WITH THE BACK ON THE GROUND

From the Early Japanese in America to MMA – How Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu Developed

By Luiz Otavio Laydner

Translation: John Tabor

Table
of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 – A New
Era For a New Japan

Chapter 2 – The
Japanese Invade America

Chapter 3 – Ito the
Invincible

Chapter 4 – The
Empire Where the Sun Never Sets

Chapter 5 – The
Mexican Revolution

Chapter 6 - Brazil

Chapter 7 – An
Unusual Encounter: Geo Omori and the Clown

Chapter 8 –
Introducing the Gracies: Vale Tudo is Born

Chapter 9 – Kodokan
Takes over Judo in Brazil

Chapter 10 –
Collapse and Ressurrection

Chapter 11 –
Masahiko Kimura

Chapter 12 – The
Search for Legitimacy

Chapter 13 – Vale
Tudo Reborn

Chapter 14 – Reenter
Kimura

Chapter 15 – Heroes
of the Ring

Chapter 16 – The
Great Rivalry: Gracie vs Gracie

Conclusion

Afterword

To
the warriors

Preface

A

while back, driven by curiosity alone, I found myself pouring over
a topic irrelevant to me at the time: the exact date Mitsuyo Maeda, or Count Koma,
arrived in Brazil. For the most part, the precise date is assumed to be the 14th
of November 1914, with the port of entry being Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio
Grande do Sul, the country’s southernmost state. It quickly dawned on me, though,
that this date was inconsistent with the facts, as I could verify that on that
same date Maeda had been in São Paulo for months already. I delved further in
my research, pinpointing precisely where this most intriguing personage could
be found on that exact date, a Saturday. I must confess that I failed in my original
objective—the date and location of his arrival, probably some time in July
1914, remains a mystery. Nevertheless, the wealth of information raised by my search
led me to write a short article about Maeda and his troupe’s travels in Brazil,
through big cities like São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, but also towns less
familiar to non-Brazilians, such as Ribeirão Preto and Juiz de Fora. Not long
after, I wrote another article, dealing with a plenty specific subject, Kodokan’s
official visit to Brazil, in 1939, a few years subsequent to the death of Jigoro
Kano. Next, I set my sights on an even more ambitious project: why not write a
longer, more analytical and not just descriptive piece recounting the saga of
what is now called Brazilian jiu-jitsu, as an attempt to provide a bias-free
account of the historical processes that resulted in its development. Based on
that idea I later scribed a lengthier text, three chapters where I describe
what came of the problem the Japanese jujutsukas (most of them judokas) faced
when they encountered wrestlers upon arriving in the United States at the start
of the 20th century and culminating in the modality’s success at UFC
1, 90 years thereafter. Of that article, only the first two chapters were properly
translated to English and circulated outside Brazil. The repercussions from this
English version of the chapters took me by surprise, and that was all the
motivation I needed to publish this book. This effort now in your hands is the
compilation of all my aforementioned writings, with some tweaks and adjustments
to make it a fluid read, and with an all-new introduction. I’ve decided to
initially release it only in English, given how universal the language is. The
entire work is based on historical sources contemporaneous to the events or on
firsthand accounts of what happened (including my own starting at the latter
half of the 1980s). I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the people who
contributed valuable information to this book, like Roberto Leitão, Bráulio
Carsalade, Ricardo de la Riva, Redley Vigio, Murilo Bustamante, among others. I
would also like to thank Barbara Makant for the final review and the cover art
of this book. If I succeed in providing readers an enjoyable read, the effort
will have been worthwhile.

Introduction

I

t wasn’t likely, without the benefit of hindsight, anyone in the
crowd at McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado, that 12th of
November 1993 had a clue that they were witnessing history in the making. The
modest audience attending UFC 1 was certainly surprised as they left the venue.
Partly the surprise had to do with the violence they’d just seen, real human
combat, with no rules or limits, mutually agreed to by contestants caged into a
fenced enclosure. But that sense of surprise was also due to how easily the
tournament winner dispatched his adversaries. The time his three fights lasted
in all: five minutes, less than two rounds of a professional boxing bout.
They’d have been more surprised still had they known the champion wasn’t even in
the top tier of his art’s practitioners back in his homeland. With Royce
Gracie’s victories at the subsequent events the community of martial arts
scholars became acquainted with what is now known as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but at
the time wasn’t yet called by that name. Naturally, analysis of this phenomenon
brought with it controversy. What ensued was an intense “battle for legitimacy”
where experts in an array of martial arts sought, to no avail, to come to a
consensus on just what Brazilian jiu-jitsu is, what the Gracies’ role in its
development was, etc… This consensus of facts has never been (and possibly
never will be) fully reached, in my opinion because the analysis always centers
on the “propriety” of the techniques comprising BJJ: Who “owns” the Kimura
lock? What about the armbar? I always felt this was a key mistake: A martial
art is composed of both philosophy and technique. Reducing the problem only to
“technique” distorts the analysis by oversimplifying it. Brazilian jiu-jitsu
didn’t prevail at the early UFCs, where martial arts were truly pitted one
against the other, because it was first to incorporate the triangle choke.
Quite the contrary, it is a modern day expression of an ancient philosophy of
combat. Its initial success was the consequence of a process that began 90
years prior, when a group of Japanese martial artists brought judo to America
and over the course of years unconsciously adapted their techniques to deal
with the problem at hand when they were repeatedly challenged by American
wrestlers who were almost invariably bigger and stronger. The natural
consequence of this was the development of a style of fighting that would
respect the natural physiology of humans, and a peculiar combat philosophy. The
outcome of this philosophy of pursuing superiority was the creation of vale-tudo
in 1930s Rio de Janeiro. That was the starting point of the timeline in which
Brazilian jiu-jitsu developed, quite unmethodically mixing combat in the gi,
no-gi and “valendo tudo,” or “anything goes.” At several points the art
came close to extinction or being absorbed by judo, escaping this fate mainly
because of the obstinacy of Hélio Gracie. From the ‘30s onwards Brazilian
jiu-jitsu plotted a path of near total isolation, restricted to a small number
of practitioners but preserving the original combat philosophy, a still frame
of an era on its way to forgottenness. Until it captured the world’s attention
on November 12, 1993. How this process unfolded, that is the aim of this book.

Chapter 1 – A New Era For a New Japan

A

t the end of the year 1904 Tsunejiro Tomita and Eisei Maeda set sail
for America. Tomita, the elder of the two, was Kodokan's number-one member,
having been there since its founding. Now, Maeda, the younger man by ten years,
was a promising and exceptionally strong second-generation judoka. The two
shared the mission of spreading Kodokan judo to the West. Tomita would
eventually return to Japan nearly a decade later. Maeda, though, had taken off
on a trip with no return, never again to set foot in his homeland. For him it was
just the first step in an extraordinary sequence of stops that would end in
Belém do Pará, the biggest city in the then-frontier region of North Brazil, a
forgotten corner of the world. What neither of the two fighters could ever have
suspected before embarking was that their ship to America put them and other
Japanese fighters on their way to the same place, on an outright collision
course with another martial art: the American catch-as-catch-can style of
wrestling.

At the time of Tomita and Maeda’s departure, Kodokan’s roots were
already firmly entrenched and the other more traditional jiu-jitsu schools were
on a one-way road to irrelevance. How this process came about is one of the
best-documented events in Japan’s recent history. There are numerous reports
and documents describing what transpired. Kano himself left records of it
written in his own hand. However, the old adage that history is written by the
victors, in this case rings true: nearly all record of what happened in the
process of the jiu-jitsu schools becoming consolidated under the Kodokan
umbrella originate with Kano or someone in some way linked to him or someone
else in his organization. Indeed, that shouldn’t be any surprise, given how the
jiu-jitsu schools at that point were in the later stages of decay and the art
was on the fast-track to extinction. Jigoro Kano himself narrates this decline.

The son of a family of sake-makers, Kano was given an exceptional
education growing up, especially by those days' standards. The target of
bullying at school and early on having heard jiu-jitsu mentioned as a form of
self-defense, he recounts how hard it was to find instruction in the art:

“At that time, a former
soldier named Nakai would frequent our house. He sometimes bragged that he knew
jujutsu and showed me some kata techniques; this experience fired both my
interest and imagination and gave me the idea of learning it from him. When I
asked him to teach me, however, he refused, saying that it was not necessary to
learn jujutsu nowadays. In addition to our family home in Mikage, my father
owned a second house in Maruyama-cho, Koishikawa-ku, Tokyo. The caretaker of
this house was Ryuji Katagiri. He occasionally showed me some jujutsu. I once
asked him to give me regular instruction, but he also declined my request,
saying that there was no point in learning it, since it was no longer of any
practical use. Another frequent visitor to our house was Genshiro Imai of Higo
in Kyushu, who had learned the Kyushin style of jujutsu. When I asked him to
coach me, yet again I was refused. In fact, I could not find anyone who was
willing to instruct me. As a result, I continued to suffer at the hand of
bullies.”

Besides the view that jiu-jitsu was already an anachronism prior to
Kodokan’s existence, there are some further points from Kano’s narrative that
deserve attention. During his first contact with the art, the techniques were
conveyed by way of katas, or forms, choreographed sequences of
movements. This was the most traditional way of imparting techniques. As a
“pure” martial art, without sporting pretensions, the practice of sparring, or randori,
wasn’t too common. When two practitioners would meet, if not choreographed, the
encounter would in essence be “real," potentially causing the combatants
serious bodily harm. Another interesting point was the brief contact Kano had
with Kyushin-ryu. As an analogy, jiu-jitsu was a generic term for all Japanese
schools of hand-to-hand combat. The different schools, each normally associated
with one of Japan’s feudal clans, had their own specific techniques and styles,
secrets often kept for generations. A loose approximation would be the term
“wrestling” in the West; basically an agglomeration of diverse sets of styles.
In his time, Kano adopted techniques from two schools of jiu-jitsu in laying
judo's foundation.

Kano continued to have a hard time finding anyone interested in
teaching him jiu-jitsu. Having heard a rumor that osteopaths were traditionally
masters in the style, he targeted them in his search. Though the information
proved to be untrue, some had indeed been teachers of the art but abandoned the
practice years earlier. Eventually Kano’s path crossed with an osteopath named
Teinosuke Yagi, an elderly man already late in life. Yagi told him that in the
past he had taught jiu-jitsu at the Tenshin Shinyo school, but after his
students there went their ways he made his living solely through osteopathy.
Having declined to himself teach Kano, Yagi referred him to a colleague of his,
Master Hachinosuke Fukuda, from the same school. Kano joined the five other
students under Fukuda’s tutelage at the time and his learning could finally get
under way.

Why so sheer a decline? What caused a traditional, thousand-year-old
art to so abruptly implode? Reason number one is just plain practicality: at a
time when firearms were rapidly replacing the sword in Japan, what would be the
point of learning hand-to-hand combat if not for sport? Cleverly, Kano in his
analysis delved deeper and probably concluded that the problem with traditional
jiu-jitsu was simply that, regardless of the school or style, it wasn’t the
least bit compatible with the new Meiji-era Japan. Aware of the tremendous
cultural value the art represented, Kano showed just how brilliant he really
was. He realized that jiu-jitsu could be rescued so long as there was a
technical framework on which to build a philosophy that would be acceptable to
the new Japanese society. Hence judo was born: replacing the “art” (jutsu), he
added the “way” (do) to encompass physical and mental learning. The purely
martial makes way for education of the body and mind.

The story of how Kodokan came to be has been documented extensively,
and this is no place to recapitulate. I will, however, address the parts
important to our story. The beginning wasn’t easy, but being the well-connected
and politically adept fellow he was, with time Kano managed to garner support
from authorities in the Japanese government. Of course, some of the traditional
jiu-jitsu schools weren’t going to just sit around and watch as Kodokan shot to
the top of the pecking order, and the newcomer was met with a steady stream of
challenges to prove his school’s superiority. Kano took a non-confrontational
stance: he’d avoid issuing provocations, but he did tend to accept challenges
directed at his school by others. And there was no shortage of them. Now, these
days there is some debate as to what the rules that governed these early bouts
were, but at the end of the 19th century it was clear to Kano that
there was a need for a more formal, standardized set of rules. The way he saw
it, even while Kodokan was by far the most highly-regarded jiu-jitsu school of
the day, his forcing a set of rules he fancied onto others would be perceived
as arrogance. Kano thus set to work to get the martial art's governing body,
Butokukai (needless to say he was the president of the organization’s
recently-formed rules committee), to announce a set of rules to govern
jiu-jitsu matches[1]. The following year Kodokan adopted this same set of rules for
itself, with negligible differences.

The essence of these rules would provide competitive judo the form
it maintains to this day, more than a century later. To delve deep in analysis
would veer too far off topic; however, three points stand out as noteworthy:

* Besides by desistance via submission, a match can be won by “pinning”
the opponent’s back to the mat;

* time spent on the ground is restricted;

* various different joint locks are forbidden.

In these original rules the match was won by best-of-three ippons
(the first combatant to score two ippons would win). “Pinning” the back to the
ground could occur either instantly, by landing the perfect throw, or by
immobilizing the opponent for a certain (unspecified) length of time, just as
it is today. The greater part of the match should take place standing. This
aspect is critical, since if this constraint were not enforced the combat would
essentially take place on the ground, by the simple effect of gravity coupled
with intrinsic human body instability when standing up. Lastly, the more
traumatic joint locks are nixed. In fact, if this same set of rules were
applied to a modern-day judo bout, lay spectators would find it quite similar
to what we’re used to watching.

In a nutshell, of the principles that guided Kano’s philosophy and that
he implemented at Kodokan, we can underscore three that will henceforth be
essential to our story. What is interesting is that Kano left an extensive body
of work written in his own hand, leaving little room for controversy in regard
to where he stood on these three points.

* He couldn’t stand prize fighting. With some distaste he came to
accept competitive judo, but even so, he never truly accepted the pursuit of
victory as the ultimate objective in a competition;

* He didn’t appreciate ground fighting and believed judo should
essentially be practiced standing. He presented a number of arguments for this,
among them, not entirely without reason by the commonly held conceptions of the
day, that standup fighting was more technical, thus presenting a greater
challenge to learn;

* He believed that for all practical effects jiu-jitsu schools
should only exist insofar as they teach judo. Not doing so could only be
possible in a very restricted form solely for historical-research purposes.

By the time Maeda left Japan in 1904 he had already had more than
enough time to become acquainted with and assimilate Kano’s philosophy and the
rules of Butokukai and Kodokan. Maeda had arrived at Kodokan many years
earlier, and no records have been found to link him to any other jiu-jitsu
school. This aspect is interesting because traditional Brazilian jiu-jitsu lore
has Maeda as one of the last masters of the original art that would be
superseded with judo in Japan, and by teaching it to Carlos Gracie he would
preserve the art for posterity. But mythology and history don’t always
coincide. The reality is that Eisei Maeda, who left Japan in late 1904, was a
Kodokan judoka who, with others, headed for America to demonstrate his art and
meet his destiny.

Chapter 2 – The Japanese Invade America

M

artial arts were by no means something new to the United States at
the start of the century. More specifically, boxing and wrestling were already
quite popular well before the Japanese started coming ashore. Wrestling, in
fact, a blanket term covering a number of different styles of grappling, is
almost as ancient as civilization itself. However, modern wrestling and its
better-known subsets are basically a 19th century European creation[2].

During the second half of the 19th century, mostly
towards the end of the American Civil War, a number of these styles made it to
the USA. Of all of them, the one practiced in Lancashire, England, spread the
quickest, perhaps for having rules that were more “liberal” and being more
violent. It was called “catch-as-catch-can.” Adopted and practiced in America,
this style gained features all its own, leading some authors to call it
“American catch-as-catch-can.” In fact, near the turn of the 20th
century, hardly any practitioners or spectators saw catch-as-catch-can as being
English at all, embracing it as American cultural heritage. As we’ll see later
on, this phenomenon would bring a tinge of nationalism to encounters pitting
wrestlers against jiu-jitsu fighters.

Initially, and for a long time thereafter, wrestling matches were
informal affairs. They were itinerant, sometimes-independent events often
featured as part of a circus. We should keep in mind that it was a time when
sports-regulating bodies were either nonexistent or had only just come to be.
Hence it was no surprise that these matches were unruly affairs that to an
observer from the 21st century would seem downright chaotic.

In setting up a bout, the first question to be settled was what the
match rules would be (somewhat reminiscent of Japan at the same point in time,
as mentioned). Normally this would be negotiated ringside by the fighters’
agents or simply imposed on the “challengers” as preconditions for the
“challengee” to agree to fight. In most cases, there were no time limits or
properly defined rounds for the matches, the outcome being determined by
“best-of-three falls.” Put simply, the “fall” could be understood to mean
“pinning the shoulders to the ground,” whether by way of a throw from standing
position or by forcing the opponent’s back against the ground while grappling.
It could be a momentary pin or for a predetermined length of time. Sometimes
joint locks or chokes were forbidden, but depending on how lenient the referee
was, at other times they could be used to coerce the opponent into conceding
the “fall” to escape the acute pain inflicted by the hold. As mentioned,
however, a number of such rules could be agreed upon ringside: whether there
would be rounds, if lock or choke submissions were allowed, and sometimes
(albeit rarely) the use of punches and kicks were negotiated “case by case.”

Another, less praiseworthy, characteristic of professional American
catch-as-catch-can already in the early 20th century: a good portion
of the fights were prearranged, that is, the winner had been determined even
before the sound of the opening bell. There were a number of reasons for that.
The most ignoble of them was outright dishonesty from the fight promoters in
rigging the unregulated gambling that accompanied practically every fight. They
bet on everything: the winner, the means of winning, how long a bout would
last. And rigged results meant hefty payouts for promoters and fighters alike.

But there were also other reasons for cheating. Though fooling the
public is always morally questionable, the fact of the matter is that a lot of
the time the results were prearranged just to make the fight more fun to watch.
It happened that the legitimate fights were uneventful, drawn out, hard for lay
spectators to wrap their heads around, and at times they dragged on for hours—they
could be flat-out boring. With a predetermined script to follow, though, they
could effectively give the audience a spectacle with greater appeal, and that’s
just what they did. As it happens, there is so much confusion shrouding events
from back then that wrestling historians to this day have a hard time saying
for certain whether some of the big bouts from early last century were real or
not[3].

Now is as an opportune moment to make an important analogy between
American catch-as-catch-can and judo: both, in their typical competition rules,
saw pinning the shoulders (once or twice) to the ground as meaning the opponent
had been subdued and the bout was over. That put a chasm between the two arts
and “real” combat, since no one is going to consider himself defeated just
because his back's on the ground, which isn’t the case when the unmistakable
gesture of “tapping out” dictates the outcome.

Now, Japanese jiu-jitsu was an exotic novelty shrouded in mystery
that captured Americans' imagination at the time Maeda and Tomita landed in the
United States in late 1904. And that was mostly due to an event that took place
half a world away in the far-off reaches of the planet (at least from the
Western point of view in those days), now northeastern China.

On February 8, 1904, precisely three hours after the Japanese navy
bombarded the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, Japan declared war on Russia. The
Russo-Japanese War, as it would come to be known, was the first large-scale
modern war to take place in the Orient. The result was an unyielding conflict
between Japan’s strategy of expanding its zone of influence in the region and
Russia’s pursuit of a warm-water port. Fact is, the Russians (and the West)
figured Japan would be swiftly dismantled, if just by the power of sheer
numbers. But that’s not how it played out. Battle after battle, on land or at
sea, the Japanese took the Russians to pieces. This led to the legend of
Japanese soldiers with supernatural hand-to-hand-combat skills spreading
through the Western media like wildfire and catching the attention of American
military and police forces. Obviously jiu-jitsu didn’t play a decisive part in
Japan’s victory, at a time when hand-to-hand fighting and no firearms simply
didn’t exist. The myth was clearly concocted as propaganda. However, to satisfy
the public and government authorities' curiosity, getting to the root of the
phenomenon and learning about the art became something of importance to the
American top brass. For this reason both the Navy (with a prod from President
Roosevelt himself), at Annapolis, and the Army, at West Point, decided to add
it to the study curriculum. It was in this setting, the story of which is now
well known, that another of “The Four Guardians of the Kodokan” (as Kano top
students were called) who was there at the time was hired to teach judo at
Annapolis at the end of 1904, more or less coinciding with Tomita and Maeda’s
arrival stateside. In fact, at an event that was not too widely known but well
covered in newspapers of the day, Yamashita and the newly-arrived Tomita and
Maeda appeared together in early January 1905 at Harvard College in Boston.
Next they took off together for New York. There Tomita and Maeda stayed, while
Yamashita forged ahead to Annapolis to take his post definitively.

Yamashita and Tomita weren’t the first jiu-jitsu instructors to come
ashore in the United States in this backdrop. Indeed, some other instructors,
from other schools besides Kano’s, could already be found there. One of these
more peculiar characters was based in Rochester, NY. His name was Yae Kichi
Yabe. Yabe made a routine of running newspaper ads for his correspondence
course in jiu-jitsu. He was something of a visionary: he came up with what may well
have been one of the first long-distance-learning courses, an academic
technique that would only gain steam many decades down the road. Yabe taught
jiu-jitsu through the mail. He’d send to the potential student a book he’d
written, and what he taught via correspondence was “identical to the course
taught at Japan's main schools.” The influence the Russo-Japanese War had is
apparent in the ad for Yabe’s course printed in the January 21, 1905 issue of
The Literary Digest. In it, we get a glimpse of what appears to be a diminutive
Japanese soldier applying an arm-lock on a hulking Cossack. Yabe identified
himself as an instructor from the Tenjin Shinyo Ryu school. There’s no way to
verify Yabe’s credentials, but he did have some intriguing things to say about
traditional jiu-jitsu. Yabe claimed jiu-jitsu had been considered a Japanese
national secret for over two thousand years. His masters had been forbidden, by
emperor’s decree, from teaching the art to foreigners. However, due to the
recent warmth in relations between Japan and the United States, Yabe, Japan's
premiere teacher of the art, was tasked with teaching it to Americans.

It’s highly unlikely the emperor had entrusted Yabe with such a
mission. Nor are we aware of an imperial decree prohibiting the teaching of
jiu-jitsu to foreigners. Yabe’s claims are surely fanciful, but in a certain
form they resemble the equally fanciful oral tradition saying Maeda taught
traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu to Carlos Gracie in spite of a government order
banning anyone from teaching the art to foreigners.

More important to our story than Yabe, though, is the figure of
Katsukuma Higashi. Higashi is reported to be from the Hozan Ryu school,
although this author has found no firsthand accounts confirming such a
connection. We do know, however, that Higashi arrived in the United States
years before, at some point in 1900, and that he said he learned jiu-jitsu at
Doshisha University in Kyoto. There’s no saying from which school he really
came, but we do know it wasn’t Kano’s, since a little later on, having
coauthored and published The Complete Kano Jiu-Jitsu with Irving Hancock,
Jigoro Kano[4] would debunk the book himself. He had a small studio located at 11
West 25th Street in New York. In December of 1904, having been called
on to assess the possibility of introducing jiu-jitsu into police training in
New York, Commissioner William McAdoo invited Higashi to do an exhibition at
police headquarters. The presentation was set for the 22nd of that
month. It wasn’t a challenge per se, more of a demonstration. What happened
next caused quite a stir in the press, since at a time when the media was yet
unfamiliar with the Japanese art, written accounts were completely inaccurate,
technically speaking. The first police officer called on to serve as uke
was Selig Whitman, also known as “Ajax,” who at 84 kg (185 lbs) and 1.75 meters
(5’7”) was considered the strongest man the police had. Higashi was a little
fellow, just 1.60 meters (5’2”) tall and, at the time of the presentation,
weighing 54 kg (119 lbs). Apparently Higashi demonstrated a throw. Having felt
it was easy, Ajax tried to replicate it but without much know-how, simply
hoisting Higashi off the ground and tossing him over his head. On landing,
Higashi inverted the position and swiftly sunk an arm-lock, most likely a
keylock or Kimura. They started over a second time, and Higashi again threw
Ajax, this time gripping Ajax’s lapel and choking him until he fainted. Once
the policeman had regained consciousness, clearly irritated, he summoned
Higashi for another round, but this time Greco-Roman style. Higashi declined,
alleging that if the challenge were a real fight he could seriously injure his
adversary.

This event at the police station in NY made a splash in the media of
the day, with reports of how the tiny Japanese guy beat up a bulky policeman.
Even though it wasn't effectively a fight, the headlines like the one in The
Sun, “Higashi Downs Ajax, The Cop,” added to jiu-jitsu’s burgeoning notoriety
and mystique. The choke-induced faint and subsequent “resurrection” of the
opponent was thrilling and unfamiliar to the Americans. Wrestling matches where
choking was permitted were extremely rare, and even when not officially allowed
but a lenient referee turned a blind eye to them, they were only used as a way
of coaxing the opponent to roll over and touch their shoulders to the ground,
to secure the “fall.”

The fact that this exhibition of Higashi’s had been documented in a
convoluted and imprecise manner is no shock, as news coverage from the
“specialized press,” if the term was applicable in those days, was rare indeed.
Curiously, one of the earliest accounts that could be deemed accurate, from a
technical point of view, came from the president, Teddy Roosevelt himself, in a
widely-known letter he sent his son Kermit on February 24, 1905. The letter is
long, and a good part of it isn’t about fighting. The excerpt of interest to us
is as follows:

“Yesterday afternoon we
had Professor Yamashita up here to wrestle with Grant. It was very interesting,
but of course jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far apart that it is difficult
to make any comparison between them. Wrestling is simply a sport with rules
almost as conventional as those of tennis, while jiu jitsu is really meant for
practice in killing or disabling our adversary. In consequence, Grant did not
know what to do except to put Yamashita on his back, and Yamashita was
perfectly content to be on his back. Inside of a minute Yamashita had choked
Grant, and inside of two minutes more he got an elbow hold on him that would
have enabled him to break his arm; so that there is no question but that he
could have put Grant out. So far this made it evident that the jiu jitsu man
could handle the ordinary wrestler. But Grant, in the actual wrestling and
throwing was about as good as the Japanese, and he was so much stronger that he
evidently hurt and wore out the Japanese. With a little practice in the art I
am sure that one of our big wrestlers or boxers, simply because of his greatly
superior strength, would be able to kill any of those Japanese, who though very
good men for their inches and pounds are altogether too small to hold their own
against big, powerful, quick men who are as well trained.”

A careful reading of the letter reveals several interesting aspects,
many of which we will be looking back on further ahead. The first aspect is the
assertion that “… jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far apart that it is
difficult to make any comparison between them…” Roosevelt believed jiu-jitsu to
be more a “weapon” than a sport, unlike wrestling. It’s interesting that even
having interacted with Yamashita, the American president’s view was
diametrically opposed to what Kano had in mind for judo. Apparently the
propaganda derived from Japan’s war with Russia overshadowed Kano’s vision in
the States. The aforementioned Grant, probably a wrestler, managed to take
Yamashita down, but when "…on his back…”, in other words, playing guard,
Yamashita had an easy time getting the submission, whether by joint lock or
choke. Roosevelt goes further, saying that Grant, the bigger and heavier man,
managed to put Yamashita on the ground using takedowns. Lastly, he surmises
that a well-trained wrestler could “kill one of those Japanese.” This encounter
that Roosevelt describes to his son, in a way, brings up a dilemma that we will
come across over and over again: what should a jiu-jitsu fighter do when up
against a larger, stronger opponent with good equilibrium? Yamashita gave his
answer: fight from the bottom, on his back, and try for a submission.

As Yamashita started teaching class at Annapolis, Tomita and Maeda
got settled in New York. On February 16, 1905 they held an exhibition at
Princeton. The general impression from the encounter was so positive that it sent
shockwaves all the way to San Francisco, as reported in the February 17, 1905
issue of The San Francisco Call.

“JAPANESE WRESTLER
THROWS A PRINCETON FOOTBALL MAN

College Students Given
an Exhibition of Jiu-Jitsu by Experts. Professors T. Tornita (sic) and
Y. Maeda of Tokio gave an exhibition of jiu-jitsu before 1000 Princeton
students today. Professor Tornita (sic) is said to have instructed in
the new manly art. Maeda called upon the students for volunteers to wrestle
with him, and B. Tooker, a football player and champion wrestler, stepped
forth. He was quickly thrown. Feagles, the gymnastic instructor, then took a
turn. By a quick attack he put the Japanese on his back, but the Princeton man
soon lost the advantage and was easily downed.”

The description of this encounter as well is too vague for us to
make a proper analysis. We can’t even discern from it what exactly it was that
Maeda did at the demonstration: in another article from the same date,
published in the Baltimore Sun under the title “DOWNED BY JIU-JITSU,” it was
Tomita, not Maeda, who performed the feat! Nor do we know if the Americans wore
gis.

A few days later, at West Point, things didn’t go quite so well for
Tomita and Maeda. In a now-well-known article titled “Cadets Down the ‘Jap” in
the February 20, 1905 New York Times, the following account of the presentation
is given:

“In the gymnasium here
to-day the art of Judo had a practical demonstration before the cadet corps and
Academic Board. The board is considering the advisability of adding the
Japanese method to the academy curriculum. Prof. Tomet (sic), Japan’s
most famous exponent of the art, and director in the school at Tokio, with his
assistant, came to the academy through the courtesy of the New York Japanese
Consul General, who accompanied them to give the exhibition. The professor
wrestled with his assistant, throwing him around like a rubber ball. He then
called for cadet volunteers. Cadet Tipton, the husky All-American football
centre, went on the mat and football methods soon had jiu-jitsu beaten. The big
fellow pinned the wiry Jap flat on his back three times without being thrown in
the bout. Cadet Daly also threw the professor.”

Using even less flattering terms for the Japanese and bordering on ironic,
the Seattle Times too recounted what happened, in its March 1, 1905 edition:

“The Japanese wrestlers
who went down to West Point to teach Uncle Sammy’s coming men the mysteries of
jiu-jitsu had a good time through the exhibition stage; but when the days of
actual practice opened they met trouble. One of the cadets, somewhat clever in
the ways of great American game of catch-as-catch-can, volunteered to play back
stop to a lesson in jiu-jitsu. But the Jap was unable to deliver a single jiu
and the only jitsu that was noticed was when the cadet spilled the Jap on the
mat as the logical consequence of a half-Nelson. Now the Japs are wrestling for
fair, and watching eagerly for the last day of their contract.”

