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Ip Man vs. Bryan Mills -- Improv & Meatloaf
21 Plays1 month ago
This matchup is pure contrast. Ip Man vs. Bryan Mills — controlled mastery versus improvisational brutality. We talk particular sets of skills, the Marko from Tropoja manhunt, why Ip Man might secretly be the William Wallace of martial arts, and how Uncle Rico somehow enters the debate. Finally, has anyone ever been shot while serving meatloaf? Bracket chaos at its finest
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Transcript
00:00:07
Speaker
This is the fictional fighting championship podcast, the ultimate battleground where Hollywood's deadliest warriors collide. We're a taking 48 of the most ruthless, skilled, and battle-hardened fighters from movies and TV and throwing them into a no-holds-barred tournament to see who survives.
00:00:26
Speaker
You've seen the movies, you know the legends. Now it's time to settle the score.
00:00:38
Speaker
You don't remember me. We spoke on the phone two days ago.
00:00:46
Speaker
I told you I would find you.
00:00:57
Speaker
I am Jordan Guerrero. I'm Christian Doherty. And I'm Steve Sadler. And this is the podcast about the greatest fictional tournament in the history of the universe. And that is not an exaggeration.
00:01:09
Speaker
We're back, baby. All right, Chris, why don't you tell everybody who we've got going today? All right, this week to kick off the Carnage Region Season 2, we have You Don't Want These Hands, the Kung Fu Master, Ip Man, versus He Will Find You, He Will Kill You.
00:01:28
Speaker
Brian Mills. bumpapo These two are badass in completely different ways, but badass. Yeah. And I was surprised at Brian Mills hand to hand. I always remember them films as him being a gunslinger, but he's great at hand to hand as well. So imagine these two going up, you head to head in a hand to hand combat.
00:01:50
Speaker
and So as long as we're talking about that, do you want to tell who you thought was going to win this before you did any rewatches? And I think before we get to the rewatches, I have to ask, I know everyone listening to this has seen Taken at least once, but had either of you seen Man before we put him in the tourney?
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah, I had. And I'm super excited about Ip Man being in this tournament and this being the first episode, including a Kung Fu, you know, or martial arts fighter. So yeah, I'd seen Ip Man before. I've actually been a fan, you know, for the listeners based on previous episodes, you know, I'm a martial arts fan. I love Jet Li movies. um You know, Kill Bill obviously has a lot of Kung Fu undertones. So um I was super excited. and And yes, I have seen this before. And for me, you guys turned me on to this. This is literally out of all 48 contestants in this tournament. Literally the only one that I did not know. i was not familiar with him. And we'll talk a little bit more about that here in a few minutes. But yeah, I'm i'm glad I watched him.
00:02:51
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Dan, this is all coming from me then, I think, because it sounds like Jordan wasn't necessarily a fan or had seen it before. No, i just thought that Ip Man was a little bit of a less familiar dark horse here. It's actually the first Kung Fu movie I had ever seen when it came out in 2008.
00:03:07
Speaker
And it is badass. And i'm going to share my opinion right here. Before any research, I thought Ip Man was going to take this. Maybe because it was my foundational Kung Fu movie, but Fast Hands, oh my God, how could he not?
00:03:21
Speaker
And likewise, opposite answer, but similar reasons. I had Brian Mills from Taken. I had Brian Mills as well, despite, you know, being a martial arts lover, but him having, I think the gun expertise was, I think what put him above it man for me.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah. If you've watched Spike TV or TNT at two, doesn't matter 2 AM, 2 PM, you have seen Taken. Yeah. Before we get rolling too far, Jordan, you want to tell everybody what they should be doing here?
00:03:52
Speaker
What you need to be doing is giving us a follow, giving us a like on Instagram, even better, Spotify and Apple podcast. That's where you can hear us every week, maybe as we come to you with our regular, almost releases. And Hey, if you really love us, tell a friend, tell a few, or put in the comment section, I'm a mega fan and we will send you QR code stickers and you can plaster those bad boys all over your city.
00:04:16
Speaker
Love that. Are your cats okay? No, they're, they're complaining. could Could you hear that? My wife just got home and they just started screaming at her that it's dinner time.
00:04:36
Speaker
All right, guys. Hey, why don't we do the tail of the tape? We're starting with Ip Man. He debuted in 2008 in the first Ip Man movie, portrayed by Donnie Yen, and his fighting stats.
00:04:49
Speaker
He's about five three about 120 pounds, which is about average for a Chinese man in the early 1900s, and he was in his mid-30s at that time.
00:05:00
Speaker
His home turf, he's fighting out of Foshan, China. His signature move, I mean, i don't know. what do you guys think? It's got to be his lightning-fast strikes. Easily. He's like the man with no name, but with fists instead of guns. Exactly.
00:05:16
Speaker
It's fast hands. Hey, I have to go back to here is you said coming in at 120 pounds. So fun fact, Donnie Yen, the actor here, who is actually a martial arts badass. He was sitting at like 150 before the movie. This dude, Christian bailed it up. He dropped like 30 pounds for this role.
00:05:34
Speaker
Wow. So he actually got down to that weight. Oh my God. He was probably just like starving himself doing calisthenics for year. Impressive. Hey, what do you have for a vibe check for this guy?
00:05:46
Speaker
Stoic martial arts master. He's a reluctant fighter. What do you think of inner peace and outer violence? That's great. Love that. And let's return to our favorite game.
00:05:57
Speaker
You guys remember the kill count, right? Let's run it back. Hey, guys ah get give me the score. Season one. How we sitting right now? Season one, Chris won seven to four.
00:06:09
Speaker
Brutal. Hell yeah. that This is news to me. This is like when the champions from the previous year received their rings in the, in the next season. Yeah. You just found out you were the champion. you just found out i was the champion. Wow.
