The martial artist responsible for Bruce Lee learning kung fu almost played Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Game of Death character. Filmed in 1972, Game of Death would have been Lee’s fifth kung fu movie, but the actor died before it could be completed. However, the studio’s decision to finish and release the film years later allowed audiences to see what Lee was able to put together before filming halted.

Directed and written by the martial arts legend himself, Golden Harvest's Game of Death saw Lee’s character advance through a tower that consisted of five levels, with each one guarded by a formidable fighter. For these roles, Lee tried to cast a diverse group of martial artists who all had something to offer in the fight scenes. Abdul-Jabbar, who was already a star in the NBA at this point, was tapped to play Mantis, Lee’s final opponent in Game of Death. The long and intense battle that raged between Lee and the seven-foot-two basketball player is widely considered to be one of the actor’s best. The huge difference in size between the two certainly made it unique from all of Lee’s previous kung fu showdowns.

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There was a time when Lee had someone else in mind for the tower’s last champion. Before settling on Abdul-Jabbar, Lee offered the part to Wong Shun Leung, the Wing Chun grandmaster credited with teaching Bruce Lee kung fu during his youth in the 1950s. During a 1986 interview with Combat magazine, Wong said that if he had taken the role, he would have beaten Lee only to be killed by him in the end [via My Way of Wing Chun]. He had made a joke to Lee about not wanting to be killed off in his first movie. Adding on to that, Wong explained in the interview that he passed on appearing in Game of Death because he wasn’t in “dire financial straits”. It wasn’t until years later that the martial artist finally made his first and only big-screen appearance, which was 1979’s Young Dragon.

How Bruce Lee Cast Kareem Abdul-Jabbar In Game of Death

When Lee wasn’t able to convince his mentor to play Mantis, he turned his attention to another acquaintance, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. While still a student at UCLA, Abdul-Jabbar pursued his interest in martial arts by training under Lee, who taught him Jeet Kune Do. Years after forming a close friendship, Lee called Abdul-Jabbar and invited him to Hong Kong for a five-day shoot. As a towering basketball star who practiced Jeet Kune Do (and not Wing Chun), Abdul-Jabbar was a radically different choice from Wong Shun Leung, but his background in martial arts helped the casting decision pay off in the end.

As for Wong, he never did get to work with Lee officially in any of his movies but remained involved with his life. Shortly after turning down Bruce Lee’s Game of Death offer, Wong was seen observing the fight choreography on the set of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon movie. Wong’s importance to the actor can be attributed largely to the amount of time he spent training Lee in Wing Chun. Though Ip Man was Lee’s official kung fu master, it was Wong Shun Leung – one of the grandmaster’s senior students – who was tasked with providing Lee’s daily lessons. Lee later acknowledged in a letter that his kung fu came for Wong. With that being the case, a ”student vs. master” fight in one of Bruce Lee’s movies could have made for an interesting spectacle.

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