotes by him about life, and it’s so true,” Sityodtong said.
“If you didn’t follow Bruce, you would think, hey, I want an easy life, but when you listen to the philosophies of Bruce and understand that by choosing a hard life, you’re unleashing your potential. You’re pushing your limits. You’re growing. You’re learning.”
“And then, that’s directly from the martial arts. You know, if martial artists are complacent your technique becomes stale. You have to always be constantly pushing and progressing and evolving and learning. That involves a lot of failure and a lot of setbacks as a result, but the strength to endure that. That’s what I truly love. The grit and resilience is what we call it today.”
Shannon attended ONE’s first-ever event on U.S. shores, ONE Fight Night 10, last May, and she was blown away by the excitement and respect the promtion presents.
But that wasn’t just at the sold-out show in Colorado.
As Sityodtong explained, ONE is about expressing love for each other and martial arts as a whole. The organization doesn’t play into the vitriol many other combat sports companies do.
“Of course, you saw the very best martial arts on the planet. I love the fact that you took away also that we were trying to celebrate the very best of humanity, right? Yeah. And that’s something that’s very intentional,” the ONE Chairman stated.
“I give a backstage talk to our athletes before every event, and I say look, it took you a lifetime to get to this point. You’ve been training your whole life. Now, the whole world is going to watch you perform tonight. How do you want to express yourself? And when I say that, it brings out the best in people, it just does.”
For those reasons, Sityodtong is adamant that Bruce would have loved what ONE is doing on a global scale.
With another of its big shows, ONE 166: Qatar, looming, he explained how Bruce continues to influence ONE Championship to show what martial arts is about around the globe.
“That’s why I said Bruce would love it. All the martial arts that we showcase are real martial arts. Meaning that, remember Bruce only cared about what worked in real life,” Sityodtong said.
“I’m like, you know what, his influence is actually everywhere in ONE. everywhere. And that’s why I say he would be very proud. We don’t showcase nonsensical martial arts. We showcase the very best martial arts, that are practical martial arts, right? Real life martial arts. And a lot of these martial arts have, in their own way, discarded what’s useless and have inherited what’s useful.”
To listen to the whole podcast, visit https://www.brucelee.com/podcast.