00:06:20
Speaker
Love that. Let's start fresh. Jordan, you have a chance here. How many kills for it, man? Let me, let me go first. So you have to price his rate. He fucks a lot of people up in the films, but is he killing people with his fists or just knocking them out?
00:06:34
Speaker
I think that's a big factor here. I'm going to go with, um and we're talking about all four movies. Yes, we are. I'm going to say 15. Okay. okay I want Chris to go first because I didn't want to steal my answer.
00:06:49
Speaker
Zero. It man has killed no one in all of the movies. Ooh, that's a good zero confirmed kills. Maybe a couple potential kills. that's That's about the correct answer. The correct answer is it's impossible to tell. This is ah a trick question. I think the implication is that he must have killed a couple of those 10 karate masters.
00:07:13
Speaker
And he might have killed one or two of those thugs that visited his house, both in the first one, the original one. So at best, we're looking at probably like, what, five or six. And even those are are just very, ah we're just guessing that he might have knocked them out.
00:07:30
Speaker
He plays by Batman rules. That's fair. That's fair. I went against my own judgment there a little bit. Yeah. but So Jordan wins that one. We're going to give that one to Jordan because even it was a trick question. He had, he was onto it.
00:07:42
Speaker
Season two undefeated champion. Don't speak too quickly because we're doing it again. Let's run the tale of the tape for Brian Mills. His debut was also in 2008 in the first Taken movie portrayed by Liam Neeson. His fight stats, quite a contrast here, about six foot four and about 215 pounds. He was in his early fifties at the beginning of that trilogy and he's fighting out of Los Angeles, California.
00:08:11
Speaker
Signature move. What do you think of interrogation or dislocation?
00:08:18
Speaker
Another good one. They got to hire you to make taglines for movies. that's Tag. That's all I do. Taglines, catchphrases, nicknames. And what about a vibe check?
00:08:29
Speaker
Another very stoic man, defensive father, protective father, I should say. Yeah. Incredibly stoic. And I've got a comparison I'm going to share later.
00:08:41
Speaker
But I'm going to say he is very, very much like another person that we have in the same tournament here. In the same bracket? ah Not in the same bracket, but in the tournament. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Okay, good. Yeah, I love these comparisons. I can't wait for this.
00:08:55
Speaker
And then let's slide right into the kill count. Who wants to go first? Kill counts. I'm going to say 40, forty four zero 44, zero. Okay.
00:09:06
Speaker
Chris. Good, good guess. Cause I feel like we've averaged to most of the guys in the tournament so far around 40 to 50 kills. I'll go 35. 35. Oh man. Price is writing me. Yeah. Price is writing you.
00:09:18
Speaker
You prices right. You went the wrong way. You went the wrong way. You're going to be blown away with this. Brian Mills, 74 kills. Wow. Holy shit. In the respective movies, 36, 23 15. Wow. Yeah.
00:09:33
Speaker
wow yeah Yep. That's what I thought yeah we were talking about just the first movie. That's why I said 35.
00:09:47
Speaker
Now that we're in season two, we've been picked up by a number of sponsors that just love our content and what we stand for and what we talk about. And so kind of rolling the dough now and we're just having advertisers throw their money at us and Speaking of advertisers, we have ah an ad for you here.
00:10:06
Speaker
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00:10:21
Speaker
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00:10:34
Speaker
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00:10:45
Speaker
All right, guys, I'm pumped up about this. Let's talk about, we'll do a character breakdown and we're going to start with Ip Man. I've got a couple of notes here. This is a unique character and some unique movies that he was in here, especially relative to the other characters that we have in this tournament. But this is our first foreign language film.
00:11:05
Speaker
I think I'm safe in saying this is our smallest competitor in the ti in the entire tournament. do Would you agree with that? Easily, yeah, probably. five, two and a buck 20. And as I said before, this is also the only competitor that I really didn't know at all in the entire tournament. So kind of a unique one here. So this is, this is pretty exciting. Let's start with his battle resume.
00:11:26
Speaker
I can say that he excels in one versus many battles. One versus one. He's fighting against soldiers. One versus one. He's fighting in tournaments, challenge competitions.
00:11:37
Speaker
Exclusively hand to hand. except for a couple standout moments where he goes against people with weapons and one disarms them, still takes them down or two, my favorite weapon fight against him in it man one, where he takes that dude down with the feather, that ass.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yeah. The duster. Yeah. Feather duster. That was a great moment. Yeah. And at the very end, he pokes him right in the armpit and I guess hits some sort of pressure point and the guy stops it, bringing the sword down on his head. Very theatrical, very dramatized fights in a lot of the films. But um yeah, really great kung fu movies all around.
00:12:15
Speaker
The time period for this character, late 1930s. So it was during the second war between Japan and China. With the fourth movie finishing, getting close to modern day, we had Bruce Lee there.
00:12:30
Speaker
Third movie, arguably could have been today. Mike fucking Tyson was there. Hmm. There's that classic trope of Chinese martial artists facing, ah you know, the Westerner, either being, you know, a boxer or some sort of fisticuffs kind of a guy, um typically the white guy in a boxing ring. But again, it was great to see um Mike Tyson play that role.
00:12:54
Speaker
That was so awesome. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a little bit too, but that was great. ah So Ip's training and his skillset and his background. So we do have some history on this guy because this is a real person. He's a real life, you know, martial arts grandmaster, um specifically Wing Chun.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, really cool. An offshoot of Kung Fu, despite the films being heavily dramatized. He is, like you said, he is a real person. and He trained Bruce Lee. and with it i would say it's within the realm of Aikido in a way, but as a martial art and the wooden statue with the wooden arms that sticks out, but that's very classically Wang Chun and Kung Fu and seeing that involved in the films is is is really cool. All right, I'm seeing that called a Muk Yan Zhang, also known as the Zhang or Muk Zhang.
