The trailer for Ip Man 4 came out three weeks ago, back on March 19th, 2019. Why are we just writing about it now? Because there was no way to find it due to Google purposefully disabling the search filters on YouTube, which meant that a lot of people weren’t properly notified about new video uploads, you couldn’t search by time or date or relevance, and everything was borked while Google frantically attempted to hide, stifle, suppress, and remove any content related to the Christchurch, New Zealand shooting.

Sadly this meant that if you weren’t manually checking certain channels, it was really easy to completely miss some of the new trailers, previews, and announcements that were uploaded during the middle and last half of March. Anyway, I finally got around to seeing the trailer for Ip Man 4 courtesy of the Scott Adkins YouTube channel, and it gives us a glimpse at what’s bound to be an epic fight between Donnie Yen and the incomparable Scott Adkins. Check it out below.

I’m not really sure what the plot is of the film, but according to the trailer that the marketers at Mandarin Motion Pictures put together, the gist is that Ip Man wants to bridge the gap between China and the rest of the world through Chinese martial arts. It seems like an odd theme given how averse the traditionalists were to Bruce Lee bringing the Chinese martial arts to the West, but oh well.

Some way or another Ip Man manages to find himself in a fight against an American soldier played by the very British Scott Adkins.

From a technical standpoint the trailer upload is terrible. It’s grainy and the sound processing is pretty low quality. It’s almost like someone recorded it at 480p from another channel and then re-uploaded it in 1080p. What’s so baffling is that it’s on Scott Adkins’ official YouTube channel… so yeah, it’s official.

It’s such a bizarre move, though.

Anyway, I’m not sure what’s up with the trailer quality but the match-up of Donnie Yen versus Scott Adkins is a dream match come true. Fight film fans have been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time.

Personally? I would have preferred if they locked fisticuffs in a crime-thriller like Flashpoint or Killzone; something where both of them could embrace their skills through characters oozing with machismo. Even still, just having them face off in an Ip Man film is cool enough.

You can look for Ip Man 4 to drop this summer in July.