Note how in this article catch-as-catch-can is referred to as a
genuinely American style of fighting, not an import from England, and this
wasn’t the personal view of the journalist, but one seen frequently in sports
writing. Another aspect to heed, and that later on would be reiterated in a
number of other articles, is that the jiu-jitsu the Japanese took to the United
States at the start of the 1900s didn’t make much of an impression on Americans
once it had left the front page and been picked up by the specialized press. In
a blend of nationalism and critical analysis, the Americans, as a whole, did
not see the Japanese art as something superior to “their” style.

But what may well have been the most significant consequence of this
event was the effect it had on Maeda himself: if at a plain-old presentation
for young military cadets Tomita was taken down and pinned by bigger and
stronger opponents, what would happen if they were to face bona fide
professional wrestlers? To throw someone heavier and with good base to the
ground would be no piece of cake, even for such savvy exponents of the art as
Tomita and Maeda. The risk of the technique failing and their landing on bottom
and immobilized was simply too great.

Soon after the West Point fiasco, on March 8, the two judokas put in
an appearance at the New York Athletic Club. Tomita and Maeda do their
demonstration (of “judo,” Tomita again stresses this point) and then have the
now-standard spar with a local athlete. This time Maeda faces John Naething, a
90kg (198lb) wrestler from the club, who is asked to put on a gi. With a grip on
the collar, Maeda tosses Naething time and time again. Once on the ground, the
two roll inconclusively. As the sparring session goes on, however, Naething
starts to mark Maeda’s shots for takedown, even taking him down a few times,
himself. Ultimately, Maeda “pulls the American down,” possibly into his guard.
Here the report is a little fuzzy, saying that Naething “rolled on top” of
Maeda and pinned him while the Japanese fighter sunk a choke. At this point an
end is called to the fighting and the American is “declared” the winner.

The following appearance was at Columbia University on March 21,
1905, a Tuesday. As usual, Tomita reiterates the distinction between judo and
jiu-jitsu. The presentation kicks off with a series of physical exercises and
stretches. Next comes the routine takedown and self-defense exposition, with
Maeda serving as uke. Then Tomita teaches some submission holds,
applying them on an instructor from the university. He follows up with a
demonstration on the proper way to fall, from an array of different positions,
landing with a roll. Last of all, the presentation wraps up with an exhibition
of “medieval jiu-jitsu,” where Maeda attacks Tomita with a sword. The most
curious part of the presentation, though, comes right at the very end. Tomita
asks that he be heard, saying that the American public has misunderstood the
nature of judo and jiu-jitsu. He cites as an example what recently took place
at West Point, where a number of cadets easily took Higashi down. Here
we can make a parenthetical: this author is unaware of any presentation where
Higashi was taken down at West Point. Tomita's the one who was taken down
there, not Higashi! Tomita goes one further: He says Higashi hadn't realized
that getting thrown onto his back meant anything. In the Japanese art, only
getting pinned signified defeat. Tomita also affirms that if Higashi had known
there was any significance to a takedown he would never have let himself get
thrown.

This pronouncement from Tomita is a surprise. Firstly because, as far
as we know, he’s describing something that happened to Higashi, when in fact he
was the one to whom it happened. But this misrepresentation isn’t the only
shocker. Tsunejiro Tomita was the very first member of Kodokan. Having been a
Kano student since the founding of the institute, it would be ridiculous to
suppose that Tomita was unfamiliar with the very rules (and vision of fighting)
Kano instituted at both Butokukai and Kodokan, whereby a perfect throw marks
the end of a bout (regardless of whether it is the first or second takedown).
Indeed, what seems to have happened was that Tomita was first and foremost
Japanese, a judoka only second. His national pride got the better of him, to
the point of distorting reality to defend his country’s art.

But the time for challenge matches with students, policemen and
cadets was over: the moment had come to face off with real wrestlers, ones
proficient in catch-as-catch-can, ones who were strong, heavy and extremely
difficult to take down. And one of these maiden tests would involve Higashi.
The slight-framed Japanese fighter would take on George Bothner, a North
American lightweight champion, in an encounter initially scheduled for April 4,
1905 and later moved to April 6 at New York’s Grand Central Palace. It was clearly
a showdown between styles, announced as “The match that promises to settle once
and for all the question of the superiority of the two styles of wrestling.”
Expectations were running high, and the repercussion in the media was
tremendous. But first, in a prelude to what would happen time and again in the
decades that followed, the rules of the match would be agreed upon beforehand,
and those negotiations didn't go too smoothly.

First they agreed both athletes would use the gi. Given how
significant an advantage that would be to the Japanese fighter, it was surely
Higashi who pushed that stipulation. The point-scoring was set at best-of-five
“falls,” a “fall” signifying throwing the opponent to the ground and pinning
him there for twenty seconds, more or less in line with the normal rules for
both wrestling and Kano’s judo. Chokes were permitted, joint locks weren’t,
which put quite a constraint on Higashi’s game. Last of all, throws where the
opponent would “instantaneously”[5] touch his shoulders to the ground would be accepted as “falls,”
even if the one applying it touched his shoulders to the ground first. Surely
one of Higashi’s demands. As far as joint locks, this limitation reflected an
important issue. The Americans as a principle felt them to be unsportsmanlike,
as the opponent could get severely injured. They weren’t admitted into normal
catch-as-catch-can rules, only being let in when the rules were established “at
ringside.” In a certain way the Americans had detected the same fundamental
flaw Kano had unearthed decades earlier in jiu-jitsu: it’s hard to reconcile
the pursuit of physical and mental health with the goal of purposefully
debilitating your opponent. The philosophical differences having been settled
and defined in the rules, the one remaining issue was the refereeing. Higashi
requested a Japanese referee, which Bothner was against. Ultimately, they
agreed to one American referee in the ring and two judges. The ref would be Tim
Hurst, a fixture in boxing matches. The judges would be John O’Brian, of
Bothner’s choosing, with Higashi picking his friend Irving Hancock.

Specifics out of the way, we come to the big day. In the audience,
as Higashi’s guest of honor, is our now-familiar Commissioner McAdoo of the New
York police force. The evening’s program also includes another wrestling match
and a jiu-jitsu demonstration between two unknown Japanese fighters as
preliminary bouts. One of the jiu-jitsu fighters is named Koga. The other uses
a curious pseudonym: he is called… Koma. It's main event time. Right off the
bat, Higashi sinks his hands into Bothner’s collar and cranks out a choke as he
pulls him into his guard. Bothner manages to break free and turn on all fours.
Higashi tries to make Bothner roll over, but in a lapse of attention, Bothner
latches on to Higashi’s leg and cranks a half-Nelson and clearly puts the
Japanese fighter’s back on the ground. First fall goes to the American at the
12:35-minute mark. After a brief pause, the match is restarted and Bothner
quickly assumes defensive position, on all fours. Higashi again tries to flip
him out of the position, again unsuccessfully. Some time goes by and Bothner
recoups his confidence and gets up, bringing the fight back to the feet.
Higashi sinks a classic collar grip as Bothner tries in vain to land hip
throws. Suddenly, Higashi lands a perfect tomoenage, unmistakably
scoring an ippon on his American counterpart. Hurst, the referee, doesn’t award
Higashi his due fall, however, to the Japanese fighter and his judge Hancock’s
chagrin, as even an “instantaneous” touch of back to the ground is acceptable,
as per the agreed-upon rules. Higashi threatens to pull out from the fight, but
after a lengthy discussion he returns to the ring. The bout again underway,
Bothner goes back to defensive position, but after briefly getting up, Higashi
applies another, less-well-executed tomoenage, clearly not amounting to
ippon. Higashi would try yet a third time, but the American lands in his guard.
Moments later, again due to a lapse of attention, Bothner lands a crotch-hold
1:31 hours and 18 seconds into the match. Another fall for the American.
Fifteen minutes and twenty seconds later, Bothner repeats the technique and
achieves his third fall, winning the bout.

Higashi was outraged by the result. He alleged that Bothner’s
defensive stance on all fours was unsportsmanlike and prevented him from using
his jiu-jitsu techniques. Furthermore, he said he had completed three falls
that the referee ignored (the truth being that only one of his falls could have
been considered “perfect”). Realistically, though, without his joint locks and
with Bothner stymying his collar-choke attempts, there wasn’t much Higashi
could do even though Bothner was no heavier than he was. The fact of the
matter, however, was that the outcome of the fight was a major blow to the
mystique that had built up around jiu-jitsu. The 6,000 spectators at Grand
Central Palace that night expected to see “magic” from the Japanese fighter,
and they surely went home disappointed.

On the eve of the Higashi fight, Tomita and Maeda did a presentation
for the press at a gymnasium on the corner of Broadway and 66th
Street, the precise location to which Higashi had moved his academy not long
before. In an interview held during the performance, Tomita underscored the
difference between jiu-jitsu and judo, taking an almost aggressive tone in
addressing what jiu-jitsu was before Kano developed the broader concept of
judo.

“Jiu-jitsu is an almost
extinct art, and a savage one that were better extinct. The real art of
self-defense is ju-do. Jiu-jitsu was developed 350 years ago, at a time when
there was tribal warfare in Japan. Then a man with a long sword and a man w1ith
no sword would meet in the streets, and out of their undying hatred for one
another, tribally speaking, it became necessary for the man with no sword to
learn a few tricks for dislocating the joints of his enemy, choking him and
rendering him unconscious.”

That Tomita spoke so scathingly suggests he must have been bothered
by all the attention jiu-jitsu was getting in America. Indeed, things weren’t
going too well for him and Maeda. They’d traveled halfway around the world to
introduce the United States to Kano's system, a complete system for educating
the mind and body, based on a set of techniques derived from schools of
traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu, carefully “polished” by Kano. Instead, they’d
landed in pandemonium, having to demonstrate a “secret art” that helped the
Japanese soldier overcome the giant Russian. What’s more, they were forced to
over and over again demonstrate whether or not this art was superior to the
ones the Americans did. As if that weren’t enough, the one considered the
greatest Japanese exponent of the art in America was Higashi, who had never
even been to Kodokan!

Tomita and Maeda went on to teach at Columbia, even to women at
Barnard College. Undyingly loyal to Kano and the principles of judo, during a
break in one of these classes, on May 7, Tomita gave a long interview, now in a
more conciliatory tone, that is of such significance that we partially
transcribed it and took a close look at the points of greatest interest. Tomita
starts by again stressing the difference between jiu-jitsu, a purely martial
art, and judo, a method of physical and mental education.

“I shall speak of the
difference between jiu-jitsu and jiudo first. The former developed some 350
years ago – i.e. at the middle of the feudal times – and reached its climax
toward the end of Tokugawa shogunate.

“The alm of jiu-jitsu,
in short, is to train a man to be able to fight unarmed with an armed opponent
or to combat with a short sword against one provided with a long one.

“In other words,
jiu-jitsu aims at the methods in which the weak overcome the strong, the small
the large. To this and jiu-jitsu teaches how to dislocate an opponent’s joints,
how to choke him, how to attack vital points and how to make him unconscious,
etc… This practice is consequently very violent and seems foolish from the
standpoint of physical culture.

“Several schools have
arisen, tai-jitsu, jiu-jitsu, yawara, toride, etc. Of these, the name jiu-jitsu
has lately become known in America. But I’m sorry to say that in Japan nowadays
this art has become out of style. How did it become extinct?

“The name which should
be remembered in this connection is that of our teacher, Professor Kano, who is
the founder of jiudo and is one of the most prominent educators of today in
Japan.”

Tomita then goes on to describe some of judo’s philosophical
principles. He highlights the issue of physical education and points out
elements that are irreconcilable between the two: winning in judo is of
secondary importance, not a question of life or death like in the original
jiu-jitsu:

“Now, the aims of jiudo
follow the principle that one should keep oneself soft in order to beat his
adversary and it teaches how to fight as man, restraining oneself from being
unjust, impolite, imprudent or cowardly. To this end we emphasize the method of
fighting manfully as well as gracefully, and the result – one beating or being
beaten by the other – is looked upon as a matter of secondary importance. We
therefore not only do not appraise but despise one who wins a victory by unjust
and unchivalrous means.

“The second aim is the
physical culture. I think there are a few points of superiority which jiudo
possesses over other methods now in vogue. As you all know, physical science
aims only at the making of perfect men and women, physically speaking; but we
do not satisfy ourselves with that. We have to do more than this. It is important
to educate muscles to be able to act with agility at one’s pleasure. We must
have, besides, the art of picking up needles fallen in the water, the strength
to move around large guns…

“Besides the two
objectives above stated, there is another thing that jiudo aims at. That is the
methods of attacking and self-defending which can be profitably employed as
opportunities call for. Jiudo is looked upon as an art anyone with those useful
arts.

“In short, the aim of
jiudo is the training of mental faculties and studying the methods of
combating. In Japan jiudo is looked upon as an art far more advanced in theory
as well as in practice than any other athletic games, like fencing, boxing,
wrestling, etc…”

Next Tomita expresses his discomfort with what he had seen in the
USA, perhaps a veiled message to Higashi:

“We are exceedingly
happy on one hand to see that this art is welcomed in America, while on the
other hand we are very sorry to witness the fact that this art is, or at least
has been, misrepresented and ranked among other athletic games; moreover, poor
imitations of this noble art are going to spread out here.”

And an interesting perspective, reflecting a typical Meiji-era view,
of the roles of the United States in the “liberation” of feudal Japan and the
end of the shogunate:

“Our coming to America
is to show you the real form of jiudo as our humble present in exchange for the
greater deed done for us in having awakened Japan from her twenty-five century
sleep.”

Twenty-five years later the countries would go to war. Thirty years
later Japan would be reduced to rubble. Lastly, fresh criticism of the practice
of traditional jiu-jitsu as opposed to judo:

“It would be a very
dangerous practice to do jiu-jitsu strictly at all times, for some of the
jiu-jitsu tricks are extremely rough and violent. The student is therefore
taught by kata which gives him the principles of the art and enable him
to put them into practice when the need arises. When men use the actual
practice, not the kata, or make believe, in practical wrestling, it is
called randori.

“Any of the systems may
be learned either by kata or by randori. In ancient Japan each
province had its own school, established by the feudal lord, and each
provincial school taught its own system and that only. A few students would
occasionally pass from one training hall to another to learn other systems than
their own but it was a rare thing. Most experts knew nothing but their own
local use, and under these circumstances no very great degree of proficiency
was to be expected.”

This interview of Tomita’s is of great importance, for having been
taken contemporarily, from the perspective of that time, by someone who had
truly experienced the situation. In the wake of Higashi’s defeat, the criticism
of jiu-jitsu became all the more vehement, insinuating that the expectations
created around the Japanese art were a fabrication by the media and
orchestrated for financial gain. But the situation would deteriorate even
further.

On April 20, the steamship Korea would dock in San Francisco. Among
its many passengers were a Japanese baseball team and another Kodokan-trained
judoka, Akitaro Ono. The reason for Ono’s visit to America is clouded in
mystery to this day. We’ll see contemporary reports that he made the crossing
to take a post as instructor at West Point. Another account has Ono as one of
the members of the baseball team also on board the Korea! Afterward, on
numerous occasions, Ono would be announced as a “jiu-jitsu instructor at
Annapolis.” A plausible hypothesis, yet still lacking in supporting evidence,
is that Ono traveled to the United States to help Yamashita in his second year
at Annapolis, but for some unknown reason he was left unemployed before the
Navy had canceled the classes. The fact is, in as early as July we see Ono
involved in presentations by a Japanese troupe in Asheville, North Carolina. As
part of the exhibition, Ono would offer US$ 100 to anyone who could take him
down. What, in fact, he was doing was establishing a provocative driver of
performance, one typical of wrestling, which would become the standard for our
Japanese companions in the ten years that followed. Challengers were bound to
start cropping up, and it wasn’t long before that happened. Managed by someone
called Mr Hirano[6],
in early August Ono signed a contract to fight a well-known local wrestler who
went by the name “Big Tom” Frisbee. Keeping with
American-professional-wrestling tradition, the fight involved a sizable sum in
ringside wagers. This modus operandi was quite different from what we had seen
up until then: rather than exhibitions with challenges that were basically
“free spars,” we now see challenges and professional presentations. The
“demonstration of superiority” of either jiu-jitsu or wrestling is still there,
it's just more in a promotional sense than the “experimental” way it had been
held up until that point.

Set to go down August 4, the next question, as usual, was the rules.
They adopted a mixed model whereby Ono would fight jiu-jitsu rules and Frisbee
would do catch-as-catch-can rules. Both would wear gis. Obviously, these
stipulations were far too vague, almost a guarantee of post-fight discord. Ono
was a heavy fighter, especially considering the average Japanese weight in
those days. He came in at around 90 kg (198 lbs), but even so he was a good
deal smaller than Frisbee, a massive wrestler who tipped the scales at over 130
kg (286 lbs). Quite unlike the uneventful match between Higashi and Bothner,
Ono and Frisbee put on a stellar show for the 2,000-spectator crowd. Ono goes
straight for a choke that Frisbee defends handily. The two are locked in heated
combat for over an hour, with the American fending off Ono’s submission holds.
However, Frisbee starts running out of steam and succumbs to a choke from Ono
one hour and twenty minutes into the fight. After a ten-minute break combat
again ensues, and Frisbee launches an assault on Ono, who swiftly sinks another
choke. The American is forced to roll over and touch his back to the ground to
not tap out in submission, and the contest ends with victory going to Ono. As
is to be expected, with such vague rules Frisbee will not accept the outcome.
He alleges that the gi hindered him and that Ono choked him using the collar,
which he understood not to count.

As a result of his win over Frisbee, Ono was challenged by a
wrestler from Illinois named Charles Olsen. The fight was set for September 15,
with the same rules as the last one: both would wear gis, Ono would fight under
jiu-jitsu rules, Olsen under catch-as-catch-can ones. The Ono-Olsen bout may
have been the first where the wrestler was considerably smaller than the
Japanese fighter. Indeed, Olsen was more than ten kilos (22 lbs) lighter than
Ono was, and what’s more, a quick look at a photo of Olsen from that time reveals
a physique sure not to strike fear into an opponent's heart, which helped
disguise his remarkable skill. It was a professional fight in all respects,
purses for the athletes and a considerable volume of betting taking place on
the side. Olsen’s interpretation of the rules, however, was quite different
from Frisbee’s:  the match under way, the wrestler pounces on the Japanese
fighter with an all-out blitzkrieg. And as it turns out, it's a one-sided
massacre by Olsen, leaving Ono drenched in his own blood. This time it's the
Japanese fighter's turn to complain. Ono cries foul since, on paper, the fight
isn’t meant to be no holds barred. In the aftermath Ono is at serious risk of
losing sight in one eye, and his manager even goes to Washington DC to formally
lodge a complaint with the Japanese ambassador.

At around this time, Maeda joined forces with Ono and the two
started doing exhibitions together in North Carolina. Around November, the
pair’s manager, probably Hirano, went to Atlanta to work on getting a deal to
do an exhibition at the Atlanta Athletic Club. Once signed, the presentation
was a success and led to Atlanta’s first wrestling-jiu-jitsu challenge: The
Maeda-Sam Marburger fight is scheduled for December 12, at the Grand Opera
House. This time there will be no ambiguity as to the rules: the agreement is
for best-of-three takedowns, the first of which in the gi and under jiu-jitsu
rules, with joint-locks and chokes allowed. The second is to be without the gi,
under catch-as-catch-can rules. The third is to be stipulated by the fighter to
have gotten the “fall” in the quickest time in the previous rounds. Maeda would
fight without the gi for at least one “fall,” the first time ever that a
high-level Kodokan fighter would do so. Marburger is nearly ten kilos (22 lbs)
heavier than Maeda. The match under way, both wearing gis, Maeda manages the
first fall without much difficulty 12 minutes into the match. In the second,
without the gi, to the audience’s surprise, Maeda thwarts all Marburger’s
attacks, defending numerous attempted half-nelsons and hammerlocks by the
American. Finally, at the 28-minute mark, using sheer force and little by way
of technique, Marburger manages the “fall.” As Maeda has scored the quickest
fall, the third round is disputed in the gi and under jiu-jitsu rules. It takes
Maeda eight minutes to get the fall, and the match reaches its conclusion. The
crowd is surprised by the Japanese fighter’s performance without the gi, and
spectators with a better grasp of the sport just might notice something that
was never apparent before up until that point: Maeda has all the makings of a
stalwart wrestler.

The fact that Maeda set off with Ono on a career of challenges and
prize fights may suggest some kind of falling out with or reproach by the purist
and “canonical” Tomita. Still, that doesn’t seem to be quite what happened.
Though Maeda went his own way on a path of no return (at least for the next ten
years), Maeda and Tomita did resurface together again not long thereafter. It
happened on February 7, 1906 at Columbia during a presentation sponsored by
E.H. Harriman. As usual, it was a judo presentation, where differences between
it and jiu-jitsu were again highlighted.

The year 1905 came to an end. At its start, the admiration for
Japan, on the wake of its success in the war against Russia, had elevated the
ancient Japanese art to the status of being invincible and of almost
supernatural effectiveness. As it came to its end, after a string of trials and
tribulations, however, the story turned out completely different. In fact, in
the years that followed, slowly but surely jiu-jitsu would, for all practical
effects, fade away in the United States, just as it had in Japan. While the
“mission” of spreading judo as a system of education, taken up staunchly by
Tomita and Yamashita, was on this first attempt a failure, a few decades later
judo would definitively set down roots and spread to all four corners of the
United States.

The most poignant criticism of the Japanese art began in the
aftermath of Higashi’s loss to Bothner. The first question posed was: where are
all the secret moves capable of rendering a man helpless with a mere touch of
the fingertips?[7] Was everything said about jiu-jitsu just a marketing scam? The most
interesting critiques were the more qualified ones. And there was no shortage
of them. The first premise was that, even with the use of the gi, it is very
difficult to take down a larger, stronger wrestler who has good balance and
assumes a defensive stance. And if you can't take him down, it's next to
impossible to sink chokes or joint locks. The Japanese had already come to that
conclusion themselves, and as Roosevelt himself had noted regarding Yamashita’s
stance, they drummed up a solution: to fight with their backs on the ground,
but we’ll get back to that a little later. One scathing critique printed in the
Washington Times of April 10, 1905, a week after Higashi’s loss, is worth
partially transcribing here:

“George Bothner’s defeat
of Higashi ... proved little except that at our style the Japs are no better
than our wrestlers.”

A little further along there’s another important point to note: the
attempt at homogenizing the rules for the bouts was a flop, having confused the
audience, fighters and referees alike:

“The styles are so
different that contests in which one is used against the other can be nothing
more than exhibitions.”

The article ends with a noteworthy, not to mention prophetic,
conclusion:

“If that Jap had used
any of what is claimed to be the real jiu-jitsu and had broken a few arms and
legs for which purpose the art seems to have been designed, he would probably
have been mobbed.”

To what the Times referred, in a nutshell, was a view not uncommon
at the time: the Japanese jiu-jitsu introduced in America in 1904/05 wasn’t
acceptable as a “gentleman’s sport” to American culture. The art’s aim of
rendering an opponent defenseless with a choke or joint-lock was seen as
unsportsmanlike. Indeed, opinions Americans expressed that jiu-jitsu was an
“... art which will never harmonize with their instincts or their standards of
fairness...” and the like were rife in the press of the day. Jiu-jitsu’s saga
at Annapolis does a good job of illustrating this. As we saw, at Roosevelt’s
insistence, Yamashita was hired to teach class at the Naval Academy in early
1905. At year’s end, the question of whether or not the contract would be
renewed for the coming year was raised. In this process, the chief officer at
the Naval Academy, Rear Admiral Sands, in briefing the House of Representatives
about Navy affairs, made clear he was against renewal:

“I expect to make an
adverse report upon the Japanese method when I am called upon to act. With my
present information I should report against this particular kind of wrestling.
I do not think the Japanese method is in any way preferable to ours. A man is
more apt to be injured or abused. I think it is a trick. I think you can injure
a man more seriously, and the more you know about it the more temptation there
is to injure an adversary, and I do not think that intentional injury is the
spirit of sport.”

Nevertheless, in spite of the admiral’s opinion, and by way of
reinforced pressure from the president, the jiu-jitsu class wasn’t canceled. In
May 1906, though, Yamashita wrapped up his fifty-class contract and promptly
returned home to Japan. Even without Yamashita and again at the president’s
insistence, jiu-jitsu class went ahead at Annapolis. It took Sands another six
months before he managed to eliminate jiu-jitsu from the Academy curriculum completely.

Obviously, the American military men never believed jiu-jitsu to
have any practical battlefield application. As mentioned, with the advent of
machine guns, close-proximity hand-to-hand combat had lost its relevance in the
art of war. Now, the admiral’s analysis was based entirely on whether or not
there was any place for jiu-jitsu as a form of physical education. And he came
to the same conclusion Kano had years earlier: jiu-jitsu was hardly applicable
for this end. Yamashita had failed to convey the benefits of judo as Kano
conceived it. We can however note a certain hypocrisy in the American position.
The submission holds were considered unsportsmanlike: there was nothing
gentlemanly about trying to maim an opponent. The American system (catch-as-catch-can)
was preferable. However, already at that time, it was practically impossible to
discern worked fights between the wrestlers from real ones. Furthermore, in
most of the worked fights, the objective was not to entertain (as with
pro-wrestling nowadays), but to game the betting lines. Besides that,
submission holds in wrestling, while not valid in most fights, were often used
illegally when referees were more complacent.

If Kano had found out about the admiral’s view regarding his
experience with jiu-jitsu he would have been terribly frustrated. He'd toiled
tirelessly for years to design his system of physical and mental education.
He'd shaped his philosophy and ironed out the jiu-jitsu techniques from the
schools on which he had based his work for the sole purpose of making it a
healthy, less-dangerous practice. He also instated a set of rules that
reflected his vision of what the ideal competition would be. In spite of all
that, his two greatest students, Tomita and Yamashita, had failed horrendously
in their attempt to export his ideas to America. Instead, they and the other
Japanese, Kodokan members or not, found themselves entertaining constant
requests to prove the art’s superiority “in combat.” To achieve success meant
they had to fight with their “backs on the ground” and target their
adversaries’ necks or arms the whole time, something Kano deplored. This model
was doomed to fail in America, and it would take decades before Jigoro Kano’s
vision would finally prevail. But even though the myth had been undone,
jiu-jitsu didn’t just fizzle away immediately in 1906. That would take a long
process of a number more years. By the same token, by no longer occupying the
front pages of the newspapers and being relegated to the sports pages, the
descriptions of the fights became technically a great deal more accurate. What
followed was qualified analysis.

Sometime after Tomita and Maeda’s 1906 presentation at Columbia,
Maeda left the United States. They never crossed each other's path again. A
little later, in 1907, another Kodokan representative turned up, this time in
Seattle, Washington State. He would be, by far, the most successful Japanese
fighter in America, simply running roughshod over his adversaries. His name was
Tokugoro Ito.

Chapter 3 – Ito the Invincible

I

n Seattle a dojo was built in 1903 already in anticipation of
Yamashita’s arrival. The Seattle Dojo was Kano's first structured and perennial
experiment implementing judo in America, and it exists to this day. Ito
immediately joined the dojo upon arrival. As Tomita and Yamashita had before
him, he practiced and demonstrated the judo techniques and philosophy he
learned at Kodokan. But he was not immune to the wave of wrestlers constantly
calling him out. Although over the years he would take a number of fights, he
did not adopt the wayfaring profile that was pervasive at the time: he hunkered
down almost exclusively in the Seattle region, later moving to California. In
this way, he became quite well known to the specialized press of the day, and
the descriptions of his fights were plenty detailed.

Ito’s first challenge arose in September 1909, coming from a Los
Angeles-based wrestler of dubious credentials called Eddie Robinson. Robinson
claimed to have taken part in numerous jiu-jitsu fights, and felt he could
handle Ito. This time there would be no ambiguity as to the rules: it would be
an exclusively “jiu-jitsu rules” fight. These rules, as we’ll see, were the
product of all the confusion from previous years and, with exception to the use
of the gi, had no bearing on the rules  so painstakingly elaborated by Kano ten
years prior (and that Ito surely knew like the back of his hand). The fight
would not end by ippon or pin: only by one of the fighters submitting or losing
consciousness. Kicks and punches with a closed fist were forbidden, though
slaps were allowed. There would be a central referee, but he would only serve
to separate the fighters should one give up or move them back to center ring
should they roll out. It would be a best-of-three “falls” fight, or more
accurately, submissions (the nomenclature used, “fall,” was a relic from
wrestling). With the terms decided, the fight was set for September 2, 1909 at
Grand Theatre.

With a partisan crowd rooting for Ito, the fight gets underway. Robinson
is clearly overweight, but he does land a slap or two on Ito and follows up
with an elbow, an illegal move as per the rules, causing Ito to clamor to his
cornerman. The ref waves the fight on, though. Ito manages to sink a stern grip
on Robinson’s gi and fire off a perfect hip-toss that puts the American
back-to-the-ground. Ito landing on top with a choke already in place, the ref
is forced to separate them after Robinson goes unconscious without tapping out.
The first “fall” goes to Ito at 9.55 minutes of fighting. After the standard
pause, the fight starts back up again. Robinson lands another illegal elbow on
Ito, opening a cut over his brow and making the Japanese fighter furious.
Robinson tries with all his might to keep his opponent from getting a good
grip, but the inevitable happens, and this time, no sooner does he get a hand
in place on the collar, Ito pulls Robinson into his guard. At the same time as
he distances the American from him by placing his feet on his torso, Ito fits
his other hand into the collar of his opponent, whom is forced to tap out in
desistance after 3:20 minutes. The fight is over, and Robinson makes the usual
excuses of not having been in proper shape. Now, Ito is immediately met with a
challenge from Charles Olsen, the same one who beat Ono years earlier. For
reasons unknown, though, the two never end up facing off.

Not more than two months went by before the next challenge cropped
up. The challenger would be George Braun of San Francisco, a wrestler of
greater quality than Robinson and in better shape, to boot, weighing about what
Ito did at the time. Braun, a Julius Johnson-trained wrestler of the highest
caliber, claimed to have had past experience beating a Japanese master in
jiu-jitsu and wore a gi he said had been used “by a jiu-jitsu master from the
Japanese imperial court.” The fight was set for Friday, November 2, 1909 at
Seattle Theater. The rules would be the same as those from the Ito-Robinson
fight but with two modifications: slaps were no longer allowed and there would
be a time limit: if after 20 minutes no submission had ocurred, the fight would
be declared a draw.

