Bruce Lee and High Tech Nunchucks: Enter the Dragon (of Ping Pong)

August 13, 2023

As a part of the 50^th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu classic “Enter the Dragon”, the movie is being rereleased this week. As fans of Bruce Lee revisit the artistry of the movie, we thought we’d take this opportunity to invite table tennis fans to revisit (and reimagine) the famous Bruce Lee Nunchucks Ping Pong Video. * Lee Jun-Fan, who was known professionally as Bruce Lee was an actor and martial arts specialist who moved to the US from Hong Kong and who became a cultural icon throughout the world after starring in a series of movies (primarily in the 1970s).

In the longest version of the Bruce Lee ping pong video, we see only one minute (1:03) of action spliced together from several different angles. Lee uses a pair of nunchucks (also called “nunchuks” or “nunchaku” – two sticks held together with a chain or rope and used as a weapon) to strike a ball across a ping pong table seemingly taking on one, and then two professional table tennis players.

For years there have been raging debates online about how these strikes could be possible, even for a martial arts master like Bruce Lee. Those debates have often focused on two points:

Is it even possible to strike a table tennis ball using nunchucks, and
Once contact is made with the nunchucks, how could the ball curve so much, landing with precise control on the other side of the table.

POINT ONE: Striking the Ball with Nunchucks

Long before Bruce Lee was an actor, he was a martial arts master. His mastery of many weapons including nunchucks (nunchaku) was well known. And he regularly conducted demonstrations where he struck moving targets with nunchucks while effortlessly moving and showing off his wizardry with the weapon. As a part of the online debate, two table tennis players set out to prove that with practice contact with a moving ball was possible – and even for these novice “martial artists”, they were able to regularly make contact with the ball using nunchucks. See Testing Bruce Lee Style Ping Pong (Nunchucks) by Pongfinty.

POINT TWO: Unbelievable Movement and Spin

In challenging the validity of the video, naysayers have focused on the difficulty of controlling a ball struck solidly with wooden nunchucks. This is actually a point that the table tennis community is very familiar with as equipment changes over the history of the sport have evolved from hardbat (see coverage of the recent Classic Nationals) through a variety of increasingly sophisticated racket coverings of today’s modern game.

It is this last note that makes all the difference. If you assume that the nunchucks used in the video are smooth and hard (likely wood), then the physics don’t fit and the spin placed on the ball would be impossible. However, if one were to assume a modern rubber, with a tensor sponge – something that could make the ball turn almost 90 degrees mid-flight, and could counteract the spin of the opponent, and still could create devastating flat attacks – then we are left with really only one conclusion: Bruce Lee must have used a modern rubber wrapped around the nunchucks. In fact, a quick analysis of some of the sickest shots executed in the video would lead this investigator to conclude that Bruce most likely used Butterfly’s Dignics 09c or Dignics 05 (the same rubber used by many of the top professional players).

What would you see if you had more than just the first minute and four seconds?