00:13:46
Speaker
Cool, love that. There are actually schools, ah you know, even within the US that specialize in that stuff. You know what I saw on Instagram the other day? no-touch master.
00:13:59
Speaker
And he fought an m MMA fighter. What do you think happened? Yep, yep. And just be completely shamed. stephen I'd love to see Steven Segar get into something like this, but he'd never put himself in that situation. Me too. Yeah, you said Aikido. I'm like, don't bring Steven into this. Come on, Chris.
00:14:16
Speaker
I got some such good stuff for for the Steven Seagal episode. Oh my God, I cannot wait. Let's talk about preferred weapons for Ip. Them hands. Yeah. Hands and of feet.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's it, right? Hands and feet, yes. His hand, his hand speed and precision i just have to be absolute top of this entire tournament. I feel like his style is like defend, defend, take him to the ground. And then like Donkey Kong, just chest pound, just fuck him up.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah. It's like the fastest video game you've ever seen. He does use some weapons though. He's, he uses some butterfly swords. These are like some, some traditional Wing Chun weapons, butterfly swords. um I think I saw, and and this long pole, I don't know. It's like about a six foot long wooden staff, which works, which was really effective against multiple opponents and armed opponents.
00:15:08
Speaker
yeah Like, I feel like with everyone, he'll beat them and then allow them to save face. Like he'll not publicly beat them if he can, we'll be like, oh, you were going easy on me. Thank you. Shit like that.
00:15:18
Speaker
You know, he's like a he's a master negotiator there where he'll beat someone and then try and let them safe face. They don't come kick his ass again afterwards. Yeah. You end up liking the guy, even though you beat your ass. I really love that about him. Yeah. absolutely yeah The whole, the whole, um, strategy of letting your opponent wear themselves out, uh, is really cool as well. They're just go giving it They're all trying to, trying to beat him. And he's, his defense is so great. He's blocking every punch, getting in a couple hits here and there, um in between, but at the very end, once you're tired and you've had too much, then he finishes you off.
00:15:54
Speaker
And then let's talk about sampling of his opponents. Black belts, boxing champions. It was supposedly the the Japanese ah military general who was like the greatest Japanese warrior. yeah Mike Tyson.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah. Branded up bandits. Yeah, bandits, other martial arts experts or um masters of other schools. Dojo, yeah, that's right, yes. Dude, those dudes have one hell of an ego on them, right? can Can we just address that in the movies? Some dude walks up to you, looks at you wrong.
00:16:23
Speaker
You got to clear out the entire town square to throw down and a battle at that second. Anyone walks up, says I'm better than you. Like, all right, I guess we're battling. To that point, I have a good ah keyboard carnage quote
00:16:38
Speaker
quote. Should we were run the gauntlet? Let's do it. It's been a while. Keyboard carnage. a YouTube user commented on a clip of an Ip Man fight scene simply just saying, this is how you solve personal issues, man to man.
00:16:58
Speaker
I think it's hilarious that these guys, it's like a group, a gang comes in there and it's like, oh my God, these guys, are they going to burn down this place? Are they going to rob us? they going to steal our children? what are they going to do? No, they just want to beat the master so that they can open up a business.
00:17:15
Speaker
It's quite valiant if you think about it. Yeah, it's a hell of a way had to get a business license back in the day was kick everyone's ass in the neighborhood. yeah I have a keyboard carnage I found. The quote was, is this Chinese propaganda?
00:17:29
Speaker
Perhaps, but who actually cares? They've gone too far. So segment where we feel parts of the film were too unrealistic. what do you guys think?
00:17:41
Speaker
I mean, I've got one for it, man. So number one, first of all, This is kind of a biography. So half of this is unrealistic. This shit never happened in his life. I Googled it is number one. And number two, the very last scene of the first movie where he just gets shot point blank.
00:17:58
Speaker
And then the second movie starts. Yeah. He just walked it off. Like it was nothing. Like, come on, seriously. No, that, yeah, that, that one's great. It's like, maybe they didn't think that there was going to be a sequel until they, it was successful. And they're like, Oh wait.
00:18:12
Speaker
Yeah. There were also some pretty wild scenes where the victims were kind of flying through the air. There was definitely some wire work in the, some of those fight scenes, but yeah, I was going to mention that. Yeah. Nothing superhero ish. So it didn't, he it's not like he was disqualified or anything.
00:18:25
Speaker
Right. I was going to mention that too. Steve was in places. It, was a little bit, um, crouching tiger, hidden dragon where they were like flying through the air, or kind of defying gravity a little bit.
00:18:37
Speaker
Like I've said before, the whole thing is dramatized, like heavily dramatized. If it was a biography, we wouldn't be able to have him in the tournament. So the fact that it's mostly fictionalized, a lot of this stuff is fictionalized, unfortunately, because you know, you would like to believe that this is the life of a Kung of all Kung Fu masters in China for your collection. Let's ah hit that quick.
00:18:57
Speaker
ah The baked potato that he ate for lunch. I mean, that's great. shit in the movie That's a great one. Yeah. Yeah. He ate half that thing and gave the other half six hours later to his wife. Oh, I did have one more. They've gone too far really quick. Another YouTube user commented, and this goes back to season one, Callback.
00:19:18
Speaker
You all know it. You all love it. My obsession with hair throughout that. This YouTube user commented ah on the fight scene with Master Zhang in Ip Man 3. He said, damn, I must get that styling gel Master Zhang uses on his hair. Keeps it neat on all of those brutal moves.