“Bring me that Jap. I’ll eat him alive,” spits Braun upon entering
the ring come fight time. The bout underway, Braun grabs Ito’s gi, but the Japanese
fighter swiftly breaks his hold and sinks an even better grip of his own on
Braun’s gi. Following up, Ito drops Braun with a forward trip, possibly a
hiza-guruma. Even though he's landed on top, Ito rolls over and pulls the
American into his guard, this time closing it, with a choke already in place.
In the process, the fighters have rolled out of the combat area. According to
the rules, the referee orders the two to return to center ring in the same
position they left it, but it's too late for Braun, whose lights are already
out as Ito lets go. They have only fought for 2:20 minutes. The 10-minute pause
ensues, and then the fight strikes back up again. Almost instantly Braun lunges
at Ito’s legs for a double-leg takedown. He manages to get hold of the Japanese
fighter’s legs, but Ito quickly pulls Braun into his closed guard again. Mere
seconds go by before the American is out cold from yet another choke. Total
fight time: just 43 seconds.

Ito’s two easy wins caused a bit of a buzz about jiu-jitsu in the
press. One tidbit of general commentary was that the fighting style was more
interesting in demonstrations than when practiced for real in a fight. The
demonstrations, from Tomita and Maeda’s days up to Ito’s, were near-acrobatic
spectacles consisting of throws, rolls, self-defense, etc…. On the other hand,
real fights bordered on monotonous: stick the opponent in guard and execute a
swift submission. Highly effective it was, but it do much to keep the crowd
entertained. Another discussion amid the chatter was of what a wrestler had to
do to beat Ito at his jiu-jitsu game. In this respect, it was surmised that a
“Cornish-style” wrestler had the best chance. Far less known than
catch-as-catch-can and Greco-Roman, Cornish wrestling, another English import,
was practiced wearing a jacket, not unlike a gi top. Truth is, the hypothetical
matchup pitting this style of wrestler against a jiu-jitsu fighter had already
been brought up years earlier. In the aftermath of the Maeda-Marburger fight
there was talk of pairing Maeda with a known Cornish wrestler named Mike Dwyer,
but the bout never materialized. In actuality, though, anyone who watches a
Cornish-style-wrestling match these days will note that though they do wear
something akin to a gi top, the way the fight unfolds is something else
entirely.

Ito’s next challenge is the wrestler Julius Johnson, the man who
trained Braun for the previous fight. The bout goes down at Grand Opera House
on March 16, 1910. The skillful Johnson manages to take his opponent down,
forcing Ito to defend by playing open guard without letting the American latch
on to his collar. At a certain moment the two roll out of the area and the ref
orders them back to center ring in the same position. As soon as the referee
signals the restart, Ito fastens a choke hold and immediately closes his guard
to prevent Johnson from posturing up and getting away. With no way out, Johnson
is left no choice but to tap. Six minutes of fighting have transpired up until
this point. The match restarts for the second “fall,” and the two remain
jockeying for grips on their feet before tangling up and going to the ground,
where Ito immediately locks on a choke using his forearm, likely a guillotine
choke. The fight reaches an end after another four minutes, to the delight of
the Japanese fighter’s fans, who are in force at the venue. There's a lot of
talk about how keenly Ito used his feet, “which he used better than a lot of
men use their hands” when playing guard.

Towards the end of the year 1910, on his trip back to Japan, Tomita
paid a brief visit to Ito and Seattle Dojo (at the time called Japanese
Athletic Training School), taking part in a public presentation. Regarding both
Ito and mainly Maeda, there are no existing reports (at least to this author’s
knowledge) about any reproach on Tomita's part when it came to the pair’s
stance on challenge matches. Tomita never betrayed the principles of Kodokan
and was always loyal to Kano in his efforts to disseminate judo. Reports of the
encounters between the two after engaging in official fights make it clear that
there was no rupture with Tomita. While on the one hand it can be said that Ito
stuck to Kodokan principles in how he captained Seattle Dojo, only sporadically
and passively (at least up until that point) engaging in fights, Maeda
gradually split from Kodokan altogether.

Ito’s next fight only comes in 1911, against Joe Acton, an Englishman
who, like Ito’s prior opponents, is a catch-as-catch-can wrestler. Both weigh
about the same, and the fight is set for May 18 at Grand Opera House under
“jiu-jitsu rules.” Expectations are running high due to Ito's year of
inactivity. At this point it seems Ito simply cannot be beaten at his game,
“with his back on the ground.” Talk in the media is that the wrestler shouldn’t
even try to fight Ito's game, but rather keep strictly in line with his own
style of wrestling. As we’ve already seen, the opponents are often able to get
the Japanese fighter’s back on the ground, but what they did next was to try
and execute a choke from within the guard, which made Ito’s job all the easier,
given his skill at “using his feet like they were hands,” defending and
ultimately squeezing out a choke of his own. Acton says he's taken jiu-jitsu
lessons back in England, under a teacher higher ranked than Ito, to boot.
However, once they've passed from talk to action, the ability he's claimed
proves to be nothing more than bluster. Ito quickly realizes the Englishman
poses him no threat at all, and instead of wrapping up round one early, demonstrates
a few positions on Acton before serving up a choke as the coup de grace. In
round two, to mix positions up a bit, he taps his opponent out with an arm-bar.
Ito’s unbeaten streak endures.

The next fight would come not a month later, in Portland, Oregon.
Ito’s victim this time around would be Farmer Watson, of whom the Japanese
judoka made quick work. The first submission arose after 5:33 minutes, in a
position that was dubbed the “arm-bar stranglehold”; there's no easy way to
discern exactly what move it was. It would seem to be an arm-bar executed while
simultaneously holding a choke in place, a position common in modern-day
Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but it’s unlikely such a move had already been developed
as far back as 1911. It could be that all Ito had done was execute a straight
arm-bar and left a leg covering his opponent's face, which due to onlookers’
lack of familiarity would seem to be at once an arm submission and a choke.
Regardless, the second submission was a traditional collar choke, at the three-minute
mark.

After the fight, Ito would take a lengthy hiatus, during which time
he traveled Central and South America with Maeda and co. Departing Brazil in
late 1915 or early 1916, almost as soon as he arrived back on the American West
Coast he took on Ad Santel in two historic fights in San Francisco, causing the
greatest repercussion of his career. In the first fight, on February 5, Ito
lost by getting accidentally knocked out in the second round, after Santel
threw him on his head. In the second fight, on June 10, Ito trounced his
American opponent, winning by two “falls.” Sometime later, Santel would travel
to Japan, where he fought (and beat) a number of Kodokan members. While a
fascinating tale, it deviates from the scope of our story.

Early in 1917 Ito moved to Los Angeles, and his first challenge
there came in facing an opponent with lackluster wrestling skills. However,
Germany’s Wilhelm Berne was a giant who appeared to be twice Ito’s size. Berne
was a circus strongman who could bend iron bars and break locks with his bare
hands. The fight was held on February 10, 1917. Before it could start, though,
there was an impediment: Berne stated that he would only set foot in the ring
after receiving payment of the purse he'd been promised. With some difficulty
to scratch together the US$ 650 on a Saturday in the pre-ATM machine days
(Berne wouldn’t take a check!) and after a five-hour wait with the two
opponents seated facing each other, the bout could finally get under way, with
2,000 spectators cheering in support of Ito. Berne starts the fight
pathetically lumbering after the Japanese fighter, but except for once, when he
manages to toss Ito over the ropes and out of the ring, every time he comes
close he gets taken down. Finally Ito looks to end it and pulls Berne into his
guard. The giant tries to wring the Japanese fighter’s neck from within the
guard, but as he extends his arm he gets slapped with an arm-bar for his
efforts. Unable to reverse his opponent, Ito can’t keep the German from getting
up with him dangling from his arm, the joint-lock still in place. Berne rushes
out of the ring and the two end up in the middle of the crowd. The fight
restarts, Ito again pulls guard, and again he sinks an arm-bar. This time
there's no escape: the German lets out a screech as his elbow pops. With all
the hullabaloo, he decides not to return for the second round, and Ito is
declared the victor.

Settled for good in Los Angeles, Ito’s next fight is on July 4,
1917, his adversary the Greece-born Gus Kervaras. The match underway, Kervaras
is keenly aware of his impending doom if Ito were to get a grip on him. Every
time Ito approaches, Kervaras spits in his eye and lands a swing. When the ref
tries to intervene, he too gets clocked with a fist from the Greek fighter!
That’s how it goes for the entire 15-minute first round, without a submission
hold to speak of and with the American crowd fully backing Ito because of the
dastardliness Kervaras is displaying. The second round in full swing, Kervaras
flubs by getting cocky and attacking Ito. He pounces on the Japanese fighter
and almost instantly the two tumble to the mat. Ito swiftly takes Kervaras’s
back and collar-chokes him, eight minutes into the round. During the interval
there's talk that Kervaras won't be back for the round two due to a heavy limp,
but he valiantly returns to face his destiny. And it won't be long before Ito
is cranking out a foot-lock (perhaps to make a point to the already-limping
opponent) to bring an authoritative finish to the bout.

The next fight would only happen in 1919, specifically on April 3,
at Los Angeles Athletic Club. It was expected to be the toughest challenge of
Ito’s career, against a high-level wrestler named Ted Thye. Thye was ten years
younger than Ito, who was already coming up on 40. What’s more, he was ten
kilos heavier. In his last catch-as-catch-can match Thye broke his opponent’s
arm with a Kimura-lock, earning him the moniker “The Bone Crusher”. Supposedly
he had already beaten two Japanese fighters in jiu-jitsu. To make matters worse
for Ito, the bout would be for two “falls,” the first of which would be under
catch-as-catch-can rules, the second under jiu-jitsu rules. But what should
have been the sternest test Ito had ever faced didn’t turn out quite as
expected. Come match time, the Japanese fighter refuses to enter the ring
without a gi for the first round, creating an impasse. To not have to call off
the fight, Thye suggests they draw straws to see whether or not to wear a gi in
the first round. Ito won't budge. To not let down the crowd, Thye agrees. The
impasse over, the bout begins. For three minutes the two stay on their feet,
feeling each other out. Thye then manages to take Ito down, but the two end up
tangled in the ropes. The ref makes them get back in the same position in
center ring, but as soon as they’re restarted Ito stands up. Five minutes in,
Ito pulls off a perfect tomoenage and lands in the mount, following up
with a choke hold. In trying to break free, Thye extends his arm, and Ito
immediately transitions to arm-bar. Thye’s arm pops, but Ito doesn’t let go,
having to be practically pulled out of the position by the referee. With an
inert arm, Thye doesn’t return for round two, and Ito is declared the winner.
When queried as to why he didn't let go of the hold even after Thye had given
up, Ito is adamant: “I didn’t hear him say he quit, nor did I see him tap.”
While he did score a major win over a stalwart wrestler, it was perhaps less
elegant than would be expected of him. Not three years later, Ito would go home
to Japan, never again to set foot in America.

One could say that Ito’s fights capped off a cycle that had begun
back in 1904. At the time of his return to Japan, the majority of the
professional-wrestling matches were worked. Some years after that, legitimate
fights were for all practical effects extinct, to the point of pro-wrestling
being synonymous with show fights, choreographed battles. Amateur wrestling
remained competitive, mainly after two styles—freestyle (the amateur version of
catch-as-catch-can) and Greco-Roman—had become Olympic sports. However,
catch-as-catch-can’s more “liberal” approach to submission holds simply did not
exist in the amateur sport, and joint locks were definitively expunged from
competition. They were still passed on from generation to generation in gyms,
but untested in “real combat situations,” they became practically irrelevant.

As for jiu-jitsu, if on one hand the introduction of Kano’s judo had
failed because of mistaken expectations built around jiu-jitsu at the turn of
the century, on the other Kano’s complete system of physical and mental
education prevailed because of the educational merits. Slowly but surely the
Seattle Dojo experiment (and other gyms that were opening all across America)
started expanding and Kano’s system succeeded. And with it, the inelegant but
practical and effective way of beating an opponent, “fighting with one's back
on the ground” and “using feet as though they were hands,” disappeared. Just
like with wrestling, ground-fighting techniques were still taught at judo
studios, but like a little-used body part, they atrophied and were no longer
truly “battle tested.”

As for our journey, it too will leave America behind. For we will
cross the Atlantic with Maeda. Our next encounter will be in the capital of the
“empire where the sun never sets.”

Chapter 4 – The Empire Where the Sun
Never Sets

M

ore than a century gone by, it's highly unlikely we will ever really
know what motivated Maeda to leave the United States. It could be that with the
whole jiu-jitsu frenzy of 1904-1905 the interest in challenges to “anyone who
can beat or withstand him” had diminished and it was no longer easy to make a
living that way, or maybe he was simply in search of new adventures. Whatever
the case, in early 1908 we find Maeda, now going by the first name “Yamato”
instead of “Eisei”, at London’s Alhambra Theatre.

Judging by the repercussions in the media, the
catch-as-catch-can-style wrestling tournament at Alhambra Theatre drew plenty
of attention. Considering how at the time London was experiencing its final
years as the “center of the world,” for any subject to make a splash in
London’s main newspapers it couldn’t have been something that escaped the
attention of the general sporting public. The competition featured three weight
divisions—lightweight (up to 63 kg [138 lbs]), middleweight (up to 76 kg [167
lbs]) and heavyweight (over 76 kg)—and would be sudden-death, whereby the loser
exits the contest. Maeda’s participation is interesting for one reason. As we’ve
seen, the Japanese in the United States were highly reluctant to fight without
a gi, and such fights were a rarity. Maeda wouldn’t just be fighting without
the gi, he’d be doing it against high-level competitors, which is in a way
quite surprising. What’s more, he would be entering in two weight categories
simultaneously. Originally it was Akitaro Ono who was supposed to compete at
heavyweight, but for some reason he was replaced by Maeda shortly before the
championship began. We saw what a solid impression Maeda made when he took on
Marburger without the gi, but he ultimately conceded a fall and lost the round.
This time he would fight without the gi and against the best. Now, it’s true
the concept of “best” needs to be put into perspective, since the North
American professionals and even a handful of the European ones weren’t
participating. But it was certainly a high level competition and Maeda would be
fighting completely out of his comfort zone—under catch-as-catch-can rules and
without a gi. Maeda wasn’t the only Japanese fighter in the competition. At
lightweight there was Juso Hirano, who later on would again join Maeda
appearing on the Iberian Peninsula. The fights in the qualifying stage were
held in a single 30-minute round, but a “fall” would end the fight immediately.
By “fall” what was meant was to touch both shoulders to the ground, for however
long it may be. If the fight went the full duration with neither party scoring
a “fall,” a winner was declared on “points.” There's no saying how points were
awarded, but it quite possibly could have been similar to boxing—by the judges'
own subjective assessment. Interesting to note is how even in “official”
competitions questions as to catch-as-catch-can rules abounded.

On the first day of the competition, January 27, 1908, Hirano and
Maeda easily won their matches. Maeda fought Joe Holloway at middleweight. The
next day, the 28th, was heavyweight day, and Maeda took on Lipps, an
enormous Parisian who was much stronger than him. They had what was deemed “the
most interesting fight of the day,” despite the weight and strength difference.
Maeda was much quicker and nimbler, always making it to the Frenchman’s back,
but found it almost impossible to roll his opponent once on the ground. Maeda
dominated the bout but was seeing firsthand how much harder things are when
you’re not allowed to fight with your “back on the ground” and without the
grips afforded by the gi. The 30 minutes having run their course, Maeda was
declared the winner “on points,” wowing the crowd with his performance.

The next challenge would take place on January 30, as the second
round of the middleweight tournament. Maeda had his hands full, facing a highly
skilled Austrian wrestler named Henry Irslinger. For his track record from his
previous fights, Maeda was already considered by some to be the favorite. The
bout, though brief, was a flurry of activity. The 5:52 minutes were packed with
positional maneuverings until Irslinger achieved a “fall” and was awarded the
win. All that was left for Maeda, now out of the middleweight tournament, was
to pursue the heavyweight title. And his next fight would be the very next day,
January 31. Maeda took on a hulking wrestler from Argentina named Abdullah and
marched right through him, winning by takedown at the 5:32-minute mark. That
same day Hirano exited the lightweight tournament by suffering a “fall” at the
hands of PC Olsen after 23:02 minutes of fighting.

With the win over Abdullah, Maeda qualified for the heavyweight
final, set for February 3. His opponent would be a Scot from Aberdeen named
Jack Essen. As they made their entrance the size difference left spectators
slack-jawed, Essen some 25 kg (55 lbs) heavier than his Japanese opponent. The
two waged war for a half hour, neither man achieving a fall. Round one was
declared a win for Essen, on points[8].
After the break, Essen scored a takedown at 7:30 minutes of round two and was
declared champion. Maeda took second place.

Maeda’s performance was impressive, considering how he took part in
two divisions at a high-level tournament in a sport other than his own. Maeda’s
wrestling career wouldn’t end there. He would again lock horns with the man who
proved his undoing at middleweight, Irslinger, again at Alhambra Theatre, on
the 29th of that same month of February. In what was a hard-fought
battle, Irslinger won the first round with a “fall” at 19:35 minutes. Maeda
took both the second round and the fight in one shebang at 20:20 minutes when
Irslinger failed to return for the third round due to a shoulder injury. Maeda
was one of the judokas who best made the transition to wrestling and no-gi
grappling. Even so Maeda remained reluctant to fight without the gi in his
forthcoming challenge matches. Nevertheless, his experience in wrestling influenced
his gi technique in pursuing maximal efficiency. Maeda leaves England, wanders
Europe and arrives in Spain, where he acquires the moniker he has been known by
ever since. Count Koma was born.

Chapter 5 – The Mexican Revolution

M

aeda arrives in Mexico City in July 1909, still known as Yamato but
already using the nickname he’d picked up in Spain. Count Koma is accompanied
by a compatriot of his named Fokura and a Cuban mulatto called Miranda de
Almirante, who serves the combined role of student, secretary and manager. As
we shall see, Maeda’s modus operandi in Mexico will be repeated in a number of
Central and South American countries. Maeda stresses that he represents ju-do,
and at this point he still makes an effort to explain his art and how it differs
from jiu-jitsu. Obviously Mexico City was not a center of worldwide
significance like New York or London. The impact the troupe made was
significant, though, getting them featured in the local press. In one
front-page article from the July 14, 1909 issue of El Imparcial, Maeda is
described as follows:

“He is short and covered
in muscles. He has a quiet demeanor; his expression at ease. He was born twenty
seven years ago in Tokyo and is currently the world champion in ‘Ju-do,’ which
is a sort of perfected ‘jiu-jitzu’.”

A little ways down in the same article the difference between judo
and jiu-jitsu is explained, and in quite a curious way. We don’t know if the
explanation was given by Maeda, but it’s quite possible it was, since the
reporter wouldn’t likely be able to come up with it on his own:

“’Jiu-jitzu’ is
approximately two thousand years old, and to understand its origins one must
trace it back in Japanese history to reports of a fight to the death witnessed
by Mikado.”

In this dispute to determine supremacy over the said system of
fighting were two warriors, named Taimago Kohaya and Nomino Sukune. The former
beat and killed his adversary. Ever since then, ‘jiu-jitzu’ has been used in
distinguished company. That is why it is called the gentle art, since it is
practiced solely by gentlemen.”

“Nowadays the sport is
completely democratized and accessible to all Japanese people thanks to the
efforts of Professor Jigoro Kano, the unquestionable authority on the subject,
who, warning of how the fight style was falling into disuse, renewed it fifty
years ago, systematizing it on a scientific basis.”

After the historical account, a brief description of the art is
provided:

“’Jiu-jitzu’ serves to
obtain the greatest result in power while exerting as little force as possible.
Its main conditions are:

Keep the body balanced
and standing throughout the entire duration of the fight.

Know how to fall
properly and without injuring oneself.

To trip the opponent.

To quickly take
advantage of any opportunity to cause the opponent pain and oblige them to
surrender. This is where the nasty and notorious ‘locks’ come in, and I say
nasty because they mean what in Japanese is called ‘Guiyaku,’ which in Spanish
translates to bending the wrong way.”

In the other newspapers where Maeda’s arrival resonated we find
similar descriptions. Apparently Maeda hadn’t yet forgotten about Kano’s
principles. As we will see, though, the attempt to distinguish judo from
jiu-jitsu would fail yet again, and the word “judo” would simply disappear from
Maeda’s lexicon in the months that followed.

Maeda’s debut came at a presentation at Virginia Fabregas Theater on
July 14, a Wednesday, with attendance limited to the Mexican press, government
officials and the armed forces. Maeda performed his demonstration with Fokura
and Miranda, and it was a success. Two days later, the three kicked off a stint
at Teatro Principal theater, already offering the usual money challenge: 100
pesos to whomever can withstand four five-minute rounds, and 500 pesos to anyone
who can win. On the first three days of the show Maeda easily beat the four
people who showed up to challenge him.

With the buzz surrounding Maeda’s arrival and the challenge “to all
takers," it wasn’t long before professionals started publicly taking Count
Koma up on his offer. The first such fight scheduled would be against “El Turco
Terrible” (The Terrible Turk). The opponent's real name was Don Luis Rahan, who
likely didn't even know what continent the Ottoman Empire was on. The fight was
to go down on July 22 at Teatro Principal. It was set for three five-minute
rounds under jiu-jitsu rules with a 1,000 peso payout to the winner, and a
considerable amount of betting money was riding on it. The fight lasted all
three rounds… a draw. Rahan was completely exhausted by the end, and Maeda
didn’t even seem to have broken a sweat. Quite an iffy outcome: how could
Maeda, a battle-tested jiu-jitsu fighter with tremendous skill even in no-gi
fighting, not manage to beat, in fifteen whole minutes and even wearing a gi, a
fighter whose quality was at best questionable? Indeed, in a July 31 article in
La Iberia the writer accuses a certain Don Pedro del Villar of asking Maeda not
to win the bout so as to profit on a wager. We'll probably never know for sure
just what happened that evening of July 22. This would not be the last
controversial episode involving Maeda during his stay in Mexico.

The next challenge would come from a non-professional. Gerald
St-Pancras Brandon was an amateur catch-as-catch-can wrestler from New Jersey
who lived in Panama and had limited combat skills. He was also considered
smaller than Maeda, who for this fight weighed around 80 kg (176 lbs), while
Brandon was just 68kg (150 lbs). The match was held in the gi and could only
end upon submission from one of the fighters. Points would not be scored. So as
not to lose his amateur status, Brandon would take no prize should he win. The
fight took place on July 24, again at Teatro Principal. Brandon aggressively
pounced on Maeda. Calmly, Maeda simply waited for the American to wear himself
out with takedown attempt after takedown attempt. By the third round Brandon
was exhausted, succumbing with little resistance to an arm-lock by the Japanese
fighter.

After Brandon, the next challenger would be Kid Alexander Mitchell,
otherwise known as “The Chawmp”. Mitchell was a boxer, though, limited in his
experience in grappling and had none to speak of wearing a gi. The fight was
held on August 9, again at Teatro Principal. In the first two rounds, Mitchell uses
all his might to flee Maeda. He's thrown to the ground on numerous occasions,
but he escapes out of the enclosure every time the fight hits the floor. Even
wearing a gi, Mitchell smears himself with cacao oil to make it harder for
Maeda to clamp a hold on him. At the end of round three Mitchell tries taking
Maeda down, but the Japanese fighter lands on top and follows up with an
arm-lock, but it is too late; Mitchell is saved by the bell. The fight ends in
a draw. The inconclusive outcome immediately leads to talk of a rematch. “The
Chawmp” argues that as he fought the first one wearing a gi, it's only fair
that the next one be without it. Should Maeda refuse, though, he'd still accept
wearing it again.

Maeda’s arrival in Mexico and the challenge fights started to have a
side effect that would resurface in a number of the other countries he would
visit too: they triggered a bona fide local fight craze. They'd fight in packed
venues, and several previously unknown names would show up in the city to take
part in the “circuit.” Obviously it all centered around Maeda, and beating him
was the greatest challenge, the holy grail everyone coveted. It was amid this
backdrop that Maeda was challenged to take the fight that, on paper, would be
his toughest battle in Mexico to date. The challenger was a professional
wrestler (the first until then) named James Black. Black claimed to have
already beaten Antoine Pierre, a well-known wrestler who at that point was no
longer active, and Yukio Tani, another jiu-jitsu fighter who made a career in
London and Europe. The fight was set for Saturday, August 28, 1909 at Colon
Theater. It would be held under “jiu-jitsu rules” with three five-minute
rounds.

And the crowd is not disappointed. Black, more than ten kg (22 lbs)
heavier than Maeda, isn't intimidated by his foe and immediately takes the
initiative. Over the course of the first two rounds the Englishman pushes the
pace, taking Maeda down several times. At a certain moment, to the Japanese
fighter’s surprise, Black grabs his arms and drops back putting a foot on his
belly. Maeda, like his Japanese counterparts accustomed to performing tomoenages,
succumbs to the technique, sailing through the air and landing with his back
square on the ground. Maeda tries numerous times to sink his now famous
arm-lock, but the Englishman is already familiar with the technique and manages
to escape every time. In the third round the difference in physical
conditioning becomes apparent and Maeda starts taking the initiative. Nearing
the end of the round he manages to sink a choke on the already-weary Black. It
looks as though the fight is now over, but pushing the limits of his strength,
the Englishman breaks free of the hold and immediately gets to his feet before
the bell rings. The crowd is delirious, frenzied by the thrilling turn of
events they've just witnessed. Though only scheduled for three rounds, Miranda,
Maeda’s manager, insists they hold an extra round. So fatigued he can hardly
stay on his feet, Black agrees. He is thus easy prey for Maeda, who three
minutes in manages another choke. This time there are no two ways about it, and
the Englishman taps in desistance. Maeda has won. Even though he's in better
shape than his opponent is at fight's end, Maeda's still forced to cancel the
challenge match he has scheduled for the next day, the heavily anticipated
rematch with “The Chawmp”. Black, on his part, a few days later sends an open
letter to Maeda requesting a rematch, claiming to have suffered altitude
sickness[9] and stating that there had been no prior arrangement for the fourth
and final round. Maeda agrees to another fight.

In the meantime, on August 29, a curious open letter[10] directed at Maeda reaches the El Imparcial newsroom:

“Mr Count Koma,

Dear Sir, in the United
States, where I am today, I learned from the Mexican press that you wrongly
claim to be “World Champion in Jiu-Jitzu fighting.” As this conflicts with my
interests, since I duly claim this championship title as my own, I invite you
to, upon my arrival in Mexico, partake in a match of which the winner will be
able to rightly claim the title, without usurpation of any kind. I hereby
extend my challenge to any and all professionals or ‘amateurs’ in Mexico.

Yours truly,

S.S. Nobu Taka”

The letter makes an immediate splash: who is this other Japanese
fellow coming from America just to dispute the title of “world champion” with
Count Koma and accusing him of being an impostor? The public is on tenterhooks
to find out Maeda's next move. In the meantime, Count Koma’s challenge matches
are still coming in, his next one set for September 1 at Teatro Principal
against Jim “Black Diamond” Smith, an American boxer who makes his living
breeding chickens. This marks his experience in a grappling match. Now, Maeda
has been under the weather for a week and doesn't seem fit to take the fight.
Even so, he doesn't have too hard a time beating the American. He spends the
first two rounds taking his opponent down time after time, not letting him keep
his feet. Ultimately, near the final bell, he repeats his already-famous
closing show: a hip throw followed by an arm-bar to wrap up.

Next came the highly anticipated rematch with James Black on
September 4 at Teatro Colón. Because of how his first fight with Maeda went and
for the Japanese fighter being sick, many favored the American to win. At the
very start, though, the crowd noted that a different Maeda was on the scene.
This time Black didn’t have a chance in the world. While he did start out with
his usual aggressiveness and even threw Maeda off stage on one occasion, the
Japanese fighter dominated the action in the first round. In the second round,
Maeda attempted chokeholds on several occasions to no avail, but the effort did
serve to sap the energy of his opponent, who ultimately succumbed to a classic
arm-lock. Maeda made it clear that the first fight had been the exception and
not the rule.

While Maeda was winning his next fights, Nobu Taka, outraged that
Maeda had ignored his letter, went back on the offensive. On September 6 he
published another open letter, this time in a more bellicose tone, stating that
Count Koma had beaten opponents who were completely unfamiliar with his art
(which, in fact, was true) and that in him, Nobu Taka, he would have his first
real opponent. Furthermore, he offered 5,000 francs to any man who could beat
him, and that included Count Koma. This time he wouldn’t be left without a
response. That very day, Maeda published an open letter of his own. In it he
says he didn’t respond to the first letter because he was waiting to do so upon
Taka’s arrival in Mexico. He stated that he already knew Taka[11] from some unspecified location. Lastly, he agreed to face him, but
stipulating two conditions: First, Taka should face the best fighters he had
faced in Mexico in order to qualify for the fight. Second, he and Taka should
each deposit the sum of 5,000 pesos in a bank. Winner takes all.

Count Koma versus Nobu Taka was splashed across the sports pages for
the next few weeks. There were comments of how Maeda’s skills had deteriorated
considerably because of the easy money he’d been making in Cuba and Mexico
without having to face first-rate opposition. Either way, due to the condition
imposed by Maeda, Nobu Taka would still have work to do just to earn the right
to face him. In the interim, Maeda wouldn’t be sitting on his hands, and the
challenges kept coming. Two days after Maeda’s reply to Taka, Count Koma got a
new challenge from Kid “The Chawmp” Mitchell. Mitchell was nonplussed about
losing the last fight and the cancelation of the rematch. He asked that another
encounter be set up under jiu-jitsu rules just like the last one, but this time
he wanted the right to fight without a gi. Maeda could, in the words of “The
Chawmp”, “…fight in a gi, wearing shoes, chaps or an evening dress, it’s his
choice.” But Mitchell’s challenge would be left unanswered, as Maeda’s next
fight came on September 12, a Sunday, at Teatro Colón and was a rematch with
the chicken breeder. In the meantime Nobu Taka’s first fight was scheduled:
he'd be facing James Black, the toughest opponent Maeda had encountered in
Mexico thus far. It was set for September 14, at the very same Teatro Colón.

