My teacher is Bruce Lee, who dominated Hollywood.

Chapter 182 UFC War Begins

In mid-June, the weather in Los Angeles was already very hot.

At Long Beach Pier, a gentle sea breeze blows through the newly renovated warehouses.

There was no red carpet walkway like in traditional boxing matches, nor dozens of high-powered halogen lamps hanging from steel beams emitting blinding white light.

In the very center of the arena, a huge black wire mesh rose from the ground, the octagonal cage resembling a steel behemoth, bringing a terrifying sense of oppression to everyone entering the arena.

The front row of the stands was filled with a whole row of muscular men.

Arnold Schwarzenegger wore a tight gray vest, his bulging chest muscles almost bursting the fabric.

He sat imposingly in a folding chair with several muscle giants from California's "Golden Gym," including his best friend Franco Columbus.

These giants, accustomed to smearing olive oil under the spotlight and showing off their muscles to the referees, stared at the closed iron cage, their eyes gleaming with undisguised fervor and curiosity.

"Arnold, this cage looks like it's for serious criminals," Franco said to Schwarzenegger in a deep voice, rubbing his thick neck.

"It's incredible. The fighters will be fighting fiercely inside later." Schwarzenegger also seemed very excited.

On the other side of these bodybuilding behemoths, there is a stark contrast of tranquility.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who had just finished the 1973 season, sat in the VIP section with several NBA stars who were in the offseason.

Tonight, he changed into a low-key black tracksuit.

Since being enlightened by Bruce Lee in the private room and deciding to confront his inner fears, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's expression was unusually focused at this moment.

For him, this was not just about watching the spectacle, but more like a spiritual pilgrimage to cleanse his soul.

In the VIP area closest to the octagon, Warner Bros. President Ted Ashley sat side by side with Universal Pictures' Sidney Sinberg.

The two Hollywood bigwigs, dressed in suits, were initially there simply to give Qin Han face.

But after sitting in the warehouse for only ten minutes, the frenzied roars around them and the rapidly rising adrenaline in the air caused even these two shrewd businessmen to unconsciously loosen their ties, completely infected by this savage atmosphere.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" A deafening roar suddenly erupted from the cheap speaker hanging on the steel beam.

Lorna Barrett, a radio personality she had specially poached from the sports channel, stood in the center of the octagon, gripping the microphone tightly, her voice slightly distorted due to extreme excitement.

Welcome to the inaugural UFC (Ultra-Fighting Championship)!

The commentator abruptly waved his arm, pointing to the blinding lights overhead: "In this iron cage before you, there are no soft, gentlemen's rules!"

"Here, there are no round limits! No weight classes! Except for eye-gouging and biting, any attack that knocks down your opponent is legal!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the entire warehouse seemed to explode like a powder keg.

After a brief moment of astonishment and doubt, the surrounding stands erupted in cheers, with thousands of spectators shouting as if they wanted to lift the roof off.

Accompanied by deafening heavy metal rock music, the iron gate at the end of the passage was pushed open.

Bruce Lee wore sleek black training pants, his upper body bare, his muscles sculpted with sharp, defined lines.

He wore self-designed half-finger fighting gloves on both hands—which not only protected his finger bones but also preserved a large grip space.

With light steps and piercing eyes, she stepped calmly into the octagon, each step perfectly timed with the frantic heartbeats of the crowd.

Immediately afterwards, the door on the other side of the iron cage groaned heavily.

A massive underground black market wrestler, weighing over 280 pounds, squeezed into the octagon like a moving mountain of flesh.

His body was covered in thick body hair, and with each step he took, his thick thighs seemed to cause the arena floor to tremble.

When the two stood face to face, the entire audience gasped. Bruce Lee's already exceptionally strong body appeared so frail in front of that mountain of flesh.

"Clang!" The gong rang out, and the competition erupted instantly without any probing.

The giant roared like a tiger, spreading his two thick, tree-trunk-like arms and lunging at Bruce Lee like a runaway bulldozer.

He attempted to use his overwhelming weight advantage to pin the small Asian man to the barbed wire and crush his bones with brute force.

However, Bruce Lee never used any traditional martial arts routines to fight head-on. The philosophy of Jeet Kune Do is never to go against the tide!