00:19:37
Speaker
And if you watch the scene, the dude has this perfect slicked back hair and it doesn't move an inch throughout the whole fight. It was amazing. oh Anyway, for your collection, the potato. That was hilarious. Thank you for that.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker. ah It was all in Chinese, so... Not like we can repeat it, but... I've i've got one. I've got one here.
00:20:01
Speaker
but you do things up go
00:20:06
Speaker
Poignant. He said, I want to fight ten men. which of Which is a great line. And kind of a turning point for him, too. And, yeah, it's just ah a great scene, which we'll get to, I think, at the end.
00:20:20
Speaker
Hey, I do have a wild card for Ip, and it's, did we pick the right character for this actor? Probably not. He probably has a better character. Really? Donnie Yen?
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah. Donnie Yen played Kane, an awesome, cool villain in John Wick. Ah, cool. He was the blind mercenary. That's, okay. That is pretty badass. But then he's he's a villain. He's not a main character. He's a villain. And we already have, I mean, he we're not going to take him over John Wick, right? So we had to take It's his best main character. And I also have to give it to one of those other blind Kung Fu characters that he has also played. What was his name in Star Wars Rogue One?
00:21:00
Speaker
He was the like Kung Fu guy, kind of force adjacent in that movie. Oh, cool. Was he blind in that one too? Blind as bad. Oh my God, what? He's typecast. Unbelievable. I didn't know that.
00:21:21
Speaker
Okay. Move on to Brian Mills. Brian Mills from Taken will do his character breakdown. Battle resume. I mean, clearly this guy's ex-CIA operative, elite black ops type agent. And from based on his age and what he talks about, he has probably spent decades in these covert assignments, I would say. Character time period was modern times. So came out in 2008. We can assume that that was about the right time.
00:21:46
Speaker
And his background in training. There's a lot of stuff on the internet for this. You guys have any ah any opinions on this? You've got to love an ex-CIA agent ex-Green Beret Special Ops.
00:21:58
Speaker
It's the classic trope. We've had a few of them now. Yeah. It looks like we don't know what his military background is, but he's certainly an expert in anything from interrogation to surveillance to counterterrorism, all that. Hand-to-hand, weaponry, i would i eat right?
00:22:13
Speaker
Everything, yeah. He's a badass with a pistol. He's a badass with his hands. He's a badass with ah a fucking rag. like he will kill you if whatever. He is the weapon. I like how one of the descriptions I found on on the internet was that he has very high level skills in tracking, urban warfare, and improvisation, which I thought was pretty hilarious. That improvisation was one of his strengths. Can you imagine him going on stage with his improv troupe? Every single role-playing sketch that he does ends in somebody getting waterboarded. The most brutal season of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
00:22:46
Speaker
tries He tries to be funny, but his stoic delivery just like brings the mood down. Exactly. All right. Jordan, do you know at what his preferred weapons might be? i'm going to say pistol. I mean, he he's a hand-to-hand guy. He always starts there, but the second he gets his hand on a pistol, I feel like that's his comfort zone. That's where he gets the most kills in. I mean, you're talking about 36 kills the first movie. I want to say 30 of them were with a pistol.
00:23:09
Speaker
Sampling of opponents. Cronies. Albanians. Gang members. Albanians. Two movies of Albanians. Human traffickers and Marco from Topoia.
00:23:24
Speaker
Good luck. Hey, I got a fun fact here. I find this interesting. Taken is ah is one of these action movies, right? And it's easy to you know to lump it in with other shallow action movies, right? This this one's good, and it has some some interesting aspects to it when you rewatch it. And I will say that I learned that before Liam Neeson was cast, the role of Brian Mills was supposed to go to Jeff Bridges. Yeah.
00:23:49
Speaker
And I actually heard that Jeff Bridges thought that it might be too physically demanding. So he got out of it. This is in 2008. So he bailed. And and so I thought that it might be interesting to to just mention this too. Taken in the timeline of action movies. Kind of changed the game. It came out in 2008, and it was really credited with not only reviving Liam Neeson's career in a different way, but also kind of rewriting the way action movies were made at that time. It kind of launched that subgenre of the the retired, experienced characters. Yeah, the operator. One man against the world. yup Yep. he kind He gets dragged back in the game due to some traumatic circumstances or whatever, right? And then if you look at it, that was 08. And then here comes several, you know, here comes a bunch more. You had Equalizer with Denzel. You have, you know, just recently you have the Nobody franchise with Bob Odenkirk. Same type of thing. Even John Wick got dragged back in yeah for revenge purposes.
00:24:47
Speaker
The Foreigner with Jackie Chan. Any Jason Statham movie. Yeah, you've officially stolen my thunder on the equalizer, but they're the same exact movie. Ex-CIA operative leading a normal life, drawn in to serve justice, to save those he cares about, and he's very calm. That's that's the equalizer, that's John Wick, that's all of these people.
00:25:07
Speaker
And I am a sucker for that genre. I'm always in. And speaking of which, I find this interesting. There is a series on Hulu called The Old Man starring an even older Jeff Bridges than when he turned this down in 2008. So by turning down that role, that allowed Liam Neeson to take the ball and run with it, blew it up, and created such a strong blueprint for that type of a movie that it opened the door for Bridges to get back in that genre 15 years later. Yep, that's funny.
00:25:36
Speaker
Have you seen the series? Is it as physically demanding, do you think, on him? But he's so much older that at this point. They must have written it. Obviously, he probably has stunt doubles. but It's a good series. It's a good series. Watch season one. It's a good one. um I think we even have the character Dan Chase in this tournament somewhere down the line. So you're going to have to watch it anyway.
00:25:55
Speaker
But it's pretty good.
00:26:03
Speaker
Let's run the gauntlet. Keyboard Carnage. Who has any good fun facts on the internet? Give me a good review of Taken. I know Steve has one. He's got to have one. I do have one. I do have one from Taken 3 because it was terrible. This ah amateur reviewer said, be warned, sequel fanboys. This thing sucks. Nothing makes a damn lick of sense. The only thing that got Taken was me.