Taka and Black had a thrilling fight. After a lively first round,
with the Japanese fighter in complete control, four minutes into round two Taka
sinks an arm-lock unlike Maeda’s traditional one, catching the Englishman
completely off guard. Black does try to hold out, but with his arm on the verge
of snapping he shouts, “I quit!” Seeming not to understand, Taka maintains the
pressure and only releases once his opponent gives the “universal” sign,
tapping thrice on the ground. His is a total success.

Meanwhile Maeda keeps up his fight schedule. On September 21 he has
his third clash with Smith the chicken breeder. The result would be no
different. Early on Maeda sinks a fight-ending toe-hold, but probably to keep
the crowd entertained he releases before his opponent can tap out. Later on,
though, in the fourth minute, he gives Smith’s arm no mercy, cranking an
arm-lock for the win. Smith wouldn’t be tending to his chickens so soon,
though, as a few days later, on September 27, he’s taking on Nobu Taka and
submitting once again, this time by choke. Maeda’s next fight would take place
at Colón on September 30 and turns out to be a night to be forgotten. Count
Koma takes on another Japanese fighter, named Yasso, who has shown up in town.
However, the fight has to be interrupted halfway through due to Yasso suddenly
coming down with an upset stomach. To make matters worse, Maeda, to try to
smooth things over with the frustrated crowd, decides to do a demonstration
with his friend Fokura, who ends up injuring his leg and subsequently has to
cancel the fight he has scheduled with Brandon the next day.

Nobu Taka was next, facing a boxer who was lighter than him and with
zero wrestling experience named Kid Lavigne. The two faced off on October 4,
with Taka again winning by arm-lock. Three days later, upon Taka beating an
American from Kansas named Sutherland, all eyes turned to Maeda, who was
watching in the audience. It happened that during the event a fellow by the
name of Mr. Harada[12] stood up, turned to Maeda and barked an accusation: “Your name is
E. Maeda, and you’re no teacher of the art of jiu-jitsu and judo, but a mere
imposter!” Maeda, normally cool and collected, this time lost it. The brouhaha
boiled over. Miranda and Fokura took to their companion’s defense, immediately
challenging Harada or any of his students to a fight. Maeda, in a rage, said:
“Honorable Harada, you shouldn’t make such remarks. As an honorable instructor
in Mexico you should honorably decline to accuse a compatriot. In Japan all
jiu-jitsu experts know each other by face or by name. And I am positive that no
Harada has ever graduated from any of our schools.” Good cheer restored, the
occurrence was of no greater consequence.

The rest of the month of October went by without anything newsworthy
happening, except a second match between Maeda and Yasso. It would pick up
where the previous one ended prematurely because of Yasso’s stomach problem.
This time it went through without a hitch, and Maeda won with ease, again with
his already-famous arm-lock. In reality, though, the calm reflected a
phenomenon that would also occur in several of the other countries Maeda would
visit. The excitement the Japanese fighter’s arrival caused would be intense
but short lived. The challenges-and-trash-talk model was already showing signs
of being played out. The talent pool for even minimally qualified fighters was
so small that they would end up facing each other over and over again, making
the public bored and uninclined to shell out the price of a ticket once the
novelty had worn off. However, there was still one act left to go: the heavily
anticipated showdown between Count Koma and Nobu Taka, where the “jiu-jitsu
world title” would once and for all find an owner. To build expectations (and
financial gains) it wouldn’t be just one fight, but five fights to determine
the “world champion.” The matches would be held at Teatro Colón on the 11th,
13th, 16th, 18th and 20th of
November 1909.

The first fight was a barnburner, with Taka taking the initiative in
the first two rounds before losing the next two. However, as neither man was
able to submit the other, it was declared a draw. The second bout, two days
later, would end in victory for Maeda, but in the third he’d get embroiled in
yet another controversy from his stay in Mexico—this one the biggest of them
all. Come the big day and the Colón packed, the two fighters make their way to
stage to begin the bout. Maeda is staggering, though, and can hardly keep his
feet. Clearly drunk, Count Koma is in no condition to fight. Nobu Taka,
standing before him, has no idea what to do when the bell rings. The fight
starts, but for three rounds the crowd bears witness to a deplorable spectacle.
Taka tosses Maeda from edge to edge of the fight area, and at times out of it,
unsure of whether he should end the match then and there. At the end of each
round, Maeda, not fit to stand, is carried to his corner by his seconds. In the
fourth round and to a barrage of boos, Taka ends the debacle with a choke. The
fight is over, and Maeda is taken to the police station for “disrespect to the
public” and is “condemned” to a night in jail and a fine. After three fights
and one shameful fiasco, the championship is tied at one apiece.

The next fight, the fourth between the two, would be the most
grueling yet. For three rounds Maeda and Taka flip-flop through positions at a
frenetic pace until in the fourth round Maeda sinks a leg-lock to which Taka
has no answer. His fate seems sealed, until the bell cuts the action short.
After some deliberation, the fighters agree that it should not end in a draw
and, though scheduled for four rounds, that they'd best have a tie-breaker. And
right at the start of that extra round Maeda dives straight for the very same
position and again locks in a leg-hold. This time there's no bell to save him,
and Taka bows out with a tap. Two to one for Count Koma.

The crowd was dizzy with expectation for the final match. After all,
the “world championship” was at stake. And in this last match Count Koma plows
through his opposition, clearly the superior fighter from start to finish.
Nevertheless, the four rounds end without a submission. At the crowd’s behest,
the two agree to go one more round, which Maeda brings to an unquestionable
finish with his trademark arm-lock. Thus, Count Koma is declared “world
champion,” having won three matches and lost only one to Nobu Taka. Taka is
still begrudging. He alleges that two of Maeda’s three wins don't count,
because victory came in the fifth round while the fight had been programmed for
four. He thus proposes that they fight once more, the winner taking the prize
and the title. Ungrudgingly, Maeda accepts. The bout is set for November 24,
this time to last six rounds. Again the venue would be Teatro Colón.

Nor would this sixth clash between Count Koma and Nobu Taka leave
the spectators wanting. Back-and-forth action throughout, they reach the end of
the sixth round without a decisive conclusion. Again they agree to forge ahead
until there's a winner. The rounds go by without closure, until in the eleventh
Maeda finally squeezes out an arm-lock. Now at last he is declared undisputed
champion. Koma and Taka will still test the public’s patience to its limit,
though: in the weeks that follow they fight four more times, always at Teatro
Colón. Alas, in the waning year 1909, as quickly as they had captured the
public's imagination, the challenge matches virtually disappear.

Throughout our saga, going from the United States to Mexico and on
to England, one big question begs asking: were the challenges legitimately
under “jiu-jitsu rules” or had the winner somehow been determined before the
fighters even stepped into the ring? No different from how professional
wrestling was back then, we’ll never be sure when looking from fight to fight.
But we can make a few educated guesses. Pre-arranged fights are always so for a
reason. That reason could be to provide greater entertainment value for the
crowd (as is currently the case with pro-wrestling in the USA) or simply to
cheat the betting lines. There’s no sense in thinking someone would “work” the
outcome of a fight just for the sake of doing it, for no reason. Therefore, to
analyze the legitimacy of these bouts, we need to pinpoint the motivation
behind them. In the United States the wrestling-vs-jiu-jitsu bouts were charged
with nationalism and the search for the art’s, not so much the fighter’s,
superiority. The Japanese (even the Kodokan purists) wanted deep down to prove
that their art was better; and the American wrestlers, that that wasn’t the
case. We can thus surmise that those challenge matches were possibly
legitimate. We can take the example of Ono, who nearly caused a diplomatic
incident. Or the example of Ito, who couldn’t care less about having a fun
fight or dazzling the crowd. Quite the contrary, he was all about efficiency,
plunking his back down on the ground and cranking out a submission hold within
seconds. Also, if any betting was going on for his fights, it wasn’t much. Ito
didn’t fight for money per se; his motivation was to prove his art's
superiority. As a consequence, his weren't the easiest fights on the eye. It
was no surprise that, even being in the USA, most of the spectators at his
matches were Japanese people who weren't there to marvel at a sequence of
sensational takedowns, but to see their representative lock down a Yankee's
jugular till he passes out. The same reasoning went for Maeda in Alhambra, with
the single-elimination tournament where only one could be declared champion of
his weight group and where no gambling was recorded. Indeed, the very
newspapers of the day heaped praise on the organizers of the event for having
managed to produce a truly legitimate championship, something rare at the time.
The performances of Maeda, Nobu Taka and Fokura in Mexico, however, are a lot
harder to assess. We saw Maeda's attempt in vain to convey the difference
between jiu-jitsu and judo upon arriving in Mexico City. It's possible that as
time went by he might have wanted to preserve the image of Kano's art once he
was no longer in full control of his performances. Judo "disappeared"
from Maeda's vocabulary. We saw a number of signs that the results were at
times worked, from the commentaries in the newspapers raising that possibility
to the mysterious endings of the fights at Teatro Principal following the
scandal surrounding the match where Maeda allegedly took it easy on his
opponent. Or the accusations of Harada, who may have been a purist who would
not keep quiet amid such behavior. But perhaps the solidest argument backing
the standpoint that the results had been fixed came from Maeda's very
performances themselves. It's simply not plausible that a Kodokan veteran
proven in gi and no-gi combat could find the slightest difficulty in submitting
a chicken breeder, for instance, who'd never had a fight in his life, while Ito
was tapping out high-level wrestlers in mere seconds. There's no way to say to
what extent this behavior was motivated by a desire to provide the crowd more
entertainment or whether it came down to working the betting lines.

As far as legitimacy is concerned, perhaps the most symbolic event
was the Koma-Taka fights. It happens that Nobu Taka was almost surely Nobushiro
Satake, a Kodokan-judoka contemporary of Maeda's who had left Japan for the
Americas sometime in 1907 accompanied by a sumo team led by Taniemon
Hitachiyama. There's no way of saying whether or to what degree Maeda was
surprised to find out the one challenging him was an old acquaintance, but he
didn't try to hide that he and Taka came from the same school. Therefore, the
chances are slim to none that the nine times Combat and Taka faced off were all
legitimate, same for the trash talk preceding them.

Post-November/December 1909, the fights "market" is
saturated. It happens that after the turn of the year, two Greco-Roman
championships are announced almost simultaneously, one at Teatro Principal and
the other at Colón. The Principal championship marks the return of fight shows
to the theater and on paper represents the higher-level competition, as among
the all-foreign roster is the Italian Giovanni Raicevich, a well-known wrestler
and European champion in the style.

Almost immediately, Maeda and Taka, now collaborators, see a new
opportunity in this and issue a challenge to the participants of the Colón
tournament[13]. A new string of fights and a certain resurgence of wrestling-fever
take place in January, though by month's end the market is again tapped out,
and the crowds abandon the arenas. This time there's no coming back. After
touring the Mexican hinterlands, on July 22, 1910 Count Koma hops aboard the
steamship Monterrey, destination Havana.

Chapter 6 - Brazil

O

n a lengthy tour of Central and South America, Maeda performs
starting May 11, 1914 in Buenos Aires at Circo Casino on Maipu Road. Shortly
thereafter, possibly in July or August, he arrives in Brazil, most likely
Santos Port. From his time in Cuba and Mexico four years earlier to this moment
we see a formidable change in his performance methods. Maeda now comes with a
considerably larger group. With him are the already somewhat well-known
Tokugoro Ito, Nobushiro Satake and Uyenishi "Raku" Sadakazu, as well
as the less well-known Yako Okura and Sadaku Shimizu. Maeda seems to have
completely abandoned any mention of his names (Eisei and Yamato) and family
name. He has now assumed the persona of Count Koma. The format of the group's
presentations evolved into a much more professional spectacle. "Count
Koma's troupe" brings a complete theatrical presentation, a much more
structured one than the trash-talk-promoted matches of bygone years. We know
exactly what the performance scripts were like. In December 1915, immediately
before departing for Manaus, the group performed for a stint in São Luis,
capital of the Northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão. Opening day was
December 7, at Theatro Cinema Palace theater. Being the main attraction of the
evening, Maeda and his crew would be the last to perform[14]. The billboard for the show read:

"Debut of
Japanese-fighter troupe led by world champion COUNT KOMA

Count Koma and any man
from his troupe challenge anyone wanting to fight, offering a 5,000-franc prize
to the one to beat them and 500 francs to the amateur who lasts for 15 minutes.

12 – Presentation by
Count Koma and his troupe

13 – Count Koma invites
spectators who wish to fight him

14 – Demonstration of
self-defense moves – fist attacks – knife attacks – bludgeon attacks – chokes –
arms bound – caught around waist – Apache attacks – boxing attacks, taken from
behind – variety of knife attacks

15 – Demonstration of
moves for winning a jujitsu fight

16 – Moves banned fr2om
jujitsu

17 – Start of match
between Luxu (sic), ex-coach at Military School of Peru, and Satake,
champion of New York

NOTE: In the second
session this number will be done by Argentine champion Schmitz (sic) and
Chilean champion Ukura (sic)

There will be two
sessions, the firs2t at 7:30.

Ticket price:

1st class ....... 1,000

2nd class .......
800”

The presentation was basically a theater piece, the challenge to the
public merely a special twist. Quite different from what they did years earlier
in Mexico. But before they made it to faraway São Luis, the group put in
appearances at a number of cities around the country.

There’s much controversy surrounding the date and location of Maeda
and his troupe’s arrival in Brazil. The most commonly held view is that Count
Koma entered the country by way of Porto Alegre on November 14, 1914, and this
is backed up by a copy of his passport indicating as such. Truth is, we know
Maeda and his cohort were already in Brazil, namely São Paulo City, at least
two months prior to that date. On September 23rd, 1914, Correio
Paulistano newspaper was already announcing for the 25th, two days
thereafter,  the “Debut of the famed troupe of Japanese jiu-jitsu fighters led
by the world champion Count Koma” to occur at Theatro Variedades theatre.

There’s
history to the the troupe’s debut venue. In São Paulo’s old town, a few dozen
meters from the famed corner of the avenues Ipiranga and São João, at Largo do
Payssandu, there had once been an old ice skating rink. Later on it became the
site of the Moulin Rouge, a Parisian café-style place and major gathering
ground for city society. Now, in the early 20th century the Moulin
Rouge made way for Theatro Variedades, owned by Italian-Brazilian businessman
Paschoal Segreto. His relationship with Maeda wasn’t Segreto’s first interaction
with jiu-jitsu, and for many decades to come the Segreto family would again and
again surface as protagonists in this story. The troupe’s stint at Variedades
sheds light on a number of aspects of Maeda’s career, and Variedades’s program
for their opening night is striking in its sophistication:

“Today marks the debut
at this theater of a troupe of fighters and a variety show of artists and
attractions. The program for the spectacle features the following:

Vivian Hett, French songstress

Martha Cotti, singing gigolette

Jeane Goorgeol, cosmopolitan singer

La Mayonita, Spanish singer and dancer

Nelly Bertti, Italian discuse

Alexandra de Vidis, international singer

Hedda, Italian opera singer

Les Vallieres, Italian comic duo

The great attraction of this day and age,
Mr Galant[15], worldwide athlete

Count Koma, unrivaled
champion of the famed sport Japanese jiu-jitsu

And numerous other truly
worthy artists.”

Something
else notable here is Maeda’s clear place above his companions in the hierarchy:
not only did he headline the troupe, but his was the only name mentioned on the
theater program. The group is qualified as comprising masters of jiu-jitsu, not
judo, with Maeda being the “world champion.” Unknown in Brazil at that time,
the denomination “judo” had remained absent from Maeda’s vocabulary ever since
his journey through Mexico. Obviously there was no such thing as a world
champion of judo nor of jiu-jitsu back then, so we can safely attribute this
title of world champion to being purely for propaganda purposes.

One important question that arises is who the members of the troupe
during this tour of São Paulo were. There’s no doubt the inseparable Maeda and
Satake were there. Among the matches in which members of the group partook
we’ve seen the participation of Okura, as well as a couple of fighters by the
names of Matsuura and Akiyama, the latter presented as the “champion of Tokyo.”
Not the slightest trace of Raku, Shimizu or Ito.

Apparently the crowd liked what they saw at the opening show, as the
newspapers the next day touted them heavily: “Haunting success by the famed
troupe of Japanese fighters.” The shows at Variedades lasted till October 22
and were a major hit with audiences. Once done there, the group performed for a
spell, between the 12th and 15th of November, at Circo
Spinelli, a circus-theater assembled just a few blocks from Variedades, at
Largo do Arouche. It’s curious that they’d perform at a venue so close to where
they appeared less than a month earlier, the likely explanation being that the
public Spinelli catered to was far more diverse and less sophisticated than the
one Variedades entertained and they hadn’t yet been treated to a show by the
Japanese.

Following that season in São Paulo’s state capital, Count Koma and
his band of martial artists only resurface in the news late in December 1914,
in Ribeirão Preto, a short period (and just like in the big city, a smashing
success) at the impresario François Cassoulet’s Theatro Polytheama (the theater
would burn to the ground a few years later). The appearances at Polytheama were
probably part of a larger tour of the coffee lands of inner São Paulo State,
complete records of which haven’t yet been unearthed.

In 1915, more precisely on March 11, a novelty was announced in Rio
de Janeiro: a jiu-jitsu championship. Not the first, but the second one to be
held in the city. At that time, we know Maeda and Co. continued with their
travels in São Paulo, likely doing shows around the state’s interior. It was a
skillful piece of marketing executed by that same Paschoal Segreto who put the
troupe on stage at Variedades. The objective was to get in some pre-marketing
for the already scheduled appearances by the group in what was then the
nation’s capital. The “championship” would be held at Theatro Carlos Gomes, at
Tiradentes Square, Downtown Rio de Janeiro.

Unlike Variedades (where São Paulo’s secretariate of culture is
currently situated), Theatro Carlos Gomes remains to this day. The theater
where Maeda would perform, though at the very same location as the one now
standing, was completely different, having been consumed by a fire in 1929. On
that same plot of land once stood a hotel and Theatro Cassino Franco-Bresilien,
and was acquired (or leased) by Paschoal Segreto in 1904.

As we’ve said, terming it a championship was actually a way of
announcing the troupe’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro, where they’d spend some time
doing shows akin to what they’d already done in São Paulo. It wasn’t quite a
championship per se, with competitors being eliminated en route to determining
a champion in a final, but more a series of matchups, possibly arranged
beforehand between the members of the troupe themselves, with a few challengers
from the public mixed in here and there. On March 11 Gazeta de Noticias
newspaper announced:

“THE NEXT JIU-JITSU CHAMPIONSHIP

Hired by Paschoal
Segreto’s company, soon a troupe of jiu-jitsu fighters now in São Paulo will be
presented at Carlos Gomes Theater. The ‘troupe’ consists of the following
fighters:

Count Koma, world champion;

Satake, champion of New York;

Okura, champion of Chile;

Matsuwra, champion of Peru;

Hara, champion of Tokyo;

Already here in Rio, champion of North
America Akiyama.”

Here too the names generate confusion. Just as in São Paulo, no
mention of Shimizu, Raku or Ito. Akiyama is featured as “champion of North
America,” and someone by the name of Hara is presented as “champion of Tokyo.”

At the end of March or in early April the group finally arrives in
Rio de Janeiro, and efforts to promote the “championship” pick up pace.
Interviewed by journalists, Maeda introduces the group and issues a challenge
to locals: he offers 5,000 francs to anyone who can beat him and 500 francs to
anyone who can withstand his attacks for 15 minutes. It’s puzzling that the sum
should be offered in French currency and not the Brazilian coinage of the day, conto
de reis. We can surmise that Maeda acquired this French money during his
stay in Europe and kept them until making it to Brazil, where wherever he went
he’d offer them to anyone who could beat him. Another hypothesis is that the
franc, like the British pound, was the strong currency in those days and was
exchangeable anywhere around the world. Converting the value of a currency at
so distant a date, when it comes to purchasing power, is never easy and is always
inexact, but the best estimate of what 5,000 francs is worth today is
approximately US$ 20,000, a pretty big deal for a challenge fight. This
reflects just how confident Maeda was in his own abilities as well as in the
superiority of his technique, seeing as the prize money was restricted to Count
Koma’s opponents only, not to those of his teammates, who as we will see, also
took on challengers. In the same interview, Maeda also introduces his
companions and their qualifications:

“Count Koma, world
champion, winner of a major competition held in England in 1914

Satake, champion of New York in 1913

Shimizu, champion of Peru

Okura, champion of Chile in 1914

Raku, champion of Mexico in 1913”

The description of the troupe members differs from what was
announced upon their arrival in Rio de Janeiro, and the fighter names are not
the same as those we saw listed for São Paulo. Here we see the group’s
“classic” formation, of which we have a reasonable degree of certainty because
i) the list above was presented by Maeda himself in an interview and ii) as we
will see, these, and only these, fighters were the ones to perform in Rio de
Janeiro. There are several possible explanations for this inconsistency. It
could be that the composition of the group varied, with Maeda, Satake and Okura
the nucleus and the rest switched in and out as they made their way around the
world. Another alternative, the more likely one, is that some members of the
group used pseudonyms or stage names. We know this to be true in at least two
cases: Maeda himself, also known as Count Koma, and Raku. It’s possible that
Matsuwra was in fact Shimizu, and that Haru was actually Raku spelled wrong. As
for the mysterious Akiyama, we know he didn’t come forth in Rio de Janeiro. We’ll
return to him further ahead. On his arrival in Rio de Janeiro, Maeda introduced
the locals to the rules of the bouts they’d be having. The written regulations
can be found preserved intact to this day, and at their essence is “submission
of loss of consciousness,” with no time limits or point scoring:

"Fight regulations:

1. All fighters should
be well-groomed, with pared finger and toe nails;

2. The attire is a gi,
which Count Koma can provide;

3. No biting,
scratching, head butting or punching;

4. The tiptoes should
never be used, only the arch of the foot;

5. A fighter is not
beaten if he lands with his back on the ground, even if he is first to land;

6. The one considered
beaten is the one who taps three times with his hand on the mat or the
opponent's body;

7. The ref will
determine whether a fighter loses if he does not remember to tap thrice with
his hand;

8. The matches will be
divided into rounds 5 minutes long followed by 2 minutes of rest. The referee
in the ring shall call out the minutes for the crowd's awareness;

9. If the fighters land
outside the carpeted area, with neither of them warning first, Mr Referee
should oblige them to return to the center of the mat, on their feet, facing
each other;

10. The judges will
substitute the referee in his obligations.

Neither the company nor
the winning fighter is responsible for the ultimate demise of the loser, if by
tenacity he chooses not to signal desistance and declare himself beaten;”

These were the "rules of jiu-jitsu" as Maeda understood
them. They conducted a fight fundamentally unlike anything Kano had envisioned:
the only purpose of executing a throw was to transition from standing to ground
fighting. Once on the ground the fight doesn’t return to standing position
unless the fighters themselves take the initiative to stand up. Fights can only
end with a submission. The main question: why did the Japanese fighters, almost
all Kodokan alumni familiar with Kano's rules and, most importantly, way of
thinking, when in the West insist so much on a set of rules prone to producing
a less elegant fight, almost doomed to unfold entirely on the ground? We
probably won't ever know the answer, but we can formulate a hypothesis: they
learned that this way of fighting afforded them maximum effectiveness. In the
USA they saw how hard it was to "take down" a high-level wrestler
(though they weren't likely to find one of those in Brazil). With these rules
they could swiftly end a match in seconds by going back-to-the-ground like Ito
would do, even if they were thrown there. There was also the possibility of
keeping the fight on the feet for a few rounds for entertainment purposes,
before the inevitable submission on the ground, as Maeda’s method was in
Mexico.

With the rules and the open challenge made public, on the 1st
of May 1915, a Saturday, at Cine-Theatro Carlos Gomes, at Tiradentes Square in
downtown Rio de Janeiro, the Rio de Janeiro Jiu-Jitsu Championship II begins[16]. The presentations by Count Koma’s troupe start out in the
aforementioned format. With Maeda in command they introduce self-defense
techniques against “an assortment of bludgeon, knife, fist and choke attacks,
etcetera,” as well as revealing a number of other “attacks, including the
forbidden ones.” Next, Satake and Raku do the first fight. In the second minute
of the fifth round, Satake sinks a leglock, and Raku taps out. The bout thus ends
there.

The following day, Shimizu beats Okura by armbar, and on May 3 the
two winners meet. Shimizu and Satake face off for five rounds with neither man
achieving a submission. As there’s no allowance for a timeout conclusion, the
continuation is set for the next day. However, the first challenge to the
troupe has arisen, and the tie-breaker has to be postponed. On May 4, 1915 Raku
takes on the Austrian wrestler Goldback and wins with a guillotine choke in
round five. The public challenge has had its desired effect. The day after,
Satake beats the Cossack Matuchevic with a choke from the back in round four,
and on May 6 Okura subdues Petrovich with a guillotine in round two. On May 7
it’s time for another wrestler, Gosales, who Satake puts away with an arm lock
in round three.

With the challenges successfully out of the way, Satake and Shimizu
again square off, and again the outcome is inconclusive. Their third match
takes place on May 9, and at last we have a winner: Satake beats Shimizu by leg
lock two minutes into round four.

Apparently the first challenge to Maeda worth 5,000 francs goes down
on May 10, a Monday. We don’t know who the opponent was or how the fight played
out, but Maeda won it. Two days after that, Maeda partakes in his first match
with a troupe member. Shimizu is the adversary, but the level of technique
separating them is vast, and Maeda puts away Shimizu handily with an arm lock
in the fourth round, after dominating the first three. The public challenge
matches continue, and on the 13th Maeda has an easy time overcoming
Joaquim Gaudêncio Alves by arm lock in round four. Two days later Raku beats
Paulo Jeolas in round four as well. Then, the next day, the 16th,
something goes wrong…

Alongside Maeda’s crew, there’s another troupe performing at Carlos
Gomes Theater, a Greco-Roman wrestling group who hold the final of their
“championship” on May 16, 1915. But unlike Maeda and company, the Greco-Roman
wrestlers aren’t meeting with much success. The expectation is that at least
the final will be exciting. The crowd has taken a liking to the Russian Gallant[17], who faces the Syrian Yusuf. Forty minutes into the match, Yusuf manages
to pin Gallant’s back to the ground; however, the move takes place partially
outside the fight area, which would annul it. Nevertheless, the referee awards
Yusuf the win, to the spectators’ disgust. Things get out of hand and chairs
start sailing through the air around the theater. It’s sheer pandemonium, and
the commotion spills out onto the street. The result of this is that Maeda’s
troupe can only resume their activities two days later, picking up the
challenge matches where they left off. But their success in combat is also their
demise as a show: Maeda and his sidekicks have such an easy time handling their
challengers that public interest in the spectacle wanes. And on the 23rd
of May 1915 Maeda and company hold their final show at Cine-Theatro Carlos
Gomes.

But the story of Count Koma’s time in Rio de Janeiro isn’t over yet.
On May 19 Maeda teaches his first class to the Rio de Janeiro Civil Guard force.
The classes only last a short while, though, and it isn’t long before it’s time
to go. On June 6, 1915, Maeda and his band of jiu-jitsu fighters leave town and
head for Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State.

We can imagine the hard time they had traveling the bumpy União and
Indústria, Brazil’s first macadamized highway. Along the way they stopped off
in Juiz de Fora to perform for a stint at Polytheama Theater, debuting on June
24, 18 days after leaving Rio. There’s nothing else we know of the troupe’s
time in Minas Gerais and their appearances in Belo Horizonte.

Our next encounter with Maeda and crew comes on August 3, when Maeda,
Satake, Shimizu, Okura and Raku hit the high seas on the ocean liner Itapema,
leaving Rio de Janeiro Port destined for Recife, the capital of Pernambuco
State. Embarking with them was someone theretofore absent, Tokugoro Ito. Thus,
three of the known “four kings of Cuba” were again reunited: Maeda, Satake and
Ito. Ito’s presence is a novelty in our chronicle, at this point. He hadn’t
taken part in any of the performances in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, at least
not using his real name. If he did, it was under a pseudonym.

On August 23, 1915 the 26th was announced as opening day
for the troupe’s next string of events, this time at Theatro Moderno, owned by
the company Bandeira e Cia, in Recife. The mysterious Akiyama resurfaces in the
group. What we know is that, whoever he may be, he participated in the São
Paulo tour, for some reason was absent in Rio de Janeiro, and again entered the
fray in Recife, where there are records of him fighting at least twice. By the
same token, we know Tokugoro Ito set sail from Rio on the Itapema alongside
Maeda and the rest. It could well be that Akiyama was in fact Ito and for some
reason was only sporadic in performing with the rest of the group.

Between August 26 and September 6 the troupe was at Theatro Moderno
doing appearances using a familiar format: matches between group members and
public challenges with Count Koma worth 5,000 francs to win and 500 francs to
hold out for 15 minutes. We have records of one outside challenger, Bianor de
Oliveira, whom Okura fought.

In October the group kicked off a season in Belém, Pará State,
holding their events at Bar Paraense. In December they put on shows for a spell
in São Luis, the capital of Maranhão State, where they performed between the 7th
and 10th of December 1915 before finally making it to Manaus.

One interesting aspect of Maeda's Brazil trip is that, in the two
main cities he visited, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Count Koma's presence
didn't spark the same kind of frenzy about his fights that it did in Mexico and
Cuba. We didn't see any major challenges going down, and at no point did the
prize fights overshadow the theatrical aspect of the show. In reality, the
“challenge bug” would only catch on in Rio de Janeiro fifteen years later with
the Gracies and other Japanese fighters, once jiu-jitsu was already
definitively dead in Japan and moribund in the United States.

It is also important that we once more address the undying question
of worked fights in Brazil. To do so, again we examine the incentive and
motivations of the moment. In Brazil, unlike other places, gambling isn't too
strong a tradition. We haven't seen any record of ringside betting from Maeda's
time in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, before reaching the country's north.
Furthermore, "setting up" a worked result could be trickier than it
seems. Unlike how it went in other countries, notably Cuba and Mexico, Maeda
and his group stayed only briefly in each Brazilian city, usually just a few
weeks. To them, not fluent in Portuguese and newly arrived in the area,
recruiting a local to "fix" a result would be no easy task. Besides,
public challenges like they'd do made it hard to "filter" opponents.
Lastly, the lack of even minimally qualified opponents in the region made it
almost impossible for any of them to encounter any level of difficulty within
these rules: the only need for a "work" would be for them to lose or
draw. For all these reasons, I find it quite a leap to believe that any of
their fights with an audience member was worked. The matches between troupe
members, on the other hand, may well have been illegitimate for being meant as
entertainment for the crowd and probably not truly competitive.

