Wang Jang Lee's Death Match - Newspaper Report

Many thanks to my good friend (and useful source of movies),  AP, for sending me this newspaper report from 1977 that covers the supposed "death match" that Wang Jang Lee almost took part in. Any self-respecting HK movie fan will have heard of this near-fight but perhaps many, like me, were a bit short on details.

The print date was September 20th 1977 and the English name of the paper was the H.K Pictorial News located at 7-13 New Street, Hong Kong.

The Chinese name of the paper is in bold red characters on the top right of the page. In this case the name is 新星日報 (San Sing Yat Bo - which means new star daily). This is a very standard location for paper names even today.

In the red banner along the top, the larger letters read (R-L) 警方制止 and 生死戰. This means "the Police prevent - a death battle". The fainter characters sandwiched between these two parts of the headline are the names of our protagonists: Wang Jang Lee (黃正利 - pronounced closer to Wong Jing Lay in Cantonese) and Cheng Kei Ying (鄭麒膺). Cheng might be a familiar face to anyone who has an interest in HK movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s. I don't think he was ever a leading man but I honestly had no idea he was the other part of this thing until I read this report.

This vertical column from the centre of the report basically says that CID converged on Golden Harvest Movie Studios (嘉禾 is the Chinese name of Golden Harvest) to prevent the fight from taking place.

Film fans will recognise Chan Wai-man. There's always a bit of confusion about Chan Wai-man's English name. Usually he is credited as Michael, but it appears that people who know him personally actually call him Raymond. It was his original choice of English name because his name "Wai-man" sounds very similar to Cantonese ears. The picture above says he also came to watch the match. It then goes to describe how both fighters turned up ready to start at 2pm but the Police suddenly arrived and stopped them. On the left it mentions that Cheng turned up in a private car at 1:50 but also 300 members of the National Martial Arts Association (國術總會) also turned up to watch along with loads of newspaper reporters. Sounds like this thing wasn't exactly under the radar. 

The pictures at the top left shows Cheng Kei-ying standing with his arms raised. Apparently he was saying that Wang Jang Lee isn't coming and therefore is declaring himself the winner.The lower image shows Wang (with Roy Horan - R.I.P - behind him) and asks whether he has seen the big scene ahead of him.
  

On the right hand side of the report is the three pictures above. Bottom right is a picture of Wang and Roy Horan inside the studio lobby. The caption says there are two apprentices (a si tou 師徒 is an apprentice) but I can only see one - Roy Horan. Above them is the picture of Cheng Kei-ying arriving by car. The caption makes note of his wrapped hands. Finally on the left is a picture of two men. The taller guy is actually a famous Hong Kong ring fighter called Sai Lam-yuk (洗林旭).The rest of the caption reads "請纓無路" which I think means he volunteered to stand in (for Cheng?). But this bit I'm not clear on. Feel free to comment below. What I will say is that both Wang and Horan are looking very solemn. I'm not surprised because these guys were definitely the "outsiders" in this encounter, both being foreigners. I imagine if it had gone ahead and Wang had won, then the chances of them escaping the studios alive were quite slim. Maybe they were quite aware of that?

Anyway, so there you go, the real-life celebrity death match that never was, was stopped by the police just before it could begin. I don't know much about Cheng Kei-ying to be honest so I am unsure how this fight would have played out, but Wang had a solid reputation as quite an expert when it came to powerful kicking.