00:26:27
Speaker
That's fantastic. Not bad. Taken 3, absolute money grab. Taken 2, Also absolute money grab. i I know we're in Brian Mill's section right now, but It Man 2, 3, and 4. Absolute money grab.
00:26:40
Speaker
um Just a comment on Taken 2, the final fight scene where you have this huge buildup. Liam Neeson's been fighting for his freedom and to save his wife, etc, etc. He walks into a room towards the very end of the movie. The final enemy is some random five foot dude in a sports jacket.
00:26:59
Speaker
Kind of hilarious. Like you'd think there would be this ah big villain, but yeah, our arch villain is like what an older George Costanza or something. ah How about this? They've gone too far. And this is a great series for this question. Scenes that were impossible to survive. Where do they just go too far action movie wise?
00:27:15
Speaker
ah Yeah, I got one. Steve, you mentioned in the tale of the tape that the character is in his 50s. So towards the end of the first film, seeing him jump off the bridge onto the boat and then ah take a guy out as well as I mean, he kind of hobbles away from that. But then he's coming down the stairs and he swings off the banister of the stairs and takes a dude out. He's very nimble for a 50 year old. I thought that was kind of silly.
00:27:38
Speaker
Can't disagree with that. How about this one, also taken to, he's on the phone with his daughter, right? He's trying to figure out where they take have taken him. And he tells her, grab some grenades. What? And I'm going to use the explosions to determine where I am on a map. And she's throwing grenades in a populated area so that he could be like a fucking bat and try echolocate himself on a map. That was insane. That's right. That's right. That was so stupid.
00:28:05
Speaker
Unbelievable. And listen, as long as we're on going too far, we got to talk about this. Did Brian Mills go too far? He shows up at the house of his oldest associate, John Claude, right? and And surprise, he's gone dirty. So anyway, John Claude's wife, totally innocent. The most pleasant person I've ever seen in my life. She's asking him about his family. She's going to make him some meatloaf or some shit. And then boom, he's Mills shoots her in the fucking arm. He could have totally shot the crooked cop and said, next one's in your wife. But no, he just shot the most pleasant lady in the room.
00:28:39
Speaker
ah And of course, Jean-Claude's freaking out, right? And mills Mills just immediately goes, ah, shut up. It's just a flesh wound. How the fuck does he know? Fucking Monty Python over here.
00:28:53
Speaker
oh man. Yeah, tells you everything you need to know about Mills. If he wants some information, he's going to get the information. How about for your collection, anything from the movies that you want to keep?
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, okay. It's just so iconic. How about the phone that he gives his incredible monologue? Absolutely. I would seriously, I'd be pumped up if I saw that thing go on, on auction or something. This is the phone that, that Liam Neeson used for his monologue. And it's, it's, and it's from 08. So it's like a flip phone or not even, it's like one of those Nokia bricks. So it's got some yeah nostalgia attached to it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:28
Speaker
It'd be great. ah The OG fidget spinner. It's got the kind of slidey face on it. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Those things are good. I feel like other option has to be, I mean, my wife loves hers. She calls it Jolene.
00:29:41
Speaker
Not what you're thinking. It's the karaoke machine. I feel like the karaoke machine from that movie is just also iconic. It is. ah All right. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.
00:29:53
Speaker
Someone has to have the audio queued up for this. Yes. I can't play the whole thing because it's just too long and we would get nailed for copyright. But what I can do is play this. But if you don't, I will look for you.
00:30:07
Speaker
I will find you.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I will kill you. That's it. That's the one. but Hell yeah. The delivery is incredible. Yeah, there isn't another. really It's not just the one for the movie. It's easily top three for the entire tournament. Exactly. Exactly. there' There's two kinds of yippee-ki-yayes. There's the one-liner, like you'll hear, get to the chopper or anything that that any of those types of characters do, right? Then there's the monologue. I'm going to say that we have the two greatest action hero monologues in the history of the universe in this, and this is one of them. The other one ah the other one is gladiator. was going to nothing is over!
00:30:44
Speaker
Which one's better, this monologue or the I am Maximus Decimus Meridius? I mean, hold on. What what about William Wallace, his monologue? Yeah, I would say the Maximus one. It's just, yeah, it's so iconic. And because I think it's because it's the setting that it's delivered in, it just feels more badass. I don't know.
00:31:07
Speaker
Hey, I have a fun fact. i don't know if this is another category or not, but did you guys see Brian Mills' CIA buddies? They're out barbecuing. Yeah. One of them was Uncle Rico.
00:31:19
Speaker
Played by John Grease. Also a star of the White Lotus here the last three. s I did not realize he was in White Lotus. Oh, he's um he's like the only character that's been in every season. Wait, Uncle Rico.
00:31:30
Speaker
I wouldn't say he's a main character, but he is a crucial character. From Napoleon Dynamite? Holy shit. That guy's Uncle Rico. I didn't recognize him without the toupee looking set a hair on him. Holy shit. That is Uncle Rico. He's also in Seinfeld. I think he's a pirate that was wearing the puffy shirt when they had to give it to the homeless people. could six degrees of Steve, this guy.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. That's him. I just looked him up right there. He's the hobo.
00:32:02
Speaker
All right. We got it. We got to dig down guys. Who's going to win this thing? Open discussion here. We're going to talk about these guys. It could be fast paced, but we're going to bring up some crucial scenes. We're going to really dig down here and see what we can do because somebody got to win this goddamn thing.