One chapter all its own from Maeda's stay in Brazil has to do with
his relationship with Tokugoro Ito. Ito, as we've seen, fought high-level
fighters in the USA and maintained closer (or less distant) ties with the
precepts of Kodokan. He fought to prove it was better, with maximal
effectiveness and without explicit money rewards. Whereas Maeda went almost
straight for the prize fights. He'd proved himself technically, but after his
stint in Europe he almost never faced high-level opponents. Whether he meant to
or not, even against opponents like the ones in Mexico, he was having a hard
time finishing fights. The group that landed in Brazil had a clearcut
hierarchy: the troupe was Count Koma's. Maeda was the world
champion. Could Ito, so skilled and more battle-proven, truly have bowed to
this leadership? We can't say for sure, but we do have a few leads. In São Paulo
we see no explicit mention of Ito, but there was a fellow named Akiyama in the
troupe. There's reason to believe Akiyama was actually Tokugoro Ito. If that is
indeed the case, Ito appeared with the group in São Paulo. However, Ito left
for Rio de Janeiro before the São Paulo stint was over, and he wasn't with the
group when they toured the interior of the state. When Maeda reached Rio, Ito
was already there. Though we do have detailed records of the group's
performances in the then-capital of the nation, Ito isn't in a single one of
them. We know he set sail with his companions on the same ship to Recife, where
he did appear with the group. After that again he disappears. Apparently Ito
would show up only sporadically, and he maintained a certain independence in
relation to his colleagues. In any case, at some point after Recife, Tokugoro
Ito returned to the United States, where he encountered the biggest challenge
of his life: Ad Santel. He and Maeda would still meet up once again, but it
would be two of the pair's students who would yet fulfill a key role in this
narrative many years later.

After Manaus, form some unknown reason the incredible journey came
to an end and the group gradually unraveled. Satake and Raku stayed in the city and jointly opened an
academy. After a year, Raku left Manaus and Brazil for good. Satake stayed
teaching in the city for almost twenty years, leaving Brazil in 1934. Maeda,
Shimizu and Okura went back to Belém, where Maeda opened an academy with his
two partners serving as instructors at least until 1919[18]. As Maeda and Satake started teaching, the prize fights were
relegated to the past. Inexorably, they started to again converge on the
principles of Kodokan. As time went by and with Maeda's
direct involvement, a wave of Japanese immigrants started flooding into Pará,
surely bringing with them the current modes from the homeland that previously
only trickled in to Maeda during his itinerant career: as foreseen by Kano, the
traditional jiu-jitsu schools would once and for all sink into forgottenness
and even the term jiu-jitsu would be all but extinct in Japan: the
"jitsu" would definitively make way for the "do." The
Japanese government had formally adopted Kano's methodology, and with this
support and by its own merit judo had taken its definitive place in Japanese
physical culture. Not without some resistance from within Kodokan itself, but
what Kano had imagined for the technical aspect of his art prevailed. Slowly
but surely Maeda, once Eisei and Yamato but now Otávio Mitsuyo, returned to
being a Kodokan judoka and spreading Kano's principles to his students; idem
Satake. In 1935 in Belém, a book[19] by Jigoro Kano was published, translated to Portuguese under the
title "Jiudo Uma Arte de Cultura Physica Japoneza" (Jiudo, an Art of
Japanese Physical Culture). Maeda surely took part in the translation, revision
and publication of the book, as he features in its photos, even appearing with
his group of students. That would be Maeda the judoka who resurfaced; the
wandering fighter of decades past was no more.

Maeda left a legacy in Pará. After his death, his students kept up
the activities at his judo academy. However, this legacy was not limited to the
confines of the state. A small number of his students, for varying reasons and
at different times, left Belém for elsewhere. One of them, Carlos Gracie, would
gain notoriety years later. Carlos was a Maeda student for approximately three
years, until the Gracie family returned from Belém to the southeast. During
this short window of time it is highly unlikely that Carlos acquired the full
array of techniques that he would pass on to his brothers and students. If we
take a close look at modern-day Brazilian jiu-jitsu, we'll find a tiny handful
of exceptional athletes who in three or four years attain an astounding level
of technical proficiency; but besides being a rare phenomenon, that only occurs
at modern, established schools, in an environment where they rub elbows with
other world class athletes. That was not the setup they had in Belém do Pará
early last century. Therefore, it's pretty much guaranteed that Carlos got some
complementary instruction at a later date. But what Carlos did take with him
was a behavior, a philosophy of fighting that had become lost in time.

As we've seen, a martial art is a combination of technique and
philosophy. Up until the 1980s it was believed that the jiu-jitsu practiced in
Brazil was, from a technical point of view, directly linked to traditional
jiu-jitsu. Nowadays we know that that's not entirely true and that practically
the entire primordial link is based on Kodokan judo with a smattering of
wrestling influence. What went unnoticed to those interested in the subject was
that the true link between traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu and Brazilian jiu-jitsu
is in the philosophy, not the technique. We saw how jiu-jitsu was condemned for
being incompatible with the Meiji era and how Kano made it compatible by
creating judo. It's common knowledge that during this process Kano had a series
of problems with his students' discipline, including with the more senior ones,
resulting in a number of them getting kicked out of Kodokan. This
"philosophical" inheritance of jiu-jitsu's from the Edo era survived
Kano not through Tomita or Yamashita, but through Maeda, Ono and others. It
came ashore in the USA, lurched forward momentarily when it encountered the
wrestlers, but ultimately, with its days numbered in the places it had been,
reached the Gracies and survived to present day. Challenges, street fights and
gym invasions were nothing new in Japan up to the end of the shogunate. Carlos
and his brothers, as we will see in a later chapter, kept part of this chaotic,
indisciplined environment in their micro-universe. They kept the concept of
maximum efficiency for the victory with the least "external"
interference (usually from the referee). They insisted on "jiu-jitsu
rules," submissions without restrictions, and fighting "with your
back on the ground." Carlos kept and passed on to his brothers and
students the philosophy of fighting he learned from Maeda and which Kano
abhorred: the challenge fights, the pursuit of proving personal superiority and
superiority of the art at all costs. And in a certain way he also kept the
indiscipline and the controversy. Had the Gracies remained in Belém much
longer, it's quite likely that Carlos, as with Maeda and his other students,
would have converged to Kodokan judo. But they left at the right moment,
carrying with them a snapshot of a time that would quickly disappear. As we've
seen, in Japan judo triumphed for its qualities, as Kano had predicted it
would, and the other jiu-jitsu schools sank into irrelevance. In the United
States, result rigging ended up killing off professional wrestling as a
competitive sport, making it into pure showmanship. Legitimate wrestling only
survived within the Olympic amateur categories, Greco-Roman and freestyle,
derived from catch-as-catch-can, where submissions are not allowed. The dreaded
locks and chokes were relegated to being academic experiments, without
practical application in true-to-life combat. In the other countries the
Japanese fighters visited, the itinerant nature of their travels, not settling
down and establishing roots, meant their legacy was next to nil.

But the conclusion to be drawn from this process was not yet obvious
to observers at that moment. In reality, the most likely scenario was that in
Rio de Janeiro too this outdated philosophy would be lost and over the years
would be gradually overtaken by Kodokan judo. But against all odds that did not
happen. To the contrary, it evolved and from it stemmed vale-tudo.
Toward the end of the '20s a new batch of Japanese fighters would show up in
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Their being there put them on a collision course
with the Gracies. What happened thereafter we'll find out next chapter.

Chapter 7 – An Unusual Encounter: Geo
Omori and the Clown

O

n June 18, 1908 the Kasato Maru docked at Santos Port. The ship had
left Kobe, Japan, on April 27 carrying to Brazil 165 immigrating Japanese
families, most of them destined to labor on the coffee plantations of São Paulo
State. Though there already were Japanese people in the country at the time,
this particular event is generally seen to mark the start of Japanese
immigration to Brazil. It would still be some time before the migration process
would reach its apex. In fact, between 1904 and 1913 only 11,868[20] Japanese made the crossing to Brazilian soil. Despite the initial
influx, the migratory flow would only really intensify in the 1920s. Between
1924 and 1933 Brazil's ports saw the arrival of no less than 233,650 Japanese
nationals, quite a significant number for the day. Almost all of them were
headed for São Paulo, by way of Santos port.

It was in this setting, at some point in 1928, that one Japanese
fellow who very well may have escaped the "official statistics"
arrived in São Paulo. Not that he was hiding or incognito, he wasn't coming
from Japan, but from New York, where he spent a good while demonstrating his
specialty: a martial art called "jiu-jitsu," according to the
newspapers of the day. With a blend of confidence in his abilities and arrogant
bluster, he publicly challenged "… any professional boxer, capoeira
stylist or Greco-Roman practitioner…" to try and beat him. His name was
Geo Omori.

Born in 1890, by his own account he joined Kodokan at the age of 13
and by 17 was already a black belt. He learned his trade from Tokugoro Ito[21], whom he genuinely revered. In the '20s he picked up and left for
the United States, where he traveled around the country issuing challenges. He
scratched together a decent sum of money there and late in the decade set sail
for Brazil, namely Rio de Janeiro, not to fight but to rest, having planned to
retire there. On arrival he pushed on straight to São Paulo, where he opened a
small specialty store selling ornamental fish. Lacking a knack for commerce,
business didn't go so well and he had to close up shop, heading right back to
Rio de Janeiro, where again he tried his luck selling fish, at a place he
opened downtown on the bustling Rio Branco Avenue. Again he went bust. His
savings dwindling, he stubbornly headed back to São Paulo to again push fish in
those parts. He kept shedding money until he had no alternative but to go back
to doing what he did best: fighting. Omori's generation had learned judo at a
time when the jiu-jitsu schools were doomed to irrelevance and Kodokan's
triumph was guaranteed. It's likely he saw himself as a judoka and used the
name "jiu-jitsu" instead of "judo" simply because that was
the denomination best known outside Japan[22] and not for any other technical or moral reason like Maeda did. He
surely wasn't the only judoka to go ashore in those parts, judging by the sheer
numbers in the massive Japanese immigration at that time. But he was an
exception in that with him he brought a philosophy of fighting that was already
practically extinct in the Japan of his day and age. At Kodokan he was from the
same class as Maeda, Ito, Satake and Ono, and that's likely where he got his "combat
views," which were already in disuse in the 1920s.

The string of challenge-matches Omori issued sparked expectations in
the press as to whether any capoeira-stylists would take the bait. Capoeira is
a striking martial art practiced between black slaves since long before
abolition. For it having been a phenomenon originally restricted to the most
underprivileged rung of Brazilian society, there's a dearth of record of it
prior to the 19th century, and much of its history was passed on by oral
tradition. To this day Brazilian historians dispute its origins, with some
arguing that it was imported from Angola by way of the slave trade. However,
the predominant understanding is that it was developed in Brazil. Like other
cultural manifestations from the days of slavery, its practice was
discriminated against by the white population of European descent, and the
public practice of it was prohibited[23]. With slavery's abolishment in Brazil in 1888 having come without
adequate planning by the imperial government and later by the republic, many of
the newly-free continued to live in miserable conditions in the margins of
society. For that reason and the resulting rise in criminality, capoeira was
commonly associated with delinquency, and through a law added to the penal code
by the newly-established republican government on October 11, 1890, the public practice
of capoeira was officially criminalized:

"Chapter XIII –
Of the idlers and capoeiras

Article 402. To
perform on the streets or in public areas the exercise in agility and bodily
dexterity known by the denomination Capoeira: to circulate on roadways, with
weapons or instruments capable of producing bodily harm, provoking tumult or
disorder, threatening people rightly or wrongly, or inducing fear of something
undesirable;

Sentence –
incarceration in a jail cell for two to six months.

The penalty is
derived from article 96.

Sole paragraph. It is
considered an aggravating circumstance if the capoeira-committer belongs to a
gang or mob. To the gang leaders, double the penalty shall be enforced.

Article 403. For
repeat offenses, the maximum penalty, from article 400, shall apply.

Sole paragraph. If
committed by a foreigner, they shall be deported after completing the penalty.

Article 404. If
these perpetrations of capoeira result in homicide, bodily harm, public or
private indecency, disturbing the peace or public safety, or if the perpetrator
is found to have a weapon, the cumulative penalty for the crimes shall be
incurred."

Due to its choppy past, capoeira's relationship with
Brazilian society at the turn of the 20th century was a complete contradiction.
On the one hand it was a national art, the only one, and its acceptance would
be a factor helping to integrate black people into society. On the other hand,
its criminalization meant it would never pass the threshold of the salons of
high society. Its first collision with jiu-jitsu would only accentuate that
contradiction. And it wasn't the fruit of Geo Omori's challenges, but from 20
years earlier in Rio de Janeiro.

It was a little past midnight on December 16,
1908 when, after nearly 11 months of travel, the Benjamin Constant, a Brazilian
navy training vessel, entered Rio de Janeiro port. It had left on the 22nd of
January. Heading southeast, it made it around the dreaded Cape Horn and,
stopping at port after port along the way, eventually reached Yokohama, Japan.
After a quick pause in Nagasaki and Sasebo, it left Japan westbound heading
home. It crossed the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea before again
meeting the Atlantic for the final stretch in its long journey. There are two
passengers on board for the trip back. M. Kakiora and Sada Miyako were masters
of jiu-jitsu, an art thus far quite unfamiliar in Brazil, and they were there
to serve as instructors to the Brazilian navy. A few days after entering port,
the afternoon before Christmas Eve, Kakiora and Miyako did a public
presentation at João Caetano Theater, at Tiradentes Plaza, just a few meters
from Carlos Gomes Theater, where five years later Count Koma and his troupe
held their greatly successful extravaganzas. Just as he did at other stops,
Miyako would make public appearances daring any and all to try and beat him in
a ten-minute match. In self-promotion, he claimed to own a win over the
renowned fighter Raku in a bout held at Lisbon, Portugal's Recreio Coliseum[24]. The challenges in Brazil went down at Concerto
Avenida, which was located at Pavilhão Internacional, at the
recently-inaugurated Central Avenue later renamed Rio Branco Avenue, where the
building Edifício Avenida Central is the current home of Rio de Janeiro's Caixa
Econômica Federal headquarters. The location belonged to "fly-by-night businessman" Paschoal Segreto, the
patriarch of a family whose convergence with jiu-jitsu would happen years later,
in the '30s with the Gracies.

Miyako was riding a winning streak up until the 1st of May 1909,
when he accepted a challenge issued by a black capoeira stylist named Francisco
"Cyriaco" da Silva. A native of Campos, Rio de Janeiro State, Cyriaco
was 39 years old and a coffee carrier by trade. Cyriaco challenged Miyako
directly during an exhibition. At first the Japanese fighter turned him down,
causing a furor in the audience and the early rumblings of a riot in the
stadium, which died down when Miyako changed his mind and agreed to fight. The
match was held right there at Concerto Avenida, with a large crowd backing the
capoeira stylist in mass. From there on the reporting gets hazy, but apparently
Cyriaco fought in a gi. The moment everyone is waiting for has come, and the
bout gets underway. Still in the first few minutes, before the Japanese fighter
manages to close the distance, Cyriaco throws a "rabo de arraia,"
a capoeira move similar to a spinning kick. The capoeira fighter's ankle smacks
Miyako upside the head and knocks him out immediately. In the celebrations that
follow, Cyriaco is carried through the streets on the crowd's shoulders: the Brazilian
martial art has been proved, indisputably, to be superior to the Japanese one.
Miyako's losing doesn't immediately bring an end to the jiu-jitsu exhibitions
at Pavilhão International, but not long after, probably due to disinterest from
the public, the presentations come to a halt.

So even 20 years after that event, expectations ran high that a
capoeira fighter would crop up to accept Geo Omori's challenge: would anyone
again dare to try and prove the "Brazilian game's" superiority?
Surprisingly, though, the first to accept Omori's provocation wasn't a capoeira
stylist, but … a clown!

In early May 1928 the Queirolo Brothers were pitching their circus
tents in downtown São Paulo at Anhangabaú Valley's Formosa Road. One of the
brothers, Othelo Queirolo, played the clown Chic Chic during one of the
circus's main attractions. And it was Othelo himself, a martial arts lover and
amateur wrestler, who accepted Omori's challenge. As during the shows the clown
had a job to do, their fight was scheduled for the between-show break on the
25th of July 1928. As could be expected, it was a bit of an anticlimax. Omori
easily defeated the clown halfway through the third round, probably avoiding
doing so earlier to keep the crowd entertained. While on the one hand it wasn't
a competitive affair, on the other it did have the desired effect of
immediately attracting a series of challengers wanting to beat the Japanese
fighter on stage, and the challenges started panning out.

The next fight came two days later, again at the Queirolos' circus,
but this won't be when the capoeira fighter finally shows up. The Syrian-born
Bentose was (or claimed to be) a Greco-Roman wrestler. He was subdued halfway
through the second round with an arm-bar. The description of these early fights
of Omori's are far too vague due to the press of the day's lack of familiarity
with such events. That's why there are so many holes in the story of whether
gis were worn, what submission techniques were performed, etc...

Three days later, July 30, the opponent is another Greco-Roman
wrestler, Archimedes Rogério, announced as Brazilian national champion in the
modality. This time the Japanese fighter has his work cut out for him. Two
rounds gone, saved by the bell in both of them, Omori gets his arm raised by
the referee, who understands him to have won "on points," to the
disgust of an outraged Rogério.

Just as had happened in the United States, Cuba, Mexico and several
other locations in the preceding decades, sports fans and the public at large
were hooked on jiu-jitsu and challenge matches. Following Omori's early
contests, a string of fighters started showing up and challenging each other.
The fad caught on yet again. Meanwhile, challenges kept coming in for Omori.
His next fight, on August 3, would be emblematic. His opponent was none other
than Alfredo Leconti, a professional wrestler who ten years earlier was
transiting back and forth between Belém and Manaus at precisely the time Maeda
and his troupe were there. Leconti, in Pará represented by Gastão Gracie, had
fought and beaten two Japanese fighters from the group, Raku and Shimizu, in
two controversial matches. The fight with Omori was thus built up to fuel lofty
expectations. But Leconti wasn't up to par, and Omori dispatched him in the
second round with little effort.

Following the Leconti fight, Archimedes Rogério, who had lost
"on points" a few days back, requested a rematch, which was promptly
accepted and scheduled for August 6. The rules this time would be slightly
different, though. Rogério, who had come within a hair of winning in the waning
moments of each round, this time demanded that there be but one break, after
the first round. From there forward the fight would go on uninterrupted until
the end. That way, Omori couldn't get bailed out by the bell again. But the
precaution proved unnecessary, as Omori won that rematch as well.

Three days later, on the 9th of August 1928, the Queirolos' circus
printed the following advertisement: "… for the 1st time in São Paulo, a
fight with both sides equal in attack- and defense-moves, JIU-JITSU versus
JIU-JITSU…" Curiously Omori's opponent wasn't another Japanese fighter as
expected, not even a Brazilian. His adversary would be a Frenchman by the name
of Charles Clery, a self-described "… ex-instructor in the self-defense
sport of the French army…" The Frenchman valiantly held out for 20 minutes
before succumbing to Omori's attacks.

Omori's winning streak endured. Between the 13th and 17th of August
he beat another Japanese fighter, M. Goto, as well as someone named João
Allemão and a fighter called Susu. Finally, on August 20, a Monday, the
Queirolo circus announced the long-awaited one: "CAPOEIRA versus JIU-JITSU."
Omori faced and beat a Brazilian by the name of Pedro Silveira.

Two days later Omori fought an Argentine named Samuel Black, an
expert in a martial art called "luta tucumana," the origins of which
must intrigue even the most scholarly of combat-sport historians. Whatever
"luta tucumana" is, it wasn't enough to beat Omori and his jiu-jitsu.

At last, on August 27, Omori would face a true challenge, his
sternest test thus far. His opponent is a Brazilian this time, a Greco-Roman
wrestler named Benedicto Angelotti. Benedicto doesn't wear a gi to the fight[25]. The first round, while very lively, ends without a clear advantage
to either of the fighters. In the second round, Benedicto has the upper hand,
though, taking Omori down a number of times until, at a certain moment and
without explanation, the Brazilian sinks his teeth forcefully into the leg of
his Japanese foe, who shrieks in pain. A major imbroglio ensues, with outsiders
piling onto the stage and precluding any chance the match might resume. Once
the situation has cooled down, Benedicto is awarded the win. Omori, incensed by
the outcome, straight away challenges Benedicto to another showdown, which is
accepted without further ado. However, the heavily anticipated rematch would
have to wait, as two days later Omori fights and beats the Estonian boxer Erwin
Klausner with a choke.

Next, another capoeira stylist comes to test his mettle. This
time it's Alcides da Silveira of Centro Palmares. At his
behest, the fight would have one ten-minute round and then, after a breather,
go on uninterrupted until a winner is determined. But there would be no need
for the break, as at the eight-minute mark Omori ends the contest via
submission. Curiously, the press was hard on the capoeira fighter, who, as
Silvera had done, "… rather than execute the promised game plan, he
developed a liking for wrestling." It's quite likely that the description
is a misconception by the writer, who, having seen Omori close the distance and
grab his opponent, judged the capoeira stylist to have willingly incorporated
grappling into his strategy.

Bouts kept pouring in. After defeating a jiu-jitsu fighter with the nom
de guerre "O Luctador Mascarado" and having a rematch with the
Argentine Samuel Black, Omori on Brazil's Independence Day, September 7, took
on the only man theretofore to have beaten him: Benedicto Angelotti. This time
there would be no doubt as to the final result. Omori tapped Benedicto out in
the third round and won the fight.

Throughout September the scene is awash with challenges. A capoeira
fighter named Lazinho Rocha, a wrestler named Phillippe and ultimately a boxer,
Jack Marin, are beaten by Omori back to back. In the interim, Archimedes
Rogério, already defeated by the Japanese fighter on two occasions (one of them
controversially), pleads insistently for a third chance. However, Alcides
Queirolo, the owner of the circus, is reluctant to promote the fight, for fear
the same two fighters facing off too many times would provoke questions as to
the legitimacy of Queirolo circus-promoted matches. The solution to the impasse
is to match Rogério with another Japanese fighter, M. Goto, who had already
fought and lost to Omori once before. By winning the fight, Rogério will
qualify to face the "champion" a third time. Sure enough, he fulfills
his part of the bargain, beating Goto in brilliant fashion. At last the second
rematch is made, for September 24, 1928. It is planned as a single 30-minute
round, with no rest breaks. Rogério dominates the fight, pushing the pace the
entire time. With no conclusive result at the end of the allotted time, Rogério
asks for a 10-minute overtime, which Omori refuses. To a dismayed Rogério and
audience, the fight is declared a draw, with a fourth encounter between the two
scheduled for four days' time, September 28. It will be the continuation of the
last one, except without a time limit, only a submission will suffice as a
conclusion. Unfortunately, here we find a lacuna needing to be filled, as the
history books show no record of the result of the fight.

With Omori having won his clashes with capoeira fighters, each time
relying on his grappling, an impresario named Eurico Palhares
"imported" to Rio de Janeiro a capoeira master named Oswaldo Caetano
"Baiaca" Marques. At the match-rules negotiations that followed, some
prevailing concepts and nomenclatures of the day were discussed, many of which
are quite helpful in painting a picture of what the setting was like at the
time. The traditional wrestler was dubbed a "lucta-romana"
("Roman-wrestling") fighter. This description would tend to be
"translated" to "luctador de greco-romano" (Greco-Roman
wrestler), but apparently "lucta-romana" referred to a more generic
set of wrestling styles, the subsets of which were largely unknown in Brazil at
the time. On the other hand, there was lucta livre, a Brazilian
catch-as-catch-can variant featuring a broad submissions repertory. However, a
meeting between distinct martial arts too was sometimes denominated "lucta
livre”. In such cases, not yet considerable vale-tudo[26], each adversary would generally adhere to his own art. Thus, boxers
could throw punches while jiu-jitsu fighters could apply joint-locks and chokes
but not vice-versa. The fight between Omori (jiu-jitsu) and Marques (capoeira)
was hence deemed a "lucta livre" fight. The Queirolos, by now in the
incompatible position of being both event promoters and Omori's managers,
wanted headbutts (typical capoeira moves) excluded from the fight altogether,
alleging that even the police forbade them. Marques opposed this. After a great
deal of bickering, it was agreed that headbutts[27] would be forbidden, but in return gravatas[28] too would be disallowed, a hindrance to Omori. Lastly and
perplexingly, the capoeira stylist agreed to one more condition: both would
wear gis. The match would be divided into five three-minute rounds separated by
two minutes of rest. As always, the criteria for determining a winner, if not
by submission, was plenty subjective. Friday, October 19, 1928 was the
agreed-to date for the bout.

On that sweltering, muggy night the Queirolo circus is jam packed,
adding fuel to the tension already in the air. Expectations are tremendous. At
the chosen hour the fight gets underway, and Omori's expression is as serene as
ever. Another capoeira fighter, name unknown, in attendance provides some play-by-play
from the first round to a newspaper:

"Baiaca started out
well, touching hands to start followed by a 'rabo de frente.' Defending this
attack, the Japanese fighter retreated, dropping his guard completely. It was
an opportune, superb moment for Baiaca to make use of the momentum from the
'rabo de frente' to leg reap, follow up with a backwards 'rabo de arraia' and
immediately land in the unbeatable 'pulo do passarinho' position."

Vasques misses the opportunity. The second round under way, Omori
tries unsuccessfully to pull his opponent close. Nevertheless, on trying his
first 'rabo de arraia,' Vasques leaves himself open and is latched on to by Omori,
who initiates a true "demolition" on his capoeira-fighting adversary,
whom the bell saves by the skin of his teeth. Any hope the Brazilian had is now
gone. To the crowd's chagrin, after cheering in mass for their capoeira
stylist, early in the third round Omori catches hold of Vasques and the end is
nigh. Slowly the Japanese fighter pries out his opponent's arm and coaxes from
him three timid taps.

The capoeira fighter's reaction to defeat is intense, spewing
remarks ranging from accusations of the Queirolo circus-promoted fights being
rigged to indignant outbursts about the humiliation successive losses by
capoeira stylists brings to the Brazilian martial art. Shortly after Vasques's
fight, another capoeira exponent, Argemiro Feitosa, challenges Omori. In his
challenge, Feitosa insists that the fight be held "… anywhere but the
Queirolo circus." Obviously he was bothered by the conflict of interest of
the event promoters doubling up as Omori's managers. He argues that it should
be a true "lucta livre" fight, with no gis involved. His wounded
national pride becomes apparent when Feitosa says he'll fight for free. In
response to the challenge, Alcides Queirolo, Omori's manager, affirms that they
agree to fight outside of the circus of his ownership. However, he insists that
both fighters wear gis, creating an impasse that causes negotiations to grind
to a halt. After a great deal of deliberation, Omori agrees not to use the gi.
This time no moves are prohibited; it will be a true "lucta livre."

The months of November and December flew by with no match date being
set for want of a venue. Perhaps the lack of drive to find a location was the
Queirolos' attempt to "force" the fight to be held at their circus.
In the meantime Omori's fight schedule was practically empty, a phenomenon
similar to what always happened everywhere else: the novelty having worn off,
the public interest in the fights was starting to ebb. Omori wasn't sitting
around twiddling his thumbs during this period, though, as he busied himself putting
together Academia Paulista de Jiu-Jitsu, a jiu-jitsu school located at Frontão
do Braz that shared space with a boxing studio[29]. But with the sun about to set on 1928, the Feitosa fight was
finally inked, set to go down at Campo de São Bento and initially planned for
December 30, then moved to January 6 and finally postponed till the 13th of
January 1929, a Sunday.

The successive postponements just made anticipation of the fight all
the greater. Accessible ticket prices assured a sizable crowd, with even the
highest echelon of the civilian and military ranks in attendance. In a strong
play at nationalist sentiment, the media made mention of Cyriaco on almost a
daily basis. The general expectation was that after 20 years capoeira would
again gain the upper hand over jiu-jitsu. Two gi-less fighters would finally go
toe to toe in a true no-holds-barred matchup[30]. The fight was set for five rounds of five minutes apiece.

The big day comes. The two fighters stand across the ring from each
other waiting for combat to begin. The action starts and Omori right off the
bat makes it clear how the fight's going to be. Not giving his capoeira foe a
chance, thrice he throws Feitosa to the ground, on the third time sinking a gravata[31]. The capoeirist is spared, as the bell sounds an end to
round one. Nothing can save him in the second, though. Just as the round
begins, Omori closes the distance, again latches on to his opponent, and again
ushers the action to the ground. A subsequent arm-bar forces Feitosa to tap out
in desistance. Capoeira loses across the board: Geo Omori has ravaged all three
of the art's representatives without the slightest difficulty. A repeat of
Cyriaco's crowning achievement will have to wait. Though expectations
surrounding the fight were running high and the audience was large, the
Omori-Feitosa fight doesn't quite do the trick to recapture the São Paulo
public's waning interest in the Queirolo circus's fights. Over the following
weeks the crowds dwindle to the point of being virtually nil. In a grab at the
public's attention, in February the Queirolo circus starts announcing that
Omori will be fighting two opponents at the same time. He will do one round
with one of the opponents, picked by random draw, and in the second round face
the other opponent, and so forth, round after round. The February 22 challenge
fight is against a pair of wrestlers: German-born Ritter and Brazil's Waldemar
II. Each round is set to last five minutes followed by two minutes of rest. On
that evening the challenge proves to be too great, though, and for the first
time something goes wrong for Omori.

The draw comes up Ritter for round one. The German takes the
initiative right off the bat, with Omori on the defensive throughout. The round
ends with Ritter cranking a guillotine choke that Omori does all he can to
withstand. Happy to see the wringer his opponent was put through in round one,
Waldemar too pushes the pace on Omori, who holds out as best he can and nearly
taps out to an arm-lock. Going into round three, Omori's exhausted. Ritter
insistently pursues the guillotine until he finally locks one in. Again Omori
does all he can not to tap–and doesn't. The bell about to sound, the Japanese
fighter passes out and tastes real defeat for the first time since setting foot
in São Paulo.

