What was the level of Brandon Lees martial arts skills? Was he a black belt?
Brandon trained in several martial arts in his life, including but not limited to; Judo, Grappling, Kali, Jeet Kune Do Concepts, Yee Chuan Tao, Savate, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Eskrima, mixed martial arts (MMA)and Gung Fu. Most of the martial arts he studied do not have a belt system of progression. Brandon’s father’s art(JKD) for instance doesn’t. Bruce Lee in fact didn’t believe in belts in martial arts, famously saying that “belts are only good for holding ones pants up”. At the time Brandon trained at The Inosanto Academy where he trained at for the last 4-5 years of his life, they also didn’t give out belts, students simply had to progress to the next phase according to the instructor. Dan Inosanto commented in 1996 that Brandon was a serious martial artist and was very skilled. Brandon in 1992 claimed that while he never had studied arts that used black belts, he felt that he had reached a black belt level in many of them. In 1990, Brandon was only 1 out of 14 worldwide who qualifi