00:32:16
Speaker
Toughest opponents, because that definitely goes toward who might win. I mean, Mills, we talked about His toughest opponent was pretty much the Albanian mob. Yeah. You could argue that Mills is facing degenerates, you know, guys that aren't specifically like well-trained. They, you know, they might have guns, but they're not exactly like the best of the best. There were some random henchmen. Yeah, exactly. Most of the time. But Ip Man is fighting the best of the best. They're all coming for him. You know, he's he's facing the the best Japanese martial artists. He's facing the best Chinese marlo martial artists. you Can't really say that for Brian Mills.
00:32:51
Speaker
One thing to throw in here, he took a Mike Tyson punch just straight to the arms at 120 pounds and didn't even move. yeah Twister was also formidable. The boxer, the Irish boxer. General Miura was supposed supposedly Japan's greatest warrior. So those are all great.
00:33:08
Speaker
Now, this might be a good spot for me to to add this here, because I told you i came in with hardly any knowledge of Hitman before I started watching him. But I really needed to see a couple things from him because he's going up against Brian Mills from Take, right? So you got to bring something to the table besides karate.
00:33:24
Speaker
First, I have to see, can he flip that switch? And by that, I mean, he's coming in with a moral code. He's really calm, philosophy, that kind of thing, right? But can he flip the switch and get fucking nuts? So I needed to see that. And number two, I needed to see him not just doing martial arts hand to hand and fighting against somebody on on the same grounds, right? I need to see somebody come in with firearms. And I will say, we can get into these in a minute too, if you'd like, but I will say he kind of passed both of those tests. We saw him flip the switch and we saw him disarm actual actual guns, weapons. Yeah, disassemble them in front of your face.
00:34:00
Speaker
At the end of ah number one, he went absolutely bananas on the the Japanese general, just letting out all of that frustration and anger on him, just completely mushing his face. All right, can I go off script here for a second and throw a parallel out here? You mentioned this guy. Biggest parallel that I see. This is almost, word for word, the exact character that I'm thinking of.
00:34:20
Speaker
Ip Man is Chinese William Wallace. He's a fictionalized real character fighting against an occupying force who inspires the oppressed locals and helps a resistance movement, but he only wants to love his family and live a chill life. It's the same movie.
00:34:38
Speaker
Unreal. yeah yeah I think you're right. That's crazy. Two different time periods two different and two different occasions, but the same dude. Unreal. I feel like you watch enough these action movies, you start to see it. You're like, oh my God, I've seen this before.
00:34:50
Speaker
William Wallace reincarnated as a small Chinese man. I like it. That's good. Let's talk about some of our favorite moments we should talk about ah for each character and and and some signature scenes. Yeah, I want to go on this real quick. sort of shows Brian Mills' quick thinking and strategy when he gets to the Albanian hideout and he speaks to, what's that guy's name? You you mentioned it earlier, Steve. Marco from Chapoja. Marco from Chapoja. And he just fucked up all the dudes in the room. But then there's more coming from around the corner who heard the gunshots Brian Mills, after all of the fighting and everything, ends up on the floor with a dude on top of him. And as these guys walk in, they're looking around the room and everyone looks like they're dead or knocked out. And Brian Mills is laying there pretending to be knocked out dead with this other guy on top of him. The guys who just came in the room are obviously completely disarmed by this mentally. And he quickly pops up and just shoots the two dudes and takes them by surprise. i thought that was really, really cool.
00:35:45
Speaker
It's great scene. That's a Joel move right there. Absolutely dirty. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say. Yeah. Put a dead body on you and act like you're. I was going to say too, actually, ah now that you brought up Joel, I was trying to think of who we were talking about in the previous season was, you know Joel was the type to take sand out of his pocket and throw it in their eyes. You see a lot of that with Brian Mills um using anything that's around him and, you know, throwing random objects at people to distract them, to give themselves some time.
00:36:10
Speaker
In a way, I mean, it's it's absolutely the opposite of Ip Man, right? Because he fights with honor almost to a fault, right? Yep. No tricks. Above everything else. So he would never throw sand in someone's eyes and when they weren't looking. He's kind of like Steve. He either wins or he just quits and declines to participate. ah You know, let me tell something about myself. I do not lose competitions. I either win them or I quit them because they are unfair. Yeah.
00:36:38
Speaker
Some of you who have listened to season one might've heard this before. There is something I want to talk about here with Ip because I told you the two things that I really needed to see. Otherwise, I'll just say it right now. I thought Mills would just steamroll this dude. I thought it wouldn't be even close. What did I need to see? I told you already. Here's one thing that I saw. Ip first learns that maybe there's some brutality going along here. He witnessed a sanctioned fight and it was one where the winner would get a bag of rice. So they were bringing him in there. And kind of exploiting them, right? So they had them fight and they disguised it as though, okay, well, you have a chance to win a bag of rice for your family. You can take it home if you win. So, okay. A lot of people were trying it, but this guy, his acquaintance, he challenged three martial artists. He lost. He didn't win a bag of rice. In fact, some dude sniped him. He shot him in the head and executed him.
00:37:26
Speaker
At this point, Ip, who, like we said, normally peaceful dude, very reluctant to throw down. He just slips that switch like I hoped he would. He gets enraged and he demanded to be next. And that's when he said, give me 10. And he took out all 10. Now we can talk, right? This is the moment where I said, okay, now we got something happening here.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah. the The only reason his kill count was not at least as high as Brian Mills is because he chose not to kill everyone that he could have killed. He was one punch away from killing most of his enemies. Yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
ah You just see the restraint. He holds back that last punch and that's the last hit that they're holding on for dear life with. I'm glad you brought this up, Steve, because yeah, it's easily one of the best Kung Fu scenes of any Kung Fu movie that's out there. Just really awesome to watch him go to town on these 10 black belts, breaking legs, arms, necks. Yeah. He's absolutely ruthless in in that moment.