Just as the giant was about to rush in front of him, Bruce Lee's foot slipped half a step away like a ghost, his body narrowly avoiding the fatal attack.

Immediately afterwards, his waist burst forth with terrifying torque, and his right leg, like a battle axe drawn from its sheath, slashed precisely at the ligaments on the outside of the giant's left knee with a piercing whistle that tore through the air.

"Bang!"

The giant's massive body suddenly tilted to the side, and the support of his lower body collapsed instantly under this sharp low sweeping leg.

The moment the spasm of pain appeared on his face, Bruce Lee's attacks came down like a storm.

Using the recoil from his low sweep kick, his body shot up like a spring, his left leg drawing a semicircle in the air, his instep like a taut steel whip, striking the giant's unsuspecting chin hard.

A crisp cracking sound echoed inside the octagonal cage.

Under the gaze of thousands of eyes in the arena, the giant's head jerked back violently, and sweat mixed with blood sprayed out.

A blood-stained tooth pierced through a gap in the barbed wire, arcing through the air before landing with a thud near the gleaming leather shoes of Sidney Sinberg in the front row.

The giant's massive 280-pound body crashed onto the arena floor like a felled tree, and then fell silent.

The entire match lasted less than ten seconds.

Everyone was stunned by this visually stunning scene, and they roared like a tsunami!

People were wildly waving their fists and splashing their beer into the air.

Schwarzenegger abruptly stood up from his folding chair, his eyes wide and staring incredulously at the man in the octagon who was far smaller than him.

He was well aware of the limits of human biomechanics, but he simply couldn't comprehend how such terrifying power could erupt from that seemingly small body.

Bruce Lee stood still, his chest rising and falling slightly.

He took the microphone from the referee next to him, walked to the center of the octagon, and looked directly at the cameras flashing wildly outside the arena.

"Martial arts have never been about simple killing and violence!"

"A true fighter is one who breaks the shackles of rules in dire straits, one who throws a punch of defiance at those who believe themselves invincible!"

Bruce Lee's voice, like a resounding bell, pierced through the frenzied clamor: "Too many sectarian prejudices, too many fancy but ineffective moves, are killing the soul of martial arts! In this iron cage, there are no lofty masters, only the purest fighting!"

"Be like water, my friends! Abandon those rigid moves, adapt to your opponent, shatter barriers! Tonight, I'm just the opening act. The rest of the octagon will be handed over to those madmen who dare to bleed and face their fears head-on!"

After saying this, Bruce Lee handed the microphone back to the referee, and amidst thunderous cheers from the crowd, he draped a towel over his shoulders, calmly exited the cage, and returned to his seat in the VIP section next to Chin Han.

The octagon's iron gates closed again, and the UFC's bloodthirsty frenzy had only just begun.

In the second match, an underground Muay Thai fighter from Thailand faced off against a white Sanda champion who was significantly heavier than him.

When the burly white man's violent punch slammed into the Muay Thai fighter's face, the entire white audience erupted in deafening screams.

But the next second, the Muay Thai fighter, covered in blood, pounced on his opponent like a nimble monkey, tightly gripping the opponent's neck, and delivered an extremely vicious "neck choke and knee strike" that broke the opponent's ribs.

The third match featured a brutal ground fight that truly opened the audience's eyes.

A seemingly frail Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt was slammed to the floor by a Russian Sambo expert.

Just when everyone thought the match was about to end in a one-sided massacre, the Jiu-Jitsu athlete twisted his body on the ground like a python, locking his opponent's neck and arms like iron clamps, and used a perfect "armrest" to directly break his opponent's arm in the opposite direction. Accompanied by a shrill scream, he submitted and won.

The sounds of fists colliding and bones snapping, mixed with the sweet, metallic smell of sweat and blood, fermented violently in the closed warehouse.

Schwarzenegger and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the stands felt their scalps tingle, and even the well-informed Warner Bros. president Ted Ashley unconsciously clenched his fists, his palms sweating profusely.

This raw, unadulterated battle strikes at the most bloodthirsty instincts in the human genome.

When the final, bloody battle ended with a brutal guillotine strike, the frenzy in the warehouse reached its peak.

Amidst a hysterical roar, Bruce Lee tossed aside the towel and strode back into the octagonal cage, now soaked in blood.

