Burt Ward, the actor who played Robin in the classic 1960s Batman series alongside Adam West, seemed to have had a great sparing relationship with legendary martial artist Bruce Lee. One of the most memorable episodes of Batman is when Ward had to fight Lee and in this instance, the two actually fought each other and they didn’t bring in a stunt double.
You might think that it would’ve been terrifying for Ward to fight someone like Bruce Lee, but he sparred with him so much already, that it was something he was actually looking forward to. Ward actually had some good solid fighting skills! The actor said on The Jim and Sam Show back in 2017:
“I loved the fight scenes because I’m a black belt in karate, and I was just inducted into the International Karate and Kickboxing Hall of Fame, which was a great honor. I started in 1959, the same year it came to the United States. I was a first-year [when] karate came to the United States.”
So, how did Ward and Lee end up meeting and sparring? Well, they lived in the same apartment building, and they ended up becoming good friends:
“I lived in the same complex that Bruce Lee lived in. We used to spar together. In fact, when I was doing Batman and I had met him [and] his wife Linda, at the time Brandon, his son, was six months of age. We would go down into Chinatown and order all the most authentic food. Because he lived in China or Hong Kong for 10 years.”
It was in 1967 that Lee appeared in Batman as his Green Hornet character, Kato. The episode is titled “Batman’s Satisfaction,” and it saw Kato and Robin face off in an epic fight. Ward believed the scene was the starting point for Lee’s Hollywood career, saying:
“Bruce Lee’s first filmed fight scene of his career was fighting me on Batman, and from there he became the most famous cinema martial artist in the world.”
Ward went on to talk about the type of person Lee was and how he was very kind to him:
“I saw him quite a bit and he trained eight hours a day. He was cocky, but he’s also a very nice guy, and he was very smart — he was a really great guy and very nice to me. And he had a wonderful sense of humor. He’s just a really nice guy.”
It’s interesting and cool coming across information like this that I never knew before!