00:38:19
Speaker
Here's what makes man dangerous. I don't think I can say this about anyone else in the entire tournament. undefeated Everyone else has some scene. Even the greatest action heroes have have some time where they're taken by surprise and they're beaten and they're brought down and they're on the edge of it.
00:38:35
Speaker
Ip Man never loses. This guy is undefeated every single time. Now you're making good points. See, now we're coming back. This is what I love about this. I walk in thinking Mills 10 to zero, right? It's going to be a shutout. Now we got a couple of good arguments here. So now we're rolling. But before we get too nuts, let's talk about Mills here. And here's what I want ah here's what i wanted to mention. Let's talk about it in the context of this tournament. So it's very relevant. We have certain rules that we follow and things like that.
00:39:02
Speaker
What's going to propel Mills in this tournament? First off, how do we do it? Every competitor gets an envelope. We can thank listener Will G for that, right? They get an envelope with the guy's name in there. Maybe there's glitter in it. I don't know. But it has It Man's name on it.
00:39:16
Speaker
Part of the challenge is tracking them down. And because of the beginning of taking one... I have zero doubt that this setup plays right into Brian Mills wheelhouse, right? This is his element. This man literally has a particular set of skills built for this kind of hunt within this tournament. I was thinking that exact thing. Yeah.
00:39:36
Speaker
I'm going to call it right now. I don't know. We haven't done this for everybody, but absolute elite tier in the entire tournament in terms of the tracking ability. And I think that he he might be number one out of 48.
00:39:48
Speaker
I agree, yeah. This tournament was sort of made for him. He caught that scumbag Peter in 15 minutes. He just flew to France. Peter was not keeping it exactly low profile. ah I will say to that point, it sort of plays into both of their strengths where Ip Man is very defensive. I could see him just sort of waiting in the wings, brooding, stoic fashion for Brian Mills to arrive and hiding out and Brian Mills having to get up close and personal, which is I think where Ip Man wants the fight.
00:40:21
Speaker
Brian Mills, I could definitely see tracking down Ip Man, but once he gets there, Ip Man is one of the best defenders of the entire tournament. Yeah, I think it's tough. you You hit on that. It comes down to scenario because I i think we all know it's pretty clear who's got the hand to hand in this one. And it's pretty clear who's got the the guns and the pistols and things like that. And who's got the tracking. So what is the scenario that they meet?
00:40:42
Speaker
And who's going to have the upper hand here? I think that basically covers each of their paths to victory. What's great is, is that you see, as you know, I'm a martial arts fan, and you know, Kung Fu film fan. Taken is not necessarily one of those types of movies. But if you watch Brian Mills, his hand-to-hand combat is on par with any Kung Fu main character, the way he fights himself.
00:41:06
Speaker
If you watch the choreography closely, it's it's very similar to Kung Fu. So it's really cool to watch. So to think about these two getting into hand-to-hand combat together in a final scene, it's really cool. Well, let's talk it. Yeah, Path to Victory. Would they ever be in a hand-to-hand combat scene? I don't see that Brian Mills would ever let that happen.
00:41:23
Speaker
Something would have to go absolutely catastrophically wrong. And even if they are face-to-face, I mean, well what's going to happen? Hitman's just going to smile at him and offer him a cup of tea and dinner before they start their battle. I've seen what Brian Mills does at dinner. Yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
Did he eat the meatloaf first or did he shoot her first? I can't remember. No, he was still getting his plate. He never even ate the food. So she's just rolling around there crying in pain saying you didn't even try the asparagus. So path to victory. You're talking about this now. If Ip Man is going to win, clearly not going to be brute strength. It's going to be through discipline. It's going to be through control. Mills thrives in chaotic scenes. So Ip Man's only shot is to kind of refuse to be in that chaos. That's not going to be his game. He's got to slow it down. He's got to make it a chess match. And if Mills closes that distance, Wing Chun was built for these tight spaces where you can be really precise, really efficient, almost like surgical. And that's where he would be able to use his weapons to try to dismantle somebody who's just much bigger, much stronger before he realized what happened. Mills might be the predator in this one, but Ip is kind of the calm in the storm.
00:42:32
Speaker
So one thing that I think is great about Taken is, I said it wasn't one of these shallow action movies, and and here's an example what I wanted to show here. The first act in this movie, it basically just exists to show us how neutered Brian Mills had become, right, since retiring from the CIA. His daughter's lying to him, his ex-wife is is just basically treating him like a total cuck. Yeah. Stuart, this smug new husband, he just destroys Mill's karaoke machine with a fucking pony. Gives the daughter a horse. So this guy brings a karaoke machine to a pony fight.
00:43:06
Speaker
Rewatch some of these scenes. Some of the non-action scenes, watch those things. They're absolutely brutal. He's so awkward. He's so unsure. He's completely disarmed. When he's talking to his daughter, he doesn't know what he's saying. His ex-wife, same thing. Even that, the Beyonce character or the Taylor Swift type ah pop star character. He says the dumbest things. This guy is totally clueless. And then all of a sudden, the second act, he flips a switch. The second he gets into field mode, it's like somebody hit kind of restore factory settings, hit that button.
00:43:36
Speaker
He's calm. He's confident. He's completely terrifying. He walks into that den of traffickers that you had mentioned with Marco. If you notice, watch it again. There was no gun drawn. There was no shouting and screaming, just absolute presence and confidence. He convinces these guys he's one of the cops they're supposed to be paying off just with confidence. It's like civilian Mills is over here and he's completely invisible.
00:43:58
Speaker
Operative Mills is over here and he basically talks a crime syndicate into doing dishes and saying things like this. Your arrogance offends me. for that, the rate just went up 10%.