He took the microphone, his eyes even sharper than before, like a peerless sword that had just drunk blood.

"Did you see that? This is the truth after the disguise is removed!"

Bruce Lee suddenly turned around, his arm like a long spear, pointing straight at the huge projection screen outside the barbed wire fence.

"Of course, fighting is just the form; the martial arts behind it require everyone to calm down and savor it carefully!"

"Next week! 'Enter the Dragon' will hit North American theaters!" Bruce Lee's eyes burned with wild confidence: "Go to the cinema and see how I, with the same conviction, trampled those self-proclaimed invincible masters under my feet in the Colosseum in Rome!"

There, Sylvester Stallone stood quietly, wearing a worn-out leather jacket.

The intense guerrilla filming in Philadelphia left bruises on his face and scars on the back of his hands that hadn't completely faded, giving him a fierce aura.

"Remember the person in that corner." Bruce Lee's voice echoed through the hall: "The true fighter exists not only in this iron cage, but in every corner of this country. It's you! It's you! It's you!" His finger traced the entire stands: "Next year, Han's Films will bring a cinematic nuclear bomb to America—Rocky! It will show you what the most indestructible soul in this messed-up world truly is!"

As it turned out, the visual spectacle of the UFC debut perfectly ignited the deep-seated repression and confusion within the American public after the Vietnam War.

A few days later, "Enter the Dragon" was released in theaters across North America.

The premiere was a resounding success.

From Times Square in New York to Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, long lines formed outside almost every theater showing this movie.

In those vast Midwestern regions, lines of cars waiting to drive into movie theaters can stretch for kilometers, their taillights forming a sea of ​​red against the night sky.

In the film, Bruce Lee's textbook-perfect duel with Chuck Norris in the Colosseum perfectly captured the fighting craze brought about by the UFC.

Kung Fu films officially became a cultural tsunami sweeping across mainstream North American society.

Inside Universal Pictures' "Black Tower" headquarters, President Sidney Sinberg looked at the box office reports flying in like snowflakes on his desk and laughed so hard he almost dropped his cigar.

Looking back on Qin Han's first visit to Black Tower, he was incredibly grateful that his foresight had been spot-on, leading to a comprehensive collaboration with Han's Film Industry.

Meanwhile, at the headquarters of Hans Films in Sunset Tower, Michael Ovitz watched the torrent of cash flow pouring into the company's accounts like a money printing press, so excited that he couldn't sleep all night.

These funds were quickly allocated, with the remainder, aside from a portion set aside for the company's daily operations, being transferred to Qin Han's financial accounts and that strange research team.

Just as the entire United States was swept up in a kung fu craze, Qin Han arrived at Paramount Pictures with his newly completed script.

It was a sunny morning.

In Paramount's top management office, President Frank Albranches was sitting behind a large mahogany desk.

This bigwig, who single-handedly brought "The Godfather" to life, has extremely high taste and is known in the industry for his pickiness about scripts.

When his secretary announced Qin Han's visit, Frank immediately went out and personally welcomed the rising young producer into his office.

"Qin, tell me quickly, is the script you mentioned finished? I've been waiting for your news!"

"Of course!" Qin Han smiled and handed over his briefcase.

But when Frank opened the script Qin Han handed him and read only the first ten pages, the flippancy on his face completely disappeared.

He was shocked to discover that the script, titled "Chinatown," had absolutely nothing to do with "kung fu" or "action."

It is filled with the viscous texture of old-school film noir, with extremely biting political metaphors permeating every line, and a sense of despair that is almost suffocating.

After some time, he turned to the last page of the script.

As the story unfolds at the end, the protagonist, Jack, stands beside a pool of blood, listening to his companion's nonchalant remark, "Forget it, Jack, this is Chinatown." His fingers, holding a cigar, begin to tremble uncontrollably.

"This is a murder—you murdered the glamorous American Dream of Los Angeles in black and white."

Qin Han's lips slowly curled up: "Frank, Han's Films can not only make audiences scream in the movie theater, but also make them feel a deep tremor in their souls after they leave the theater."

"Paramount is funding it, and Hans is handling all the production. Let's use this film to knock on the doors of Hollywood's highest artistic hall."

"Let's give those old guys a real shock at next year's Oscars!"