There are many conspiracy theories about Bruce Lee’s death. Some people believe the triads (Chinese mafia) did it. It is said the triads had links to the Chinese entertainment industry and were angry Bruce Lee refused to play along and star in their movies. This grudge also passed onto his son Brandon Lee who’s death they also supposedly had a hand in.
Another scenario was he lost a fight to a martial artist a few days before who performed the Dim Mak (death touch) on him. This was supposed to be a punishment for Bruce Lee teaching Chinese martial arts to westerners in the US. I believe he was the first to do so. The fight with Wong Jack Man from the movie Dragon did actually happen.
Although Wong contested the notion it was because Bruce wanted to teach westerners and said it was simply because of Bruce Lee’s open invitation he could defeat any martial arts master in San Francisco.
Obviously, there’s is the curse. Depicted in Dragon by a demon that stalks Bruce’s nightmare before turning on his son Brandon. This act eventually lead’s Bruce to defeat the demon.
There are some unsettling similarities between Bruce Lee’s and Brandon Lee’s death. Both died young. Both died while working on their fifth feature film. Neither lived to see the film that would launch them to worldwide stardom, Enter the Dragon and The Crow.
Bruce Lee’s official cause of death is attributed to cerebral edema possibly due to an adverse reaction to a drug called Equagesic, which contains aspirin and a tranquilizer meprobamate. Basically, the aspirin made his brain swell. Could happen to anybody right?
Chuck Norris himself said Bruce was on medication due to his back injury. When he took the medication for his headache, they reacted with each other causing his brain to swell.
In a new book titled “Bruce Lee: A Life” by Matthew Polly, he claims that Bruce may simply have died from heat stroke.
Bruce Lee collapsed and almost died about two months before his death due to cerebral edema but was not taking the drug at the time.
Polly says Bruce may have increased the likelihood of this by having his sweat glands removed.
“A few months before his passing, Lee had undergone elective surgery to have the sweat glands from his armpits removed, because he didn’t like how his dank pits looked on screen.”
“On May 10, 1973, he walked into a small dubbing room on one of the hottest days of the month. They turned off the air conditioner to avoid ruining the soundtrack. He immediately overheated and got dizzy.”
“He left the room and still collapsed to the ground. He got back up and when he walked into the heated room, he collapsed again and started violently convulsing. They got him to the hospital and the doctors suspected his brain was swelling… And so the first collapse looked exactly like a case of heat stroke.”
According to the Mayo Clinic heat stroke can indeed cause the brain to swell and even cause brain damage.
His widow Linda Lee Cadwell said the cause of death was hypersensitivity to the drug he took. Many forensic pathologists who studied Lee’s body testified to this conclusion. Is there a difference in the way a brain swells from hypersensitivity to a drug and to heat stroke and would they be able to tell this at the time?
So does this book finally close the mysterious case of Bruce Lee’s death?
Probably not, there will always be speculation and conspiracies and the fact that people are still talking about this and even making movies and books about Bruce Lee exactly 45 years to this day after his death is a true testament to the man and myth himself Bruce Lee.