Omori's loss was the last act in the string of fighting spectacles
in São Paulo. The process turned out just the way it had in so many other
places around the world. The central figure, Geo Omori, was a foreigner. With
ease he beat the numerous local adversaries who cropped up to challenge him.
What's more, his opponents were of questionable skill level. Prize fights
became rarer and rarer until once and for all they ended. Ultimately, the
Queirolo circus decamped and departed São Paulo City.

As the year 1929 drew to a close, a new challenge to Geo Omori
captured the sports headlines. The challenger arrived in São Paulo a few months
earlier, after a spell in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais State,
where he was teaching jiu-jitsu (basically self-defense) to the state police
force. He got his start in the art from Mitsuyo Maeda in Belém do Pará a decade
earlier. Carlos Gracie's challenge of Geo Omori immediately sparked a buzz.
After Feitosa's flop the year before, could this time a Brazilian finally
manage to overcome the Japanese master at his own art? But there was another
intriguing angle: it was a showdown between one of Maeda's students and one of
Tokugoro Ito's. In his master's footsteps, Carlos had splintered from Kano's
philosophy completely, just as Maeda had during his wayfaring years. By the
same token, Omori, a true Kodokan product, like Ito was far less radical. If
philosophically he wasn't a judoka the way Kano conceived one to be, nor had
Ito by that time completely abandoned Kano's line. The fight was, therefore,
charged with symbolism.

Truth be told, it was not the first time Carlos Gracie and Omori had
met. The previous April, shortly after Carlos's arrival in São Paulo, the two
together had done a demonstration sponsored by then-Senator Manoel Lacerda
Franco at Paulistano soccer field in Jardim América. It was initially meant to
be an actual fight between them, but as on the occasion Omori had an injured
right wrist, it ended up reconfigured to a demonstration. This time, in early
1930, however, the expectations surrounding the clash were tremendous. The
matchup gained the usual nationalist twist, and the repercussions were
widespread. Set for January 5, 1930, it would be held at a location quite
familiar to Omori: the old Queirolo circus pavilion, now known as "Madison
Square Garden Paulistano," would host the event. There would be five
three-minute rounds to one minute's rest,  and governed by jiu-jitsu rules,
that is, only a submission can determine a winner. At Carlos's behest, there
would be no mats; they would fight on the bare floor. Already at that time
Carlos demonstrated an attitude that is characteristic of the Gracies to this
day: intense self-promotion. While Omori trained silently with the other
Japanese, the Gracie's training camp at São Bento, the same place Omori and
Feitosa faced off, was accompanied by daily visits from the press and a great
deal of fanfare.

When fight day finally comes around, Carlos and Omori don't
disappoint their public. The first round sees Omori take the initiative, but
Gracie deftly snuffs his attacks. It's in the next period, round two, that the
controversy arises: Carlos manages to sink a snug arm-bar on Omori and starts
applying pressure until he hears the elbow ligaments pop in the arm of the
Japanese fighter, who in true Japanese tradition doesn't tap[32]. Aware that his opponent is going to let his arm break, Carlos
turns to the referee and asks, "Can I snap his arm?" In this fraction
of a second, though, he loosens the hold a bit, and through this tiny opening
Omori manages to break free. Having lost strength in his arm due to the
hyperextended ligament, there's nothing Omori can do but just hang on and try
to survive for the three remaining rounds. He still manages to pull off a hip throw,
slamming Carlos's unprotected head on the ground and stunning the Gracie. Omori
doesn't capitalize on the opportunity, though, and the fight ends without a
winner.

The story would have ended there if Carlos hadn't gone and said he
could have broken the Japanese fighter's arm if he'd wanted to. The remark
infuriated Omori, who responded saying that the following round he was being
nice by not attacking Carlos after throwing him on his head. Furthermore, he
argued, the three-minute rounds were two short for him to impose his technique.
With this event, what had been a cordial relationship between the two became an
intense rivalry marked by back-and-forth bickering in the press. In one such
interview, Omori argues that his fight with Carlos had been “no mole," a
slang expression of the day suggesting that it had not been a legitimate fight[33]. However, the next day, January 15, Omori himself retracted his
statement to Folha newspaper:

"Either I was
misunderstood or I did a bad job of explaining. I didn't mean to say that the
fight was a work. All I meant to say was that prior to the fight we had agreed
not to use forbidden moves and no limbs would be broken. I was outraged at Mr
Gracie's statement saying he could have snapped my arm. Why didn't he do it? If
I'd wanted to take advantage of my superiority when I threw him on the ground
and he was groggy, I could have. I'd have massacred him."[34]

We'll probably never know for sure whether the Omori-Carlos fight
was originally meant to be a work, but the fact is that if that had indeed been
the plan at the start, from the arm-bar onwards the fight was legit. In that
same interview Omori touches on another point. He argues that in Brazil no one
knew the rules of jiu-jitsu as practiced in Japan. There, he alleges, there are
no rounds, and the fight "ends with one of the fighters winning. It's
enough to slam the opponent on the ground five times to have him declared
beaten." Omori, like Maeda and the others before him, was quite familiar
with the rules of judo. Though slightly off base, his statement shows that he
was clearly aware that the "jiu-jitsu rules" as practiced in Brazil
led to the fight playing out differently.

Concomitant to the whole Omori-Carlos feud, a new rivalry captured
headlines. On the same day as the fight, one of Carlos's brothers, George
Gracie, commented to Celestino Caverzasio, a well-known Italian boxing coach,
that "… pugilism, faced with jiu-jitsu, would disappear entirely…"
This infuriated Caverzasio and, from there on, parallel to the Omori-Carlos
spat, the press almost daily reported on the mutual challenges between Carlos
and his brothers and a handful of pugilists. In a way, the Gracies were
ushering in a new era: the Japanese tended to avoid provoking personal
challenges, usually putting themselves in a position to be challenged. In this
new era, the challenges became objective, and therefore impersonal: martial
arts got challenged, to prove jiu-jitsu's superiority.

Finally the long-awaited rematch was scheduled for January 19, 1930,
at the same venue as their first encounter. The evening's six-fight program
also featured the jiu-jitsu-vs-boxing challenge, five three-minute rounds
pitting George Gracie against the boxer Johannes Toom (2-1-1 at the time). Now,
Carlos's bout with Omori was set for five five-minute rounds.

The big days comes around. On the undercard, George Gracie and Toom
make their way into the arena. The pugilist comes in sporting gloves and,
amazingly, a gi. At the sound of the bell, Toom stalls for a second, expecting
a second signal for the action to begin, giving George time to dart right in,
latch on to the pugilist and drag him to the ground. The three remaining
minutes in the round have a desperate Toom struggling to avoid George's
submission attacks. The second round is even less fruitful for Toom, with
George easily catching him in a choke. During the break preceding the main
event the mats are removed. Again the fight will be held on hard floor. Carlos
and Omori make their entrances. The Japanese fighter's arm is still bruised
from their last fight, just two weeks ago. With an understanding of this type
of injury, we can be sure there's no way his arm is completely healed. The
fight under way, this time Carlos exerts complete control. At a certain point,
while rolling on the ground, Omori, possibly in Carlos's guard, slowly drags
his opponent to the edge of the combat area. About to fall off the platform,
Carlos relaxes the position to return to center stage, at which point Omori
slams him violently, the underhanded tactic making Gracie furious. In another
controversial maneuver, Omori dives for a scissor on Carlos after the bell. The
final round ends without a decisive winner, even though Carlos dominated the
entire fight. Despite it being another draw, Carlos is applauded as he exits
the stage.

The Gracie-Omori rematch wasn't enough to revive São Paulo's
interest in fighting, and the encounters remained sparse. A few months later
Carlos Gracie and his family left town for Rio de Janeiro. Omori would follow
suit right after. As we've seen, the Gracies' arrival in Rio de Janeiro would
again spark that familiar craze fueled by spectacular challenges, and just like
in the United States, Cuba, Mexico and so many other places during the previous
decades, it would feature prominently in newspaper headlines for a brief spell.
This time, though, there was a different dynamic. Unlike in the past, this time
the phenomenon wouldn't last a mere few months and then fizzle. Quite the
contrary, between spurts and lulls, it would endure for at least 80 years, all
the way to present day. And it would lead to an unprecedented evolution in the
art of fighting "with the back on the ground."

From the technical point of view there's a dearth of detailed,
play-by-play reports on Omori's fights. The "jiu-jitsu rules" that
governed these bouts kept right on leading the action to the ground in pursuit
of the submission as a question of necessity, even though, as Omori put it,
these rules skewed way off from what was practiced in Japan. As the narration
of the fights was far from concise, there isn't much for us to glean about the
famed "back on the ground" style. There are plenty of descriptions of
Omori's takedowns, though, suggesting he truly was predominantly a judoka.
Where philosophy was concerned, though, Omori and Carlos (as well as young
George) upheld the "combat vision" of their predecessors. While the
need for the gi remained controversial, Omori did seem flexible about accepting
gi-free fights and introduced a sort of "proto-MMA" in his "lucta-livres"
against capoeira stylists. Carlos, on his part, introduced impersonal
challenges to prove his art's superiority. Omori used the denomination
jiu-jitsu purely for semantic purposes and fancied himself a judoka. Carlos
felt he practiced the same art Omori did, but he may well not have been
familiar with the denomination judo and might not even have known who Jigoro
Kano was.

Chapter 8 – Introducing the Gracies: Vale
Tudo is Born

O

n September 6, 1930 Donato Pires opened Rio de Janeiro's very first
jiu-jitsu academy. Donato was Maeda's student in Belém and an old acquaintance
of the Gracies. Carlos and his brother George served as instructors there from
day one. A few months after the inauguration, Carlos  along with his brothers
started holding presentations at some of the clubs around Rio de Janeiro, like
Fluminense and Botafogo. At that time, the only other martial arts academy of
any significance in the city was Club Carioca de Box, a boxing studio based at
Phoenix Theater on Almirante Barroso Avenue under the command of Coach Jayme
Martins Ferreira and Rodrigues Alves. In early 1931 the club, by Jayme's
initiative, started holding capoeira classes as well. Formally capoeira
exhibitions were illegal at the time, as the article prohibiting it was still
in force (it would only officially be repealed in 1935), though enforcement of
the law was practically nil since the start of the 1930s. Carlos Gracie's
inciting ways made a clash between the two academies inevitable. In May 1931
provocations reached a tipping point and preparations for a showdown started to
take shape. To start, Carlos would send into battle three of his brothers: the
experienced George and Oswaldo along with the youngest, Hélio. Representing
capoeira, respectively: Eduardo José "Coronel" Santanna, Manoel Tito
"Mané" Ferreira, and Demétrio. However, Hélio Gracie
suffered an injury while training with George and had to pull out from his
fight. Lacking another Rio de Janeiro-based jiu-jitsu fighter up to the task,
Carlos had to bring in an old student of his from São Paulo, Benedicto Peres,
to fill in for his brother. On the capoeira side, Demétrio was replaced by
Reynaldo.

In an old rerun of so many occasions over the past few decades, ever
since the Higashi-Olsen fight, pre-fight talk hinged on match rules and,
mostly, whether or not gis would be worn. Carlos fell back on the argument that
they were exactly the same ones used so many times in the past. He claimed that
jiu-jitsu wasn't a sport but a form of fighting, and as such, matches should
resemble real fights as closely as possible. And gi tops simulated suit
jackets, common attire at the time. Besides, Carlos further argued, people
didn't walk around the streets shirtless, so it made no sense to fight as
though they did. After a great deal of discussion, Carlos and Jayme came to a
compromise: the jiu-jitsu fighter would wear a gi while the capoeira fighter
would sport a "sailors outfit" of reinforced linen. Should the cloth
tear during the fight, the capoeira fighter would immediately change into a gi[35]. The fights would be of three five-minute rounds separated by one
minute's rest on a mat-less platform.

Besides the gi debate, there was also discussion of a
"philosophical" order that wasn't unprecedented either. Capoeira's
defenders claimed that "... a capoeira fighter worth his salt doesn't beat
on dead people...," meaning they don't hit opponents when they're on the
ground. Jiu-jitsu fighters, on the other hand, "... pounce on a downed
opponent and tweak his foot or leg." Again ground fighting with
submissions is seen as being "ungentlemanly." The story would repeat
itself once again... The most scathing criticism, though, was aimed directly at
"fighting with your back on the ground" and was published by Jornal dos
Sports in its July 3, 1931 issue, the very day of the fight. It happened that,
as negotiated by Carlos and Jayme Ferreira, a winner would only be declared if
the opponent gave up or was rendered unconscious. There would be no
point-scoring nor any other means of determining a victor. The author of the
article argued:

"Mr Gracie, we
believe that for your being unfamiliar with the official rules, you failed to
fully understand what it is they teach, as your proposal opposes what is laid
down in the book of Iiguro Kano (sic), inspector general of the
jiu-jitsu schools of Mikado, regarded as the highest authority on the subject
in all of Japan. In it, the author says that a fighter shall be declared beaten
if HIS SHOULDER BLADES COME IN CONTACT WITH THE GROUND FOR MORE THAN TWO SECONDS."

Further along, the same author explains how Carlos's rules, which
differ from Kano's, imply a serious disadvantage for the capoeira stylists:

"As you can see,
there's a startling contradiction between what was agreed upon and the official
teachings. According to the 'agreement,' the jiu-jitsu fighter, finding himself
in a position of disadvantage, can lie down on the ground in waiting for his
opponent (as they do anyway). And everyone knows there is nothing a capoeira
fighter can do when his opponent is lying on his back. The jiu-jitsu fighter,
in this position, can now wait for as long as he wants for the attack from the
opponent, who will have to take it upon himself to attack him under inferior
conditions, putting himself at risk of suffering a leg or foot attack that
could render the appendage useless and him consequently unable to proceed in
the fight or force him to give up, which either way will result in him
losing."

Carlos's insistence on submissions as the means of determining the
winner was interpreted by the author of the article as being bad faith.
However, Carlos's view of combat was perfectly aligned, as we've seen, with
Maeda and his colleagues' during their itinerant phase and was most likely
passed on to him by Count Koma himself. Contrary to how it was during Maeda's
days, though, the fact that judo (and consequently its competition rules) had
spread around the world brought the subject to the fore. But the most
significant consequence of dissonant sets of rules, according to the author,
was the way jiu-jitsu fighters used fighting "with their backs on the
ground." The person writing the article hadn't a clue, at that time, that
the style he was seeing wasn't by any means a new way of fighting or one of
Carlos's own invention. He was a witness to one of the last facets to have
survived from a style of fighting that Ito, Higashi and so many others
practiced before them and that had faded away over time.

All in accord on the rules, the big day, July 3, 1931, arrives. The
show begins at 9pm at Botafogo Club, on General Severiano Road (where MMA
events are still held in Rio de Janeiro to this day). Just like in the build-up
to his fight with Omori, the training camp at Gracie Academy is highly
publicized[36]. In the preceding weeks the Gracies hold some public demonstrations
at that very Botafogo venue, in between movie screenings at the club's cinema,
creating an even bigger buzz around the event. A six-meter-by-six-meter stage
is set up in the middle of the soccer pitch. The crowd has no idea what they're
going to see when George Gracie and Coronel step onto the platform, but it
clearly favors the capoeira fighters. Coronel goes in wearing a hat, a trick to
not let George know where he, with his head facing downwards, is looking. The
referee asks him to take the hat off, but Coronel refuses; after all, he'd
agreed to fight with his torso covered. The fight under way, Coronel ginga
back and forth a bit but George promptly closes the distance, catches hold of
his opponent and pulls him into his guard, settling in "back on the
ground" position. About 30 seconds into the fight Coronel, from within
guard, punches him in the face. As that's not allowed, he's immediately
disqualified. Oswaldo and Peres win the next two fights with ease within the
first minute of the first round with an arm-bar from the guard and the other
possibly a kidney lock (which was often confused with a collar choke from
closed guard), respectively. The crowd, though, doesn't understand what
happened, since it doesn't seem to make sense that two capoeira stylists would
give up while apparently superiorly positioned, on top of their opponents. The
imbroglio that ensues requires police intervention to restore the peace but
jiu-jitsu's victory is indisputable.

The capoeira-vs-jiu-jitsu challenge was the lever opening the
floodgates for the wave of challenges and confrontations that swept Rio de
Janeiro. Even before the fights of that July 3, Carlos Gracie had already
exchanged provocations with the capoeira fighter Mário Aleixo. Aleixo was a
well-known local sportsman, quite an eclectic fellow. He was a masterful fencer
and target shooter, even going on to teach jiu-jitsu, an art he came to know
through Sada Miyako, whom he fought in public in 1909. Aleixo may have been in
the audience when Miyako was knocked out by Cyriaco's rabo de arraia.
His definitive contact with capoeira, however, would only come years later when
the diplomat Oscar de Tefé, the son of the Baron of Tefé, called on him to
teach between 1917 and 1919. The classes granted him access to Oscar's vast
library, where he found scarce information on Brazil's own martial art. He
developed a highly controversial style of capoeira[37], incorporating into it elements of self-defense and eventually the
jiu-jitsu that he would go on to learn[38].

While Jayme Ferreira and Carlos Gracie taunted each other and
negotiated the terms of their encounter, Aleixo held a lecture on Saturday,
June 20 where he brutally chastised jiu-jitsu, and heaped accolades on
capoeira. Aleixo's angle was that capoeira was unsuited for exhibitions, that
it could only truly be evaluated in real combat conditions, in the outdoors,
without rings or stages. He lamented that, unlike boxing, savate or jiu-jitsu,
capoeira had been unfairly relegated to the dregs of society and, for that
reason, didn't get the publicity the other arts enjoyed. As for jiu-jitsu,
Aleixo stated that it was useless without the gi and that, unlike capoeira, it
didn't let you take on more than one opponent at a time. Carlos didn't like the
potshots Aleixo was taking on his art and promptly fired back at him. He argued
that the challenge about to happen would not be a demonstration, but a real
fight; that saying capoeira practitioners don't fight indoors isn't reasonable.
Carlos questioned whether a capoeirist, when attacked, would tell his
aggressor, "Wait, I'm going to go get my guitar, and when the moon shines
on the earth we'll face off..." After the July 3 event, Aleixo, as you'd
expect, was none too happy about capoeira's defeat and upped his rhetoric
against the Gracies, issuing a direct challenge, the only condition being that
the fight had to be no holds barred and held in an open field. Aleixo's
challenge is both surprising and courageous, seeing as he was about 50 years
old at the time. Carlos picked his brother George, reportedly the most skillful
of the family, to face Aleixo. But the George-Aleixo fight would have to wait,
as another challenger crossed the Gracies' path first.

One day, late in July 1931, an insurance salesman was having tea at
Café Mourisco, on the corner of Rio Branco Avenue and Rosário Street, downtown
Rio de Janeiro. At one point an acquaintance of his showed up and took a seat
to shoot the breeze. Without meaning to, though, he plunked down right on top
of the hat of the guy one table down. Half apprehensive and half in jest, the
salesman gave his newly arrived friend a piece of advice:

- I think you'd best take out that accidents-insurance policy right
away.

- Why? Inquired the gentleman.

- Because you just sat on the hat of the jiu-jitsu champion, Carlos
Gracie.

- Don't get flustered. – reparteed the friend – Offer that policy to
the hat's owner. He needs it more than I do!

The insurance salesman's friend was named Manoel Rufino dos Santos.
He was a wrestler, perhaps the only person in Brazil who could rightfully claim
to be one. In the '20s, a time when luta livre was still a denomination
used for grappling without the gi and its practitioners were for the most part
brutes with plenty of brawn and not much by way of technique, Rufino had spent
years training and fighting in the United States before returning to Brazil
towards the end of the decade. He'd had some challenge fights upon arrival back
in the country and taught at the Young Men's Christian Association. Right after
Reynaldo lost to Peres, Rufino stepped into the ring and issued a challenge to
any Gracie willing to fight him. At that moment Carlos kept to himself and
exited the stage, but a few days later he'd go to the press to say the
challenge had a taker: he himself would fight Manoel Rufino.

Before they scheduled the match, though, a few weeks went by where
the fighters were locked in heated debate as to the match rules. Obviously,
Carlos wanted his rules, and the result to be determined by submission only.
Whereas Rufino, a typical wrestler, wanted it to be a no-gi affair that could
also be ended by pinning the opponent's back to the ground. There was some
comic relief during the rules discussion, though, like when someone remarked,
tongue in cheek, that Carlos had said that "... he'd only fight Manoel
Rufino dos Santos if he showed up in the ring at 9pm, wearing a jacket,
double-breasted white shirt, top hat, his collar turned up, tie of Japanese
silk and his hair parted down the middle..." When asked about this
fictitious demand of Carlos's, Jayme Martins Ferreira, the capoeira fighter's
coach, stated: “Fair enough. No elegant lad of good breeding is going to fight
some half-naked guy. To fight him you'd better show up wearing ‘toillete’ for a
‘soirée.’”

After a series of discussions, the bout was finally scheduled for
August 22 at Fluminense Club in the Laranjeiras neighborhood. They had come to
a compromise on the sticking points: it was agreed that Manoel Rufino would not
wear a gi (Carlos could wear one or not wear one, as he saw fit – and he indeed
wore one). On the other hand, pinning the opponent's back to the ground would
not determine the winner; only a knockout or submission could do that. Low
blows were no-can-does, and it would be a fight of five five-minute rounds with
a minute's rest between them. A few days before the fight, however, something
unforeseen almost led to the event's cancellation. They had agreed that the
entire sum made at the gate would go to the winner, minus 500$000 paid to the
loser. Fluminense was providing the venue free of cost. It happened that Rufino
had agreed to hand over 100% of his cut, win or lose, to Fluminense to hold a
Christmas event for needy children in Laranjeiras, the neighborhood where the
club is located. He'd said he wasn't fighting for the money, but to demonstrate
the superiority of his art. Carlos refused to donate his purse, though. This
infuriated the club's board of directors, and with only a few days to go
Fluminense canceled the contract that had allowed them use of the stadium.
After some discussion, Carlos agreed to donate 30% of his share, and the event
went ahead as planned.

What really happened in the fateful seconds of August 22, 1931 we'll
never know for sure. The fight was moving along normally for the first two
rounds, with Manoel Rufino holding an advantage for being on top for the bulk
of the time. Near the end of the first round he nearly caught Carlos in a
foot-lock but the Gracie was saved by the bell. The third round under way, the
fighters roll out of the ropes but are still on the ring platform. Now on top
of Rufino, Carlos, who'd opted to wear a gi, sinks a chokehold using the cloth
from his own collar. With the fighters nearly tumbling out of the ring, the
crowd huddles around them, nearly touching them, which obstructs the table
judges' view. Carlos squeezes out the choke until Rufino taps three times. In
the ensuing confusion Carlos gets up declaring himself the winner as Manoel
Rufino stumbles around the ring dazed, having nearly gone unconscious. In the
tumult that follows, Rufino, now recovered, says he tapped for Carlos to let go
of him since the ref had ordered them to stop and restart the fight in the
middle of the ring. The Gracie disagrees and withdraws from the fight area while
Rufino, now recovered, hollers after Carlos, "I appeal to your honesty. I
know you heard the referee order us back to the center. Confess!" Left
with no reply, Rufino persists. Twice the referee tries to convince Carlos to
return to the stage for combat to resume, but due to his resistance Rufino is
declared the winner. In the weeks that follow, the two sides fire back and
forth at each other in a debate that eventually, nearly a month later, on
September 21, leads to the result being changed to a "no contest" by
the table judges, making it a fight without a victor.

The Rufino fight now in the past, talk turned back to the
anticipated bout between George and Aleixo. But again the match was postponed,
as the latter came under the weather and was too ill to fight. The next
capoeira-vs-jiu-jitsu clash thus materialized at an event set to take place at
the field on Riachuelo Street on November 5, 1931, a Wednesday. There two
Gracies, Oswaldo and George, would take on two capoeirists, Baiano and
Januário, respectively. What drew the most attention was the striking weight
difference between Oswaldo, at 64 kg (141 lbs), and Baiano, who was 20 kg (44
lbs) the heavier. Regardless, it was an uncontested victory for the jiu-jitsu
fighter. Baiano was at a clear advantage in the first round, but in the second
he succumbed to a choke by Oswaldo, the fight's winner. Next on the card,
Januário, George's opponent, simply didn't show up to fight, and the event
ended up relegated to a demonstration between George and his younger brother
Hélio.

It wouldn't be long before a new challenge cropped up. Again George
and Oswaldo would represent the family. Their opponents now would be Jayme
Martins Ferreira himself and João Baldi. Jayme, as we know, was the head
instructor at Club Carioca de Box boxing club, the Gracie academy's big rival.
In theory they were defending capoeira's colors, but their technique was
questionable given their lack of practice. They did have a bit of a
Greco-Roman-wrestling background, though, which was deemed sufficient for the
bout. But the main event of the evening would be between Oswaldo and Baldi.
Baldi was a wrestler already into his 50s who, though not quite remarkable in
the technique department, drew his fair share of wows for his size. He was a humongous
fellow, weighing at fight time 125 kg (275 lbs) crammed into a 1.72-meter frame
(5'6”), compared to Oswaldo's 64 kg (141 lbs). The prevailing opinion was that
Oswaldo was going to get massacred by an opponent nearly double his weight. The
spectacle would take place on November 19, 1931 at Theatro República, on
downtown Rio de Janeiro's Gomes Freire Avenue.

The show has the crowd at the edge of their seats. In the first
fight, George has his work cut out for him in the early goings. The
"capoeira stylist" shows great resolve, determined to overcome the
member of the family that so easily beat his students. Despite the advantage,
though, his seconds are numbered starting the moment the Gracie manages to
sweep and mount him. In his despair to escape and lacking proper technique, he
gives up his back, paving the way for George to snag him in a mata-leão
(rear-naked choke), offering no escape but to tap out in desistance.
Victory to George. The next fight is the one the crowd's there to see. Early on
Baldi pounces on his opponent, throwing caution to the wind. When Oswaldo makes
a noose of Baldi's collar (both are wearing gis), the larger man seems to trust
his meaty neck muscles to keep him safe. On the brink of going unconscious,
though, Baldi launches himself out of the fight area and forces the referee to
unravel the position and order them back to center ring. At another point,
Baldi makes the most of Oswaldo having fallen out of the ring to rid himself of
his gi. After some arguing he puts it back on. From there on it's a romp for
Oswaldo. The action having resumed, he pulls his colossal opponent into his
guard and sinks a choke there's no getting out of. Another Gracie victory.

There was an illustrious presence in the crowd at Theatro República
that day – Geo Omori. Omori had recently arrived in the city, probably drawn by
the same craze that had taken over São Paulo and now, through the Gracies, had
reached Rio de Janeiro. Fact is, thenceforth Omori and the Gracies form an
association in defense of jiu-jitsu's hegemony. Considering the apparent
rivalry between him and Carlos, resulting from the previous year's fights, it
may seem odd that Omori would initially have his name linked to the Gracies in
Rio de Janeiro. It could be it came down to financial need, but we can
construct the argument that, even way back then, one characteristic of
Brazilian jiu-jitsu had become apparent: the need to prove its superiority puts
the martial art top on the list of loyalties. That's why it's so common for
fighters from rival jiu-jitsu academies to gang up on representatives of other
martial arts. It could be said that this is a characteristic exclusively
Brazilian, but considering how Tomita defended Higashi in 1905, it may be that
this behavior is inserted in the very philosophy of the fight style itself.

The Baldi fight over, the much-awaited bout between George and
Aleixo is definitively scheduled for December 3, at the same Theatro República
venue. George, unlike his brothers Carlos and Hélio, has the habit of staying
out of the public eye in the lead-up to his fights, but with the matchup so
long in the works the rivalry has simmered down anyway, making the pre-fight
smack talk pretty tame. Even so, despite Aleixo's advanced age it's believed
that he's capoeira's greatest hope of beating a Gracie. But those hopes don't
pan out. Despite the partisan crowd it turns out to be an effortless outing for
George, who Aleixo at no point puts in any danger. George, as always, shoots
right into close range. His opponent tries to evade him and disengage. But that
doesn't keep George from latching on to him and sending them both to the floor.
At this point, to a perplexed crowd, Aleixo welcomes the grappling game. As the
first-round bell sounds, the two fighters are tangled up against the ropes. The
second round is all George. Aleixo, on top in George's guard, makes a pathetic
attempt at a guillotine choke, but in the process he leaves his own neck
exposed, and George pays back in kind with the same hold. Aleixo does manage to
get free and throw a few face strikes on George, who, in defending, again sinks
a guillotine choke. In extending his arm to defend, Aleixo signs his own death
warrant: George immediately drops the guillotine and transitions to the
fight-winning arm-bar. Victory to Gracie.

George Gracie's win over Aleixo catapulted jiu-jitsu's fame to new
heights. At the same time, criticism from its detractors grew, too, with
arguments, not entirely unfounded, saying the regulations (restricting some
types of traumatic blows) and the use of the gi were unfair advantages
benefitting jiu-jitsu fighters. But the fact remained, just as had been the
case in previous decades, that no one had yet developed an effective technique
for preventing gravity itself from sending the fighters to the ground. By the
1930s no efficient "takedown defense" or "ground and pound"
techniques yet existed, and opponents were basically defenseless. In fact,
decades would go by before such techniques were developed. In the final month
of the year 1931, however, no Gracies would take to the ring in combat. It
would be Geo Omori's turn to defend jiu-jitsu's colors.

Manoel Fernandes is Portuguese, a Greco-Roman wrestler and weighs 87
kg (191 lbs). Even before the George-Aleixo fight he'd already challenged Geo
Omori or any Gracie inclined to fight him. Interestingly, despite being the
challenger, Fernandes puts forth his own demands for how the fight should go
down: no gis, and the match should be won by pinning the shoulders to the mat,
like in Greco-Roman wrestling. He does admit the use of submissions, though. He
claims, and correctly so, that both the Gracies and Omori have had prior fights
without the gi and that Geo Omori had even fought (and lost, by the way) under
"back-pin" rules. It's the opportunity Omori's been waiting for. He
promptly accepts the challenge and agrees to fight gi-less. However, he makes
no concessions when it comes to only submissions determining the winner.
Fernandes, as a last-ditch demand, does try to bargain chokes out of the picture,
but Carlos Gracie, who's managing Omori at this point, won't budge on that
count. Fernandes ultimately folds and the fight is set for December 17 at
Theatro República. It's set for six three-minute rounds with a minute's rest
between them – another of Fernandes's demands.