00:44:10
Speaker
And they totally bought it and paid him an extra 10%. Yeah, that is kind of funny, actually, especially like that dichotomy between the first and the second act. It's it's great. And that was kind of a comment on the movie itself, but ah maybe i'll maybe I'll wrap it up in a bow here by bringing it back to the tournament, which is those types of characteristics remind me of another FFC legend, John Rambo.
00:44:31
Speaker
And Rambo told those mercenaries, and I'm kind of paraphrasing here, This is who we are. And watching these Taken movies again, I realized that this is who Mills is. The one from Act 2 and Act 3, that's who he is, not the suburban dad that was getting tooled in the first 25 minutes of the movie.
00:44:48
Speaker
That was great.
00:44:53
Speaker
Now it's time settle the score.
00:45:05
Speaker
All right, verdict. What are you all thinking? Who wants to go first? All right, I'm hyped up. I'll go first. Okay, yeah, go for it. So going to be honest, going into this, I thought It Man had it in the bag. Maybe it stood out to me as just my quintessential, my first, my big kung fu movie. Dude's an absolute badass. You watch It Man again, I'm like, oh my God, he has the fastest hands. He is undefeated. No one has ever beat It Man.
00:45:29
Speaker
But put him in the FFC scenario, he is going to get his ass handed to him. And that's my take right here. It man is goddamn clueless when he's not fighting. He is just getting outsmarted. He is unsuccessfully running a business in this scenario where it's anything but a weapons free cage fight.
00:45:47
Speaker
He will be out tricked out maneuvered at every step of the way. Brian Mills is a competent, not as good, but still competent hand hand combat expert strategist and great with all other weapons. And I'm going to say as an overall well-rounded warrior here,
00:46:03
Speaker
Ip Man cannot take it. Ip Man, probably one of the best in the whole tournament in a weapons-free hand-to-hand cage match. But outside of that, I don't see him as the ultimate warrior. Very fair. yeah I think like it.
00:46:14
Speaker
If Ip Man makes it to the next round, we could potentially have a Hell in a Cell segment for Ip Man, and he would beat everyone in this tournament in Hell in a Cell. I guess I'll go into my verdict today.
00:46:25
Speaker
Love Ip Man, his kung fu, his martial arts are unparalleled. And I think despite the huge weight advantage and size advantage that Brian Mills has over Ip Man, I think in hand-to-hand combat, Ip Man takes Brian Mills. That being said, you kind of touched on this a little bit Jordan the skills that he has for this particular tournament for this particular setting just do not cut it I think Ip Man is a little too docile he's a little too defensive he's too reluctant to fight and Brian Mills is the one that will be bringing the pain and tracking down Ip Man and really bringing the heat on him and I don't think Ip Man has the minerals to withstand the onslaught from him. Unfortunately, it really kills me to to have to vote against the first true martial martial artist in the tournament. But the size advantage, the weaponry advantage that Brian Mills has, as well as the tracking and, you know, overall covert operations skills that that Brian Mills has, I think is just too much for Ip Man to overcome. And I I can't realistically give Ip Man a vote in in true faith. I got to go with Brian Mills.
00:47:35
Speaker
Two votes for Brian Mills. Okay, well done. So you guys touched on this part. It's possible Ip is the best pure hand-to-hand fighter in this entire tournament. For sure he's top three or four or five. And that is absolutely massive to have that type of apex in ah any particular category, right? That's not it. His downfall is that when I watch this, he still pulls punches.
00:47:56
Speaker
He still bows to his opponent. It's like the fight should end with mutual respect. We see that multiple times with Ip Man. But that is unfortunately not what this tournament is. In real life, those are great admirable traits. In the fictional fighting championship, those are weaknesses. And unfortunately, I have to point to one particular scene that I just absolutely can't get over. It was in Ip Man 2.
00:48:17
Speaker
A student was just kind of like wide-eyed marveling at Ip's ability to defeat many, many different men at one time and and to do it with with such ease. And then he said, but what if so many men came with weapons?
00:48:29
Speaker
And Ip answered, I'd run. And that was kind of a fun line. But in this tournament, that's a killer. yep He uses compassion. He uses respect. He uses honor.
00:48:40
Speaker
When dealing with an adversary, Mills has has absolutely none of those traits. He has no compassion, respect, honor, nothing like that. What he does have is resolve sharpened with vengeance. And if you're standing between Mills and his goal, he will find you.
00:48:57
Speaker
He will kill you. Mills is absolutely my winner. What he does have is a very particular set of skills. I really blew it. You know what? we should We got to record this whole thing over again. You know why? Because I was going to start the podcast by saying this is the podcast with a particular set of skills. We would went to a whole goddamn podcast. I didn't even say that whole fucking line, which would have been perfect.
00:49:20
Speaker
Guys, we have a three votes to nothing victory. Brian Mills from the Taken series is advancing to the next round. Now you should be able to see on Instagram, the bracket Mills will advance.
00:49:32
Speaker
It man goes in the losers bracket, which basically means we'll probably never see him again, but we love Donnie Yen being a villain. I'd love to see ah a villain, a villain fictional fighting championship.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah. Most of the ones we're talking about are heroes. Great villain in this bracket. Yes. The best villain. Possibly the best villain. All right. It was a blowout. Ip Man, great character, but he got his ass handed to him by an absolute killer. You can argue all you want, but right now it's a goddamn fact. Brian Mills is the winner. Just to finish here, ah you we mentioned in the beginning, if you like the podcast, please share it with a friend, family member. If you don't, We will find you and we will kill you.
00:50:15
Speaker
Damn, Chris, that was harsh.
00:50:20
Speaker
You don't remember me. We spoke on the phone two days ago.
00:50:28
Speaker
I told you I would find you.
00:50:38
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the fictional fighting championship podcast, the world's premier destination for very serious conversations about completely made up fights produced by Chris Doherty against his better judgment.