Four days to go, on December 13 they hit a new impasse. Fernandes
announces that he won't be fighting, says the purse is too low. Outraged, Omori
accuses the Portuguese fighter of being afraid and makes him an offer: if
Fernandes wins he keeps 100% of the purse, and if he loses he still gets to
keep 15%. To Omori it's all or nothing. Met with only silence from Fernandes,
Omori is beside himself with irritation and proposes they fight behind closed
doors, with no crowd and no purse. On the day the fight is originally set to
take place, a bomb splashes across newspaper headlines: Manoel Fernandes's
manager accuses Carlos Gracie of having approached him on December 11 to
propose they work the Fernandes-Omori fight to be a draw, in order to build
interest for a second fight between them. He says his fighter still agrees to
face Omori, so long as Carlos Gracie isn't representing him. He also says that
under Greco-Roman rules he'd fight all four Gracies on the same evening. Carlos
is irate. He claims the accusations leveled at him by Fernandes's manager are
unfounded and fires back with a counter-offer: he suggests Fernandes fight his
youngest brother, Hélio, who is just 18 years old and has never fought in
public. The offer goes unanswered, the incident eventually forgotten. But
Omori's problem remains: he needs an opponent for his Rio de Janeiro debut or
he'll have to go back to São Paulo. That's when a young German fellow by the
name of Sanson materializes to challenge him. Omori promptly accepts, proposing
they do battle under the same rules as had been negotiated for the Fernandes
fight. They agree to fight on the second-to-last day of the year, December 30,
at Theatro República.

Sanson's a walking fortress, so formidable is his physique that he
regularly performs feats of strength like bending iron bars with bare hands and
shouldering the weight of six grown men. Whether his wrestling skills are up to
snuff, however, is highly questionable. Come fight time, the German gives the
Japanese fighter a workout, only succumbing, after suffering a handful of
takedowns, to an "americana" lock Omori applies from the mount. A
sterling Rio de Janeiro debut for the veteran Geo Omori.

As for Manoel Fernandes, he and Omori still have unfinished business
to attend to. Their fight, months later, is finally scheduled for September 3,
1932 at São Cristovão field. By this time Omori is no longer publicly
associated with the Gracie name, which clears the way for the fight to go
through, since Fernandes is intractable on not fighting anyone Carlos is
managing. Omori dominates the fight from start to finish. Clearly superior,
several times he takes Fernandes to the verge of tapping out but, when it looks
like all is lost for the Portuguese fighter, Omori lets up on the hold and
allows Fernandes to escape. Only as the fight draws to an end does Omori seem
inclined to try for a conclusive end, and in the very last seconds of the
decisive round applies a choke his opponent is spared tapping to by the sound
of the bell. The fight is declared a draw, as the rules state that only a
submission can yield a winner. The inevitable rematch is set for October 1.
This time there will be no draw: there's no limit on the number of rounds; a
fight to the finish, at the same São Cristovão stadium. And Omori wins. Aware
of how hard it was to make Fernandes tap to a choke, the Japanese fighter
executes an unbelievable series of takedowns until one in the third round sends
the Portuguese national sailing out of the ring and renders him unconscious and
unable to return to the stage within regulation time.

Back to early 1932, following Geo Omori's victorious debut against
Sanson, Carlos fixed his crosshairs on boxers. The first jiu-jitsu-vs-boxing
event was scheduled for January 16. Carlos had his work cut out for him in
finding first-rate boxers willing to accept the challenge, as they had far more
to lose than to win at such an event. Finally two professionals agreed to the
undertaking. In the preliminary fight, Hélio Gracie, just 18 then, would be
making his public debut, facing the boxer Antônio Portugal. Hélio was on the
roster for the first jiu-jitsu-vs-capoeira challenge but suffered a training
injury and ended up replaced by Peres. Later on, amid the Manoel Fernandes
controversy, Carlos had offered Hélio to the Portuguese fighter, but received
no response. The third time was a charm, and the battle against boxing went
down without a hitch. Hélio's opponent wasn't too accomplished a boxer, his
18-fight record of 5 wins, 12 losses and 1 draw at that time didn't stand out
as particularly impressive. The same couldn't be said about the main event,
though. Geo Omori would face the veteran João Tavares Crespo, a Portuguese-born
fighter from the city of Porto who was already well known, having fought in
Brazil since 1925. His career was on the decline but it was common knowledge
that his was an aggressive style and his 90-fight record (44w-34l-7d-5nc)
impressed.

The event was scheduled for January 16, 1932 at Colyseo
Internacional, located at Praça da República square. The jiu-jitsu fighters
would present themselves in gis while the boxers would fight bare chested.
Interestingly the boxing gloves they wore were four-ouncers, precisely the
standard size currently used in professional MMA. Barring low blows, everything
counted. Crespo had devised a strategy for beating Omori, according to a
statement he made to A Noite newspaper in the lead-up to the fight:

"In the event of
him catching hold of my left arm or even my right one, the pain from the lock
won't be too quick in coming, and I'll feel free to use the unobstructed arm to
blast him with a punch and stun him. And that's only if I don't nail him before
he can latch on to some sensitive body part not poised to box. Those are the
points on which my chances of success against Omori hinge, without getting into
the ones that need to be kept secret."

The week before the event the Boxing Commission tried in several
ways to keep the bout from going through. They argued that Portugal and Crespo
weren't qualified to represent the sweet science in the challenge. Carlos
countered by saying, not without reason, that no other big-name boxers had
publicly stepped up for the challenge. Lastly, just days before the event,
police-appointed doctors examined the fighters and certified that they were apt
to fight, precluding any further possibility of cancelation. Come the big day,
the fights ended up being a walk in the park for Hélio and Omori. The former
won via americana-lock from the guard at 1:45 minutes of combat on the dot.
Now, Omori was even more efficient, winning with a foot lock in just 45
seconds. However, the newspapers that week were splattered with stories about
another jiu-jitsu event, and this time it wasn't limited to the sports section,
but the police pages.

Bar Sympathia was an oddly configured structure. On the corner of
Rio Branco Avenue and Rosário Street, the Dutch Neo-Renaissance-style building
by architect Rene Barba occupied a small, somewhat triangle-shaped plot of land
nestled between the side of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Boa Morte church and
the avenue. Given the cramped space inside, the bar and its elegant seats
occupied part of the sidewalk. It was decidedly well-located, at the heart of
Rio de Janeiro's commercial district. On a sweltering, muggy January 14
afternoon, two days before the highly anticipated jiu-jitsu-boxing showdown,
João Baldi took to Sympathia in a failed attempt at escaping the heat. One day
prior he had had a serious falling out with Carlos Gracie at Club Carioca de Box.
Carlos had gone to the club for them to try to arrive at an agreement on the
outstanding payment from Baldi's purse in the Oswaldo fight. Not coming to
terms, the conversation deteriorated into a bitter argument that, according to
some accounts, escalated to a physical confrontation between them, with Baldi
getting the better of Carlos. The event was already water under the bridge for
Baldi when, at around 3pm, he paid his tab at the bar and rose to leave. At
that instant he glanced up and saw four men bearing down on him. It all
happened in a flash. To the astonishment of the bar's clientele, a scuffle
broke out between the sidewalk tables, and an all-out brawl ensued, with men
rolling around on the ground in a frenetic fistfight. At that precise moment an
army lieutenant was passing by, and after breaking them up he sent two of the
ruffians, George Gracie and a battered João Baldi, to the local police station.
What really happened that day at Sympathia we'll probably never know. Some
reports have George approaching Baldi and, after telling him to stop pestering
his brother, going straight for the attack while his brothers made sure nobody
tried to intervene, saying, "Keep out of this!" Other accounts say
that what actually happened was that the four brothers sucker punched Baldi and
proceeded to beat on him until the lieutenant arrived.

The thrashing Baldi endured, whether an act of cowardice or not,
wasn't an isolated incident as far as settling personal differences outside the
ring was concerned. Ten months after that fight, on October 18, Manoel Rufino
dos Santos published an open letter condemning Carlos Gracie. That same day, at
around 8:30pm, Rufino was on his way to Tijuca Tennis Club to teach. As he
approached the club entrance he heard someone call out his name. When he turned
around, he identified Hélio Gracie, with his brothers Carlos and George
accompanying him. Again a melee ensued, with Rufino seriously injured and
hospitalized as a result. Again the Gracies denied involvement. The conclusion from
the police inquiry into the occurrence:

"It seems to me
that the injuries sustained by Manoel Rufino dos Santos were a result of
premeditated aggression perpetrated together by the accused Hélio, Carlos and
George Gracie, who patiently awaited the victim at the time and place where he
was expected to be. Therefore, as I see it, these accused, teachers of the
Japanese gymnastics jiu-jitsu, enemies of the victim, according to him and
confirmed by them, should answer for the infraction in article 304 of the Legal
Code, page 5. I hereby recommend the Registrar dispatch the case files to the
criminal courts judge for sentencing."

The three Gracies were cleared of the crime in the first instance,
only to be condemned to 18 months in prison in the second (Carlos got a longer
sentence for being a repeat offender of the same crime) and went to jail on May
23 of the following year. One week later they were freed by presidential pardon[39].

The public challenge fights and the quest to prove jiu-jitsu's
superiority weren't unique to that moment in early-'30s Rio de Janeiro. To the
contrary, it was an old format, one initiated by the Japanese who crossed the
seas to the West to spread their art since back at the start of the 20th
century. Street fights, though, were an exception to this format. We found no
reports of Maeda, Ito, Higashi or anyone else involved in skirmishes in the
streets of the cities they visited. In fact, the brawls the Gracies were embroiled
in were reminiscent of Meiji Japan, when traditional jiu-jitsu, seeing its last
days, declined into disorder with the end of the shogunate and disappearance of
the samurai. There we saw how Jigoro Kano went to lengths to eliminate this
practice and instill discipline in his students. With no equivalent figure in Brazil,
street fights became a fixture in Brazilian jiu-jitsu history. Without the
"control" mechanisms that a scheduled fight in a ring entails, Rio de
Janeiro's street fights were completely unbridled and ranged from being
"legitimate" challenge fights that just happened not to take place in
a ring to acts of pure unseemliness perpetrated against unwitting
"opponents" who often had no prior martial arts experience whatsoever[40].

Another aspect worth mentioning is the worked fights. We saw how Geo
Omori and Manoel Fernandes accused Carlos of proposing they tie their fights
with the Gracies. Over the years, accusation of this nature continued to
surface, and there's no doubt the outcomes of numerous fights were prearranged.
Sometimes promoters deliberately accused competing events of illegitimacy,
implying that only their own events were real. One interesting case,
exemplifying this point, occurred when an American wrestler named Fred Ebert
arrived in Brazil.

Ebert was a catch wrestler of the second tier by American standards,
and judging by the days in which he performed, it's likely most of his fights
were not of the legitimate sort. According to statements he himself made, he
was on the Olympic team representing the United States at the 1920 Olympics in
Antwerp, which isn't true. He claimed his record held wins over Ed
"Strangler" Lewis, Joe Stecher and Stanislau Zbysco, as well as a
draw over Jim Londos. Upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro on the 20th of September
1932, Ebert issued a challenge to local wrestlers like Roberto Ruhmann and
Manoel Fernandes that also included Geo Omori but failed to mention the
Gracies. That could be because the Gracies weren't considered wrestlers, just
jiu-jitsu fighters exclusively. However, the most likely reason is that upon
his arrival in Rio de Janeiro he signed a contract with São Cristóvão A.C., an
event-promotion company/club that hadn't the slightest interest in promoting
fights involving the Gracies. On October 1 Ebert did a demonstration against
Orlando "Dudu" Américo da Silva in the São Cristóvão ring. Right
after that his first real match was made. It would be against Geo Omori on
October 8.

Put out that he and his brothers had been excluded from the event,
Carlos started a smear campaign to discredit the Omori-Ebert match, and the
outcome of the fight only helped him. Omori had imposed two conditions for
facing the American: that only submissions, not back-pins, would determine the
win, and that head butts not count. The six rounds drug on monotonously, and
the fight ended in a draw. That was all Carlos needed to assert through the
press that it had been a "work," meaning he flagged it as an
illegitimate fight. Carlos's campaign caused a harsh backlash against him in
the press but still the Gracie hit his mark: Fred Ebert's next fight would be
against Hélio Gracie on November 5 in the São Cristóvão ring. In theory it
would be anything goes, only forbidding "... biting, hair or ear pulling,
eye gauging, low blows and kicks." The rounds would last ten minutes apiece,
but there would be no rounds limit: the fight would only end with one of the
two fighters submitting. Winner takes all.

The Hélio-Ebert fight wouldn't be the first time all kinds of
strikes or moves were allowed. Generally, though, in this type of match each
fighter could only use the techniques proper to his martial art and violence
was kept to a minimum, which wasn't the case this time. In the first two rounds
Hélio, 20 kg (44 lbs) lighter than Ebert, did nothing more than defend as the
American pushed the pace. In round three, however, Hélio mercilessly fired off
a blizzard of elbows and knees that took his opponent by surprise. Ebert wasn't
counting on such a "breach of protocol" and aggressiveness from his
opponent, though, and merely defended as best he could and didn't
counter-attack in any way. Starting in the sixth round the pace ground to a
halt, with both fighters plenty fatigued. It was 1:45am and ten rounds into the
bout when something unprecedented happened: by police order the fight had to be
cut short because they had already gone well past the curfew on nighttime
events. The promoters did manage to persuade the police to authorize a final,
11th round, but it played out just as the previous ones had, and ultimately the
fight was declared a no contest. The first-ever fight with such a degree of
violence couldn't have gone by without criticism. A column in Diário de
Notícias newspaper three days later, on November 8, could easily have been a
21st century swipe at MMA :

"What needs to be
outright prohibited by the police (it seems this had been deliberated
beforehand) is the promoting of mixed matches. What we saw on Saturday was not
the style of fighting termed catch-as-catch-can in the United States, but a
bizarre mixture that shouldn't please anybody."

With Ebert's presence in Brazil also came the first of the countless
internal skirmishes that plagued the Gracie clan over the decades to come.
Three months after Hélio fought Ebert, the manager Romeu Cotta, on behalf of
his fighter George Gracie, approached the heads of São Cristóvão to set up a
fight with Ebert. The match was scheduled for December 10, and unlike the last
one, it wouldn't be anything-goes but luta-livre, with no pinning, only
submission or unconsciousness determining a winner. To avoid getting
interrupted by the police, this time it was imperative that the bout start
earlier. Almost as soon as the fight had been scheduled, Carlos started a
campaign to discredit George. He claimed his brother wasn't prepared to fight
Ebert, that he hadn't trained enough to overcome the enormous weight difference
separating them. He stated that, regardless of the result, George would not be
representing Gracie Academy. George, on his part, didn't sit back and take his
brother's discourse passively. He said that he indeed did not represent his
brother's academy, but his own, newly-inaugurated academy on 310 Catete St. He
then withdrew with his team to Paty do Alferes, a town in Rio de Janeiro’s countryside,
by train. Interestingly, the bout never took place. On the day of the fight
George failed to enter the ring for having fallen ill. Ebert would never again
fight in public in Brazil. Following the debacle, a fight between George and
Roberto Ruhmann was made. Shortly before they were to meet, though, Ruhamm suffered
a fall and seriously injured his arm, causing the fight to be called off. In
March 1933 Fred Ebert left Rio de Janeiro. With Oswaldo Gracie himself also
clearing out of Rio, Gracie Academy was left exclusively in the hands of Carlos
and Hélio.

With jiu-jitsu's victories over capoeira and boxing, the Japanese
art reached the zenith of its fame. Fighters from all corners of the country
converged on Rio de Janeiro, and clashes between the broad array of martial
arts were held. A typical program for an event generally included a number of
fights and, as a rule, closed out with a main bout involving some Gracie or
another or Geo Omori. Up until this point it's likely Carlos Gracie had heard
little or nothing about Jigoro Kano or judo. After all, he was very young when
he'd had contact with the art through Maeda, who had only just wrapped up his
career as a traveling fighter. As for Omori, though, that was a different story
altogether. He was Japanese and left Kodokan at a time when judo was just
becoming established in Japan. Omori knew exactly what Kano thought and what
the principles and rules of judo were. However, as did Maeda and others, he
opted to take a path philosophically and technically distinct. One interesting
example of Geo Omori's fighting philosophy and the confusion regarding the
rules afflicting these early bouts can be seen in his clash with Syrian
wrestler Roberto Ruhmann. While in São Paulo, Omori lost two fights. One was
under "jiu-jitsu rules" when he fought two fighters in a single fight
by alternating between them each round. The other was to Ruhmann, under
"wrestling rules," by back pin.

Roberto Ruhmann came ashore in Brazil around April 1931. He claimed
to be a 1924 Olympic champion, which doesn't correspond with reality. He wasn't
a heavyweight; in fact he was slightly lighter than Omori, but inspired awe for
his physical strength. Besides fighting professionally, he would also perform
feats of strength where he'd bend iron bars and lift 100 kg weights with just
two fingers. By the time Ruhmann had reached São Paulo, the challenges
"fad" was over and events were few and far between. His path crossed
with Omori's on June 13, 1931, just before the Japanese fighter left the city
for Rio de Janeiro. It was a "wrestling rules" match, where pinning
the opponent's shoulders to the ground for three seconds was all it took to
win. Furthermore, almost all submission holds were forbidden (though chokeholds
were allowed). Fighting without a gi and unable to apply his submission holds,
Omori couldn't keep up with the Syrian, who won by back-pin. Without much money
to be made in São Paulo, months later, in February of the next year, it was
Ruhmann's turn to make the move to the nation's capital. The loss in São Paulo
not sitting well with him, Omori immediately challenged Ruhmann to a rematch.

While Omori was appealing for his rematch, Ruhmann handily won his
first two fights in Rio de Janeiro, against João Baldi (via wrist lock in round
3) and against Germany's Adam Mayer. Aggressively pushing for a second shot at
Ruhmann, Omori claimed to anyone willing to listen that the rules of his first
meeting with Ruhmann had stripped him of any possibility of winning.
Discrediting his opponent, he also stated that the Syrian's manager had on the
occasion tracked him down to propose working the result (Omori had made a
similar accusation after his fight with Carlos Gracie). Ruhmann countered Omori
by asserting that the only reason he didn't whip him in the first round was
because he "... was begging me for mercy." The fact is that the
exchange of diatribes caused them to resent each other and sparked a heartfelt
rivalry between them.

For the rematch, Omori agreed not to use the gi, but he was adamant:
by no means would he accept that the outcome of the match be determined by back
pin. Omori demanded that he should "... be exposed to all the moves in
luta livre, or better yet, jiu-jitsu, which when performed without the gi are
very similar to the American means of self-defense[41]." By the end of February the bout agreement had been signed
and the match set for Saturday, March 12, 1932 at Theatro República. However,
as for the match rules, the contract rather than bringing the discussion to a
close only mystified things further for being so vague in the rules clause:

"The fight shall be
long enough for one of the opponents to be deemed the winner: Mr Geo Omori may
employ all the resources and rules of luta livre."

By Omori's interpretation, the fight could only end by the opponent
"submitting or losing consciousness," but by Ruhmann's reading that
only counted for Omori, who would fight under "jiu-jitsu rules," and
that he would be the winner if he were to pin Omori's back to the ground for
three seconds, as those were wrestling rules. The discussion continued during
the days leading up to the fight, and Omori asserted, in a rare allusion to
judo, that if that were the case then he would be the winner by merely
performing a throw on Ruhmann. According to Omori:

"I have the right
to apply all jiu-jitsu's resources and, consequently, all of its rules for
determining victory will have to be accepted. If that indeed be, a mere throw
putting my opponent's dorsal on the carpet will secure me triumph."

The controversy continued until the hour of the fight, when Ruhmann
refused to step on stage unless Omori agreed to the back-pin rule, but the
Japanese fighter was unyielding. Two hours of discussion ensued, until the
Syrian finally agreed to the "submission or loss of consciousness"
rule, so long as Omori agreed to split the purse regardless of the outcome.
With the agreement signed the two entered the ring, Omori with Japan's Rising
Sun flag stitched onto his shorts.

Round one under way, Ruhmann circles around the unwavering Japanese
fighter, spitting insults at him until the referee issues him a warning.
Approaching the end Omori pulls guard, attempting a guillotine that Ruhmann
wards off, and the round ends without much to get excited about. In the second
round Omori manages a takedown and lands with a chokehold already in place. It seems
like the end for Ruhmann, who manages to alleviate the pressure by squeezing on
Omori's neck with his hand and forcing him out of the fight area, obliging the
referee to step in to send them back to center ring. In round four, Ruhmann
tries to fend off Omori's arm and ends up landing a punch to the Japanese
fighter's face. The referee immediately calls a stop to the bout and declares
Ruhmann disqualified for an illegal move.

The disqualification was controversial, obviously, and made it so
their taunting each other carried on after the fight. Ruhmann alleged, in the
days that followed, that Omori had "got him in the crotch" in the
second round, which he understood to be a low blow. Now, the Japanese fighter
countered:

"To avoid
discussion I must make it clear that two feet on the crotch is nothing more,
nothing less than the jiu-jitsu guard. Nobody saw that so-called low blow, not
even the judges."

Still up in arms, Ruhmann dug up a judo 1908 rule book in French
(probably derived from the Butokukai rules of 1899) stating that an ippon would
determine the end to a bout, implying that the "jiu-jitsu rules" used
there were not the ones in force in Japan. Either way, the fact is that with a
somewhat frustrating result, talk of a rubber match immediately ensued.

The tie-breaker would only end up happening in the last days of the
year, and again the pre-fight slurs and bickering about the rules. Oddly this
time Omori agreed to make an allowance that pinning the back to the ground for
two seconds would determine a winner. The third Omori-Ruhmann fight went down
on December 20, 1932[42] at the old Riachuelo St field. The venue had gone quite a while
without hosting a fight event, so it had to undergo a complete facelift first.
And once again the crowd would be left wanting...

Before the big day rumors circulate the fight is going to be a work.
Only adding to suspicions is the fact that Omori doesn't have a Japanese flag
on his trunks, which he is said to only do when in a work, to not dishonor his
country. The first round does get a bit lively, though, with Omori sticking
Ruhmann in his guard and sinking a guillotine choke. The Syrian defends with a
“fish hook,” though, which is nothing more than sticking his fingers in his
opponent's mouth to try and "hook him out." The illegal maneuver
forces Omori to abandon the hold, bleeding from the wound it opened in his
mouth. At another moment in the round Ruhmann buckles on his knee, which he
injured before the fight, and shows signs of being in pain. Starting with the
second round the fight loses steam and unfolds almost entirely on the feet,
with Omori doing his best not to get grabbed, possibly out of fear of getting
pinned. The crowd's irritation with the two-sided inactivity is made clear when
in the fourth round a lit cigar is tossed into the ring, singeing Omori, who
grabs it and throws it out as Ruhmann looks on in shock. The referee demands
more combativeness from the fighters, and in the seventh round the two tumble
to the ground in a sacrifice throw from Omori, who touches his shoulders to the
ground. Ruhmann asks the ref if he hasn't won the match, getting no for an
answer, as the referee feels he wasn't the conductor of the throw; Omori had
dropped back in sacrifice. Irritated, the Syrian fighter applies a finger lock
on Omori, who responds in kind as the bell sounds an end to the round. Had the
fight truly been a work, this would have been one of those that spiraled out of
control and into the realm of real fighting. As it happened, in the eighth
round Ruhmann is noticeably out of sorts and the fight is looking more like a
brawl. He shoves Omori, who reciprocates and gets smacked on his neck. Ruhmann
again lunges forth, and the pair fall to the ground, Omori on bottom. At this
point an out-of-control Ruhmann throws a violent punch to the face of Omori,
who immediately counters with a kick to the belly of the Syrian, who keels over
in pain. Amid a hail of chairs flung into the ring, Omori gets to his feet and
has his hand raised by the referee, who disqualifies Ruhmann for the illegal
blow and declares the Japanese fighter the victor. That is the melancholic
closing act in the series of encounters between the two. Attending the event,
Carlos Gracie exclaims from the audience: "That was a real fight. Omori
won the honeymoon and the divorce..."

The fights against wrestlers, boxers and the like continued
throughout the decade. The technique the Japanese brought to the West early in
the century improved, was adapted to no-gi and anything-goes combat and thereon
evolved. However, the technical evolution the fight style itself underwent
remained restricted to clashes with other arts. From Maeda to Omori, the vast
majority of Japanese who did demonstrations in the West had passed through
Kodokan and chosen a path separate from the one Jigoro Kano had envisioned, at
times suffering "consciousness crises" because of it. Outside this
group, all there was was a confused mass. The overall public, the Gracies and
the opponents from other martial arts hadn't an inkling of how the philosophical
concept evolved from the Meiji era up to judo's consolidation. To them it was
simple: they practiced the Japanese art of self-defense, which they deemed to
be the most effective one there is. With the consolidation of judo in the world
and the Japanese wave of migration to Brazil, it was inevitable that the
concepts would start to come into focus. With Rio de Janeiro at the start of
the 1930s as the backdrop, this process began when the press started to
question the fact that there weren't any fights pitting jiu-jitsu against
jiu-jitsu. Indeed, an editorial piece in Diário Carioca from January 24, 1932,
a few days after the challenge against boxing, titled "ABOUT JIU-JITSU'S
LATEST VICTORIES" said:

"For us to
recognize jiu-jitsu's value we need to see it against another practitioner of
that [same] means of defense. That way things will be on their proper
footing."

That line of questioning was more pertinent than even the columnists
themselves had been thinking. Ever since the Japanese arrived in America in
1904/5, legitimate bouts (if not all, at least most of them) didn't extend
beyond the fights with other arts. Public fights between two jiu-jitsu stylists
tended to be exhibitions between two fighters from the same group, like for
instance the members of Count Koma's troupe. These "bouts" were more
for demonstration than a form of competition. When Donato Pires opened his gym
in Rio de Janeiro, shortly thereafter becoming Gracie Academy, what was taught
to the general public were essentially self-defense, and the small group
inclined to take on challenge matches were taught lessons in real combat. The
possibility of competitive jiu-jitsu matches started to arise when, just after
the jiu-jitsu-boxing challenge match of early 1932, Geo Omori distanced himself
from the Gracies. Following his fight with Ruhmann, Omori opened his own
academy on 142 Conde de Irajá Street, in Rio de Janeiro's South Side. To help
with the teaching, he brought in from São Paulo another Kodokan judoka, named
Takashi Namiki. Namiki hailed from a small town near Tokyo called Shiki, and he
joined Kodokan when he was 13 years old, earning his black belt four years
later. He landed in Brazil in early 1931, establishing himself in Araçatuba,
São Paulo State, where he practiced judo with other members of the growing
Japanese community. He moved to Rio de Janeiro to assist Omori, though he was
more "canonic" than his companion; Namiki was opposed to challenge
matches, and did his best to avoid them.

However, the first public exhibition of a jiu-jitsu match since
Count Koma passed through Rio de Janeiro nearly 20 years earlier didn't involve
exponents of the sport, but two of Omori and Namiki's students: Saburo Senda
and Mineyoshi Fukushima.[43] The two were in one of the preliminary bouts on a July 16, 1932
card headlined by Geo Omori and Syrian fighter Yussuf[44] at Coliseu Internacional arena. The fight between Saburo and
Mineyoshi was a lively affair, but ended in a draw. The exhibition between
Omori's students failed to quell the criticism from the press, which insisted
on a fight between two real rivals. In fact, just three days after the fight A
Noite newspaper printed an article on the subject: "A MATCH THE PUBLIC
WOULD LIKE TO SEE... Why don't jiu-jitsu aces face off?" That was the
incentive Omori and Namiki needed. As Namiki didn't speak Portuguese, Omori
issued the challenge on his behalf: "... Namiki will take on any opponent,
even the Gracie brothers, in a jiu-jitsu-rules match." Though made to
"any opponent," the challenge obviously addressed the Gracies, seeing
as theirs was the only other jiu-jitsu academy in town. It was the opportunity
Carlos Gracie had been waiting for. He immediately declared that the brothers
accepted the challenge. Days later, an enthusiastic Hélio stated that he would
be the one to face Namiki. To do so he put forth just two conditions: winner
takes all, and a winner can only be determined by "submission or loss of
consciousness," which Namiki agreed to right away. The fight was set for
September 3 at República Theater, then rescheduled for the 10th of the same
month at Teatro João Caetano at Tiradentes Square[45] possibly to not "compete" with an event going on at São
Cristóvão field, where Omori defeated Portuguese fighter Manoel Fernandes with
Saburo and Mineyoshi again featuring on the undercard. While pelted by a storm,
Mineyoshi overcame Saburo.

Namiki and Hélio were about the same age (the Japanese fighter was
21, and Hélio would turn 19 a few weeks after the fight), and there wasn't much
of a size discrepancy, with Namiki weighing 72 kilos to Hélios 65 on the day of
the bout. At first the prevailing opinion was that the Japanese fighter would
win, even though he had no public-fighting experience (this would be his first
appearance); after all, he was a bona fide Kodokan black belt. As the fight
date approached, however, Hélio exuded confidence, and questions began to
surface about whether the Brazilian might actually have what it takes to beat
the Japanese fighter at his own art. Although direct provocations were kept to
a moderate level, expectations surrounding the bout were enormous.

The anxiety would only grow come fight day. One of the preliminary
matches had Saburo and Mineyoshi facing off for a third time, with Mineyoshi
winning by choke in the fourth round. Now, as for the main event, it lived up
to everyone's expectations. From the outset Hélio assumes his usual guard
position, a stance more defensive by nature, with the Japanese fighter taking
the initiative throughout but physically depleting himself. After two whole
rounds enduring intense pressure from Namiki, in the waning seconds of the
third round the Japanese fighter slips up and Hélio, physically less worn out
at that point, sinks a guillotine choke, but Namiki's saved by the bell. In the
next round, the fourth, the intensity of the fight seems to have taken its toll
on the both of them. Namiki takes Hélio down and keeps top position the entire
time. In the fifth round comes the opportunity Hélio's been waiting for.
Capitalizing on a slip-up from his opponent, the Brazilian manages an arm-bar
that has Namiki's arm extended out to breaking point. Without so much as a
change of expression, though seeming to the crowd to be about to lose his arm,
the Japanese fighter manages to work it free while Hélio makes a superhuman
effort to snap it. It's the last act from the two of them before fatigue
precludes any more action before time is up. The match is declared a draw.
Namiki pushed the pace for most of the fight, but Hélio's valiance and arm-bar
made him appear to have won. Curiously, after the fight, Namiki would lose all
reticence about accepting and issuing challenges to other martial arts: just
five days after facing Hélio he was in Niterói fighting – and beating – the
wrestler Manoel Victorino at an event where Omori, Mineyoshi and Saburo also
won their fights.

Given the inconclusive outcome to the Hélio-Namiki fight, the
rivalry between the two academies escalated and a clash between Omori and a
Gracie became inevitable. Early the very next year, 1933, newspapers broke the
story about the next jiu-jitsu match: Geo Omori would be facing off with George
Gracie. At this point George had reconciled with his family but divided his
time between Gracie Academy and the classes he was teaching at the newly-formed
Special Police Force[46]. While the bout agreement was being inked, Omori was interviewed by
A Batalha newspaper for its March 12 issue, where he recounts the story of
jiu-jitsu history, Jigoro Kano's founding of Kodokan, and above all how

"At the very Kodou
Kwan (sic) school itself, Jigoro Kano decided to modify the name of the
Japanese form of fighting from being 'jiu-jitsu' to 'jiu-dou' (sic).
Even in this day and age, when there is talk of 'jiu-dou', it is recognized
right away that it is the form of fighting that obeys the precepts of Professor
Jigoro Kano."

In the same interview Omori goes further and publishes the entire
set of rules for competition "jiu-dou." In it, obviously, there are
two ways of bringing an end to a match: "one by throw, and the other by
holding on the ground..." He also breaks down the concept of "holding
on the ground": "... to hold him under certain conditions for a
certain amount of time (as determined by the referee), including by choke, arm-
or leg-locks." Omori's interview ends there. He mentions no link between
these rules and the "jiu-jitsu rules" that basically boiled down to
"submission or loss of consciousness." It's hard to say what Omori's
aim was with the interview. Perhaps he was concerned (like Maeda and others before
him) about separating the noble effort of Kano from the chaotic cauldron of
challenge matches in which he had become embroiled. The fact is, even after the
interview, Omori never tried to negotiate "jiu-dou" rules for his
matches.

The fight with George Gracie, in the midst of their fervent rivalry,
was ultimately set for the 8th of April at São Cristovão field. It would be
under "jiu-jitsu rules," as could be expected, in eight ten-minute
rounds.

The evening of Saturday, April 8, 1933 is none too inviting for a
show held out in the open. The rain drizzling incessantly the entire day drives
off part of the crowd and attendance is modest at best for the fight. Upon
entering the ring, Omori complains to the referee about George's gi. The
complaint isn't unfounded, as by this time Omori's already made a habit of
wearing long-sleeved gis akin to modern ones. George, like his brothers, is
still partial to the old, short-sleeved gi tops and pants, which are harder to
sink a grip on. The referee doesn't side with Omori, though, and signals a
start to the fight. What the crowd sees is Geo Omori retreating in defensive
stance the entire time. George, on the other hand, can't find a way through his
opponent's blockade, and the fight plays out monotonously save a single spurt
of excitement when the Gracie manages to a tight arm-lock in the fourth round.
The stoic Japanese fighter is finally made to wince. He is fighting a losing
battle to save his appendage when the bell ending the round chimes in to save
him. Once the fight is over and declared a draw, Omori justifies his passive
game plan by saying he injured two fingers on his left hand prior to the fight,
which hampered his ability to grip.

Omori vs George was followed by a pause in the series of jiu-jitsu
matches. The truth made apparent by them, the "submission or loss of
consciousness" rule combined with a pre-defined number of rounds poses a
problem: all the fighter at a disadvantage has to do is stall in defensive
position until the fight has run its course. Of course, they could stipulate
that there would be no limit to the number of rounds, but that generally
implies the fight will drag on for hours on end, which would tend to wear on
the crowd's patience. That went for luta-livre fights as well, not just jiu-jitsu
ones. As a natural consequence, the crowd started to get fed up with these
results. The solution to this quandary would be discovered unintentionally,
accidentally over the course of that year of 1933, when, in the months
following the Omori-George fight, MMA as we now know it was invented, and
George Gracie would be a key player in this development[47].

Tico Soledade was a beast of brute force packed on an 80 kg (176 lb)
frame. His rivalry with the Gracies went way back. One day, early the previous
year, Tico went to Gracie Academy and, behind closed doors, challenged George
to fight him right then and there. The two put on gis, and within seconds Tico
had tapped out. They then took off the gis, and again Tico swiftly submitted.
Tico clearly had his own version of the events of their meeting, saying George
had gotten the worst of the action. So as was to be expected, the rivalry
between them started boiling over with time, and in 1933 conflict was imminent.
It seemed a sure thing that at any moment Rio de Janeiro's streets would see
another fistic spectacle. On the first Wednesday of July, Tico chased down
George to settle their differences the very next day, behind closed doors, no
rules, anything goes. George, not feeling too prepared, proposed Tico fight his
brother Hélio in two days' time. Catching wind of what was going on, the
commissioner for the special-police force (to whom George was instructor),
Euzébio de Queiroz, proposed they hold the fight at police headquarters, the
Pavilhão das Festas events hall used for the 1922 independence centenary
celebrations, since they'd been holding public amateur-fighting events and even
had one set for the next Saturday, July 8, with a card composed of little-known
fighters. George liked the idea and accepted both the date and the condition of
it being real fighting, vale-tudo.

The George Gracie-vs-Tico Soledade bout was a milestone on several
counts. Other fights between martial arts had been drawn up as "no
rules," but as we've seen, usually each fighter would stick to his
background art. Hélio Gracie had partially broken that paradigm in his fight
with Ebert, but that was a one-sided affair, as the dumbstruck wrestler didn't
reciprocate the assault and stuck to the techniques that came naturally to him.
This time, though, things would be different, with both fighters fully aware of
what was in store for them. Another distinguishing aspect, one that would
endure until the advent of sport MMA, was the genuine rivalry between fighters
who flat-out hated each other. Up until then, it was normal for fighters to
badmouth each other in the press and then be seen jovially rubbing elbows with
each other at bars around town. The arrival of vale-tudo on the scene,
with opponents mutually tearing bits from one another, brought an end to that
phase. Also, real rivalry made it impossible to work fights at such events.

At the same time, yet another novel aspect that started to take
shape in 1933 was the greater reliability of play-by-play descriptions of the
fights, due to the press having become more familiar with the events. The
notoriety of the clashes also made it so photographic records started to
appear, making it easier to understand just what went on in the fights.

As the opponents stand across the ring from each other on the
evening of July 8, 1932, George tells Tico: "I admire your courage."
As the bell rings Tico' hasn't a doubt in his mind that his opponent's
utterance was nothing more than a bluff. The crowd is awed by the
disproportionate size discrepancy between the fighters. George weighs a measly
58 kg(128 lbs) compared to Tico's 80 (174). The fight begins and Tico lands a
right on George, who tags him back with a low kick. With shorter reach and
unable to get a clean strike on his foe, George eats another punch and lands
with his back on the ground, holding his feet up in open guard[48]. Still standing, Tico sees a chance to grab a leg and go for a
classic foot-lock. George knows just what to do and sweeps him by grabbing both
Ticos ankles and kicking him forward as his feet point backwards. Getting the
better of the scramble, George lands mounted on Tico, who reflexively extends
an arm to protect himself. In a split second Gracie has his arm outstretched in
an arm-bar. As a Hail Mary alternative to letting his arm snap, Tico hoists
George into the air while still attached to his arm and flings him out of the
ring. The two continue to fight on the cement, with a frenzied crowd huddled
around, trying to cordon off an ad hoc enclosure. The referee finally manages
to pry them off each other. George gets back in the ring, and Tico soon returns
too. The Gracie realizes his opponent isn't just physically exhausted, he's
psychologically in shambles. It's the beginning of the end. George closes in on
Tico, landing some punches just to set up the takedown. As Tico hits the ground
he goes straight to all fours, and George takes his back, "espalhando
o frango[49]," and blitzing him with a salvo of strikes to his head.
Overwhelmed, Tico tries to defend but hasn't a clue what to do, and George
wraps an arm around his neck for a snug mata-leão. Ironically, in a
photo immortalizing this moment one can see George crossing his legs in front
of Tico's legs as he straddles his back. If Tico were up to speed on his
technique he could tap the Gracie out with a foot-lock right there, but that's
not how it goes, and it's Tico who does the tapping in submission, which goes
unnoticed by the referee. George doesn't release the hold until his opponent's
lights are out. Amid a crowd delirious from the five minutes of fighting
they've just witnessed, George, not to see a penny for his efforts, is beaming.
He relishes what he's just been through but has no idea, at this time, what
will come of this experiment 60 years down the road. As for Tico, he now knows
what George said to him at the start of the fight was no bluff...

The decisive end to the bout doesn't discourage other fighters from
calling George out. In late September that same year, Manoel Fernandes, the
same one who'd accused Carlos of proposing to work a fight at the end of the
previous year, starts insistingly trying to set up a fight with George,
inclined to fight under rules and conditions of the Gracie's choosing. Towards
the end of the following month George finally makes a pronouncement. He accepts
Manoel Fernandes's challenge so long as it's vale-tudo. Oblivious to
what the three letters stand for, George has become an MMA fighter. He claims
not to have spoken up earlier because he was under contract to Empreza
Pugilistica Brasilieira, owned by the manager Paschoal Segreto Sobrinho[50], and as such could only fight publicly in events organized by him.
However, should they not reach an accord, he would happily fight Fernandes
privately, behind closed doors. That proves unnecessary. Agreement signed, the
fight is set for October 28 at Paschoal's very own venue, the recently
inaugurated Stadium Brasil[51], right next door to Pavilhão das Festas.

The fight about to ensue, Manoel Fernandes enters the ring first,
followed by George. At the sound of the bell, it's clear Fernandes wants to
keep his opponent's hands off him. In a striking exchange, George pokes the eye
of Fernandes, who complains to the referee. Impatient about how the round is
unfolding, George leaps to fasten his guard around Fernandes's waist, and the
two drop to the ground. The Portuguese fighter tries an ineffectual
ground-and-pound attack, handily defended by George, who opens his guard and
lets his opponent get to his feet as the Gracie remains stretched out on the
canvas. At this point Fernandes makes the very same mistake Tico'd made. In
grabbing one of George's feet he positions himself close up on his lying
adversary, who is almost right under his legs. The sweep is easy to execute at
this range, and George finishes the move mounted on Fernandes, from where he
launches a flurry of blows to the face of his opponent, who, clueless as to how
to defend, tries to block by extending his arms. The transition to arm-bar is
immediate, and within seconds George's prey is tapping out in desistance.
George is euphoric. A few days after the fight he declares: "Now I'm
waiting for more opponents, and I only want fights where we can do as we
please. If it's anything-goes, I'm there!" It wouldn't be long before the
next adversary cropped up. And no-holds-barred fighting had never seen anything
like it...

On the occasion of George's fight with Fernandes, Carlos Gracie
issues a challenge to Geo Omori on behalf of his student José Cayat. Omori
feels belittled, insulted, and declares:

"Carlos Gracie
shouldn't be making challenges for his students. That's ugly. He, a teacher,
like me, should only issue challenges in his own name. He's the one who always
prepares his brothers for the fights they do in Brazil, so it is only right
that he, as an exceptional master, accept a fight with me. I want to face
Carlos Gracie under any conditions whatsoever and as soon as possible."

The feud between them has been brewing for quite a while. Following
their first fight, back in São Paulo, Omori had suggested (and later denied)
that the fight had been a work. After a period of reconciliation with the
Gracie, just after he moved to Rio de Janeiro, Omori again had a falling out
with Carlos and then opened his own academy. The task of defending his brother
is relayed to the dogged George, though. Carlos, he says, is retired and no
longer trains. George brings up his first encounter with Omori that same year
when he nearly tapped him out with an arm-bar. However, the bone of George's
contention with Omori has nothing to do with him challenging Carlos nor the
first time they locked horns. He's furious at the Japanese fighter for having
trained Manoel Fernandes to fight him; to George that's downright inexcusable.
He spells out that Omori was a man who

"... dared infringe
jiu-jitsu's code of honor by with malice aforethought seeking out Manoel
Fernandes to teach him, to demoralize the art of self-defense of which he
himself is a practitioner."

Alas, here you have another facet of what for decades was part of
the philosophy that would become Brazilian jiu-jitsu: never train a fighter
from another martial art to face one from jiu-jitsu. As we shall see, this
tenet will prove vital in upholding the isolation that protects Brazilian
jiu-jitsu from getting swallowed up by judo over the decades to come. Truly
peeved by Omori, George wraps up by saying he wants to fight Omori with no
holds barred and no gi. Omori responds to the accusation of being a traitor by
saying he never coached Fernandes, just allowed him to use of his training
facilities. At first Omori isn't too keen on doing a vale-tudo, saying,
"Where technique disappears there can be no beauty in one's attitudes and
the sport loses its purpose." Nevertheless, after careful consideration
and fearing being tagged as a coward, Omori accepts the terms.

Carlos, George's manager, sees a chance to cash in on the fight, and
in negotiating with Paschoal Segreto asks for an exorbitant sum, which
stretches the purse deliberations out over a period of almost two months.
Impatient and impulsive, George is already growling about fighting Omori behind
closed doors when they come to an agreement and the event is finally scheduled
for December 23. The day before the showdown, however, a bombshell crashes:
Omori gives an interview where he returns to the subject of his first fight
with Carlos. He again asserts that the fight had been a work at the request of
Carlos's father and that the arm-bar he incurred was a betrayal of the
agreement. True or not, the fact remains that on stepping into the Stadium Brasil
ring that 23rd of December 1933, the two opponents have nothing but hatred for
each other.

Time for the fighters to make their entrance, and Omori goes first.
The size difference between them is slight; it's the first time George isn't
much smaller than his opponent[52]. The bell sounds a start to round one, and George takes the
initiative. Early on a brief pause is called to let the Japanese fighter
recover from a low blow. Back at it, George manages a takedown on Omori, who
desperately struggles not to let the Gracie mount him, and with great skill he
achieves the reversal and lands in the Brazilian's guard. George, as always,
plays open guard, and when Omori tries for the foot-lock he goes for the same
sweep he'd pulled off on Tico and Fernandes, but Omori braces himself against
the ropes and avoids going down. The round ends with the Japanese fighter
bleeding from the left eye. In the second round, Omori has his finest moment of
the fight. The Brazilian tries body-clinching him up against the ropes, and
Omori makes the most of the opportunity to sink a tight guillotine while still
on his feet. Clamped down on George's neck, he pulls guard to try and produce
the pressure he hopes will end the fight, but the Gracie manages to keep his
opponent from getting his legs around his waist. He then pounds on Omori's
liver until he gives up on the attack. From the third round to the last, what
the crowd bears witness to is a curious sight. Omori seems to be fading, but
George realizes his strategy from the last two fights will be to no avail
against his Japanese foe. As a result, the two fighters spend all of the
remaining eight rounds trading blows on their feet in a violent spectacle, each
leaving his bloody mark on the other's face[53]. Only at the end of the tenth and final round does George manage to
get Omori down in attempting an arm-lock, which the Japanese fighter skillfully
defends. The scrap over, the promoters still try to force a continuation until
there's a winner. In the post-fight commotion, Omori withdraws from the stage
and the referee raises George's arm, declaring him the winner. Days later, the
decision, clearly a breach of the bout agreement's terms, is reassessed and the
result is officially declared a draw. As we shall see, the fight makes such a
deep impression that it changes the course of George Gracie's life forever.

Disapproval of the gory battle between George and Omori would come
at once. Days later, a headline emblazoned on the December 26 edition of
Correio da Manhã: FIGHT BETWEEN OMORI AND GRACIE A GROTESQUE, OUTRAGEOUS
SPECTACLE UNBECOMING OF A CIVILIZED PEOPLE." The organization regulating
fights in the city was the newly formed Pugilism Commission[54] of Rio de Janeiro. Prior to the fight, the commission had gathered
to deliberate the rules (or lack thereof) of the bout and, in a nonconsensual
decision, came to agree that it would be a vale-tudo. Faced with the
backlash from the bloody spectacle, though, on that very December 26 the
Commission banned no-holds-barred fighting, only permitting punches in boxing
matches.

George Gracie would return to the ring soon after, in January of the
following year, facing Dudu, in a boring no-gi match under "submission or
loss of consciousness" rules where he spent most of the time fighting
defensively from bottom position, ending in a draw. Not long later, that same
Dudu would take on Geo Omori on March 24 at Stadium Brasil, a fight ending
controversially. As the Pugilism Commission had prohibited vale-tudo
matches, the rules were tweaked to allow strikes using the forearm, with
neither punches nor elbows permitted. Naturally such rules made the referee's
job next to impossible in trying to discern whether a strike counted or not.
Omori and Dudu fought under these rules without gis. Early on, Omori gripes to
the referee that Dudu punched him, but the referee feels the blow was valid and
orders them to carry on. Inexplicably Omori loses interest in the fight, turns
his back on his opponent and continues to carp to the referee. Dudu, then, from
behind sinks a mata-leão on Omori, who to defend executes a hip throw
that lands Dudu on the ground, while still yammering to the ref. Dudu now goes
for another mata-leão, but this time he pulls Omori to the ground and
crosses his legs to lock in the position. With no other recourse, Omori taps
out in desistance.

In a way, the Dudu-vs-Omori fight marks the beginning of the end for
the Japanese fighter. In the uproar that followed, as he exited the ring Omori
assailed the referee, Gumercindo Taboada. As punishment, days later the
Pugilism Commission suspended him. Unable to fight, Omori went back to teaching
at his gym and at the YMCA. Meanwhile the nonstarter of his fish business
outside the ring continued to wreak havoc on his personal finances. A year and
a half after fighting Dudu and having completed the suspension imposed on him,
Omori had another challenge lined up on the horizon. On his return, he would
take on Portuguese jiu-jitsu-stylist Manoel Grillo, who would be making his
Brazilian debut. Grillo was massive, weighing 90kg, 20 kilos heavier than
Omori. The word on the street about him was that he was a student of Raku's,
who he "beat" extraordinarily some time ago. Supposedly, Raku,
already in the twilight of his career and over 50 years of age, at one of his exhibitions
had challenged any takers to a bout of "jiu-do." Grillo, oblivious to
what "jiu-do" entailed, stepped up to the stage. On reaching out to
shake hands, though, Raku suffered an unexpected, powerful kick that dropped
him to the ground dazed. Grillo then followed up with a straight punch to the
Japanese master's face, knocking him out cold. Hunted down and arrested by the
police, Grillo was released after Raku forgave him, and he even went on to take
lessons from him after that.

The Grillo-Omori match is held on the 5th of October 1935 at Stadium
Brasil, both wearing gis and under "jiu-jitsu rules." Early on, Omori
is clearly superior. He body-clinches Grillo but takes a tomoenage in return.
Once on the ground, though, Omori manages to mount Grillo and attempt a choke.
The Portuguese fighter escapes, only to get snared in an arm-lock, but then the
fight is  interrupted when the two fall out of the ring. After the restart,
Omori in a lapse of attention ends up stuck in a guillotine. In the process of
defending, Omori is lifted up into the air and violently hurled out of the
ring. The ref starts the count for Omori to make his way back to the ring. He
doesn't return, though, and the Portuguese fighter is declared the winner.
After the fight, rumors abound about the outcome being fixed so that a win from
Grillo would make the Pugilism Commission penalize Omori again, this time
causing him to lose his purse. It's a melancholic end to the master's
professional-fighting career. Omori never fights in Rio de Janeiro again. With
his financial situation deteriorating further and further, late in 1937 he
leaves his wife and daughter in the city and heads for Belo Horizonte, the
capital of Minas Gerais State, where fight fever is in full swing. Omori has a
hard time getting fights. In early 1938 he manages to set one up with George
Gracie in the state capital but it gets canceled. To generate some income he
lands a job as a janitor at the Belo Horizonte Feira de Amostras fair aquarium.
He dies a few weeks after that. The state of medicine what it was at the time,
there's no precise diagnosis of his illness[55], but it could well be he just lost his will to live amid all the
decadence. What Omori didn't know, at the time of his death, was that his
decision to return to the ring on arriving in São Paulo had lifted his name out
of anonymity forever. The judoka who was but one of thousands doing
demonstrations around the world would end up immortalized as one of the
protagonists in the birth of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the first to consistently
agree to fight without the gi.

Back to 1934, the Gracies' first matches with Omori and Namiki set
the ball rolling for the "jiu-jitsu rules" challenge matches between
Rio de Janeiro academies. It was a question of time before new challenges would
arise. And it wouldn't be long in coming. A few days after Omori lost to Dudu,
another Japanese fighter, known as Myaki,[56] managed by Luiz Segreto and his Empresa Pugilistica Brasileira (the
one that owned Stadium Brasil), appeared on the scene with a challenge that
rang of a certain arrogance: he challenged all takers, especially the Gracie
brothers, so long as they responded within 48 hours. As George was locked down
in a contract, Myaki's first fight would be against another fighter, the Syrian
Roberto Ruhmann, and would be in the gi. Myaki fought (and lost to) Roberto
Ruhmann at Stadium Brasil on April 14. Despite succumbing to a guillotine, the
Syrian's specialty, in the 22nd minute, Myaki captured the crowd's imagination
for his dexterity. Several times he was on top of Ruhmann, and at a certain
point he sunk an arm-bar that his opponent only escaped by relying on his
exceptional strength, picking the Japanese fighter up off the ground. Myaki
thus earned his shot at one of the Gracies.

Hélio Gracie was readied to take on Myaki at a fight initially
scheduled for May 12, 1934. There was much talk of what could be expected of
Hélio, as it would be his first appearance since a serious accident that nearly
cost him his leg ten months prior. The severity of the injury and the lengthy
inactive spell made it impossible to predict how the fight would go. The
Helio-Myaki fight would be postponed, though, and in its stead went another
matchup, between George Gracie and Shigeo, a young teammate of Myaki's, on May
16. For the first time George Gracie was fighting someone smaller than him. He
weighed 63kg for the fight, while Shigeo tipped the scales at just 61. When the
fight started, it was clear to George that they were ushering in a new phase
right then: just seconds after the opening bell, the Japanese fighter enters
with a perfect hip throw that sends the Gracie sailing across the stage. George
quickly puts his opponent in his guard and gets to work. The Brazilian doesn't
seem to be in his best shape, though, and the Japanese fighter manages to mount
him, the first time ever a Gracie has that done to him. A photo of the match
shows the Japanese fighter in the half-guard of George, who displays
exceptional flexibility in defending. Shigeo again mounts George, who endeavors
to escape. At a certain point, while playing guard, the Gracie attempts an
arm-lock but comes up short. He gets his hands positioned for a choke on the
opponent's gi but only produces mild pressure. A little later he tries the same
move again, cleverly getting his opponent to think the chokehold offers no
danger. The third time, however, the pressure he exerts is tremendous. Seconds
before passing out Shigeo taps in desistance. This fight marks the beginning of
a new era. Shigeo set in motion the wave of challenges from judokas who rose
through the ranks at Kano's school from an early age, ones ever more geared
towards fighting on the feet. George must have been surprised at how easily
Shigeo threw him, before he had time to think. On the other hand, Yamashita and
Ito's old "with the back on the ground" game had evolved by leaps and
bounds to the point of being almost insurmountable. That meant a tremendous
positional advantage for the Gracies, who were next to impossible to beat in a
"submission or loss of consciousness" fight as they could at any
moment retreat to defensive stance and bide their time until they tie the fight
if their attacks don't pan out.

Hélio and Myaki's unfinished business still loomed. Their fight had
to be put on the back burner, though, as Carlos, George and Hélio were in jail
for beating up Manoel Rufino dos Santos. Once the presidential pardon set them
free, though, the fight was finally set for June 23. Before the action begins
Myaki protests the short-sleeved gi top and pants Hélio is wearing, but the
Pugilism Commission decides to get the fight started. There is, however,
controversy as to the referees, with one fighter not accepting the name the
other suggests. The impasse is settled by a third name being picked to oversee
the fight. Combat underway, the action goes almost straight to the ground, with
Hélio playing guard on bottom and demonstrating the same flexibility as his
brother. Myaki tries a classic hand-on-collar pass, but completing the maneuver
is no easy task against so flexible an opponent. Now and again Hélio tries to
sweep placing his feet on his opponent's crotch, hoping to put him off balance
and making it harder to pass. The Japanese fighter starts to fatigue and tries
in vain to choke Hélio from within his guard. Twenty-five minutes in and Myaki
is running out of steam, and at this moment Hélio manages to sweep and land in
the mount. Unhurried, he fits his hands into his opponent's collar and starts
to torque. The Brazilian turns to the referee and says, "He's going to
sleep!" The ref waves them on. When Hélio feels the arm his adversary was
using to alleviate the pressure go limp he lets go, and Myaki collapses
unconscious. Queried after the fight as to why he didn't tap, Myaki asserts, "I'll
die before I tap." Of the 26 minutes the fight lasted, Hélio spent exactly
22 of them playing guard.

Miyaki and Shigeo's stint in Rio was brief. Immediately following
the fight there was talk of a rematch, but it never happened. Myaki returned to
São Paulo, where he produced a team of judokas called Landory Chomukan that
included Myaki himself and Murakami, Issida, Misawa, Naritomi, Yamada, Naoite
Ono, Iwawe, Azuma, Takassawa and Tigusa, not to mention a young fighter
heralded as a phenomenon named Yassuite Ono. The troupe's October 20, 1934
debut was a smashing success[57].

A few days before the George-vs-Shigeo fight a pro-wrestling troupe
led by the Zbyszco brothers would roll into town. The Polish ringleaders Wladek
and mainly his older brother Stanislaus were famous pro-wrestlers, from the
generation where legitimate fights were already pretty much unheard of. The
troupe's appearance at Riachuelo field was a moderate success though they
didn't make it clear to the crowd that the fights were fake. It wouldn't be long
before the Zbyszcos and the Gracies were at loggerheads. Days after George
outfought Shigeo, between the third and fourth fights at their May 19 show a
gi-clad Stanislau stepped up to the ring and said he was waiting for a Gracie
to show his face and fight him. The opportunity came when the Hélio-Miyaki
match was canceled in late July. In Miyaki's place that July 29, Wladek wore a
gi to the ring to take on the Gracie. The promoters had to leap some hurdles
the Pugilism Commission put before them before they could put on the show. The
first obstacle was the commission's reluctance to allow a fight with an
over-40kg weight discrepancy between the fighters. That one was circumvented
with the argument that the gi would minimize the weight difference, which, not
without debate, was somehow accepted. The second problem was the commission's
misgivings about the chances of the fight being a work. To deal with that one,
Zbyszco (but curiously not Hélio) had to deposit a sum that would be lost,
along with the fight purse, were the commission to suspect foul play. And there
didn't turn out to be any. However, it was one of the most monotonous fights
ever reported. At the start of the first round Hélio immediately pulls the
opponent into his guard. An experienced wrestler and a hefty fellow, Zbyszco
doesn't allow room for any submissions and sticks his head up against Hélio's
chest to keep him from sinking a choke. There's no way Hélio's going to sweep
him, but by the same token, the Polish fighter just plain doesn't have the
skills to threaten Hélio's guard and resigns himself to trying to choke him
through the guard, which Hélio has no trouble defending. In the second round,
early on the Polish fighter manages to take Hélio down, but from that point on
the round is just a replica of the first. The fight ends in a draw.

Soon after, George Gracie is matched up with a Zbyszco-troupe member
named Jack Conley. Prior to the fight, Carlos Gracie, at that time again
estranged from his brother George, goes to the press with venomous accusations
regarding the planned bout. He says that, given the weight difference,  lack of
gis and the back-pin rule, George doesn't stand the slightest chance. More
severe, though, is the claim that if George does indeed win the fight, it will
surely have been a work. The next day is George's turn to fire back at Carlos
for attacking him, saying his brother was never a fighter and that he wasn't
the one who taught him jiu-jitsu.

It was in that climate that George  on August 14 stepped up to the
ring before a small crowd to take on Conley. Without a gi and under the usual
"submission or loss of consciousness" rule, the fight was set for two
20-minute rounds and featured something new: there had to be a winner. If no
one gave up or passed out by the time the fight was over, the referee would
designate a winner, but relying on criteria that was highly subjective. There
was no need for that, though, as what the crowd was treated to that night was
George, 17 kilos the lighter, dominating the fight from start to finish and
topping it off with an arm-lock seven minutes and 38 seconds into the first
round.

After dispatching Conley, George had a slew of fights lined up, and
all were canceled for some reason or another until a no-gi one was arranged for
October 6, at an impatient George's behest, against the giant Wladeck Zbyszco.
George's 66.9 kilos weren't enough to upset 104kg mass of seasoned wrestler.
George did what he could but tapped to an arm-lock at the 9:50-minute mark. It
was the first time a Gracie would lose in the ring. And his brother Carlos was
merciless in his criticism. In one interview given a few days later he says
George was a pale shadow of the fighter he once was, that he'd lose to Zbyszco
with or without the gi and that there was even a handful of Gracie Academy
students who could beat him.

But the relentless George didn't sit around brooding about the loss
for long, and less than a month later was already climbing the stairs up to the
ring for a rematch with Dudu, a fight promoted as the final of the Brazilian
national luta-livre championship. It would be under classic
submission-wrestling rules, with submissions and back-pins. After making his
entrance George requests the announcer inform the crowd that he would be
fighting under the back-pin rule, but doing so against his wishes. As per
custom, the referee summons the fighters to center ring to quickly go over the
rules. He advises them that forearm strikes are permissible, to which George
cuts in: "No, they can't be!" An argument ensues and a few minutes
later George exits the stage refusing to fight, to the crowd's bewilderment.
Days later the Pugilism Commission hands the Gracie a year's suspension.
Curiously, the one to take up arms in his defense is his brother and detractor
Carlos Gracie. Carlos says that that there was no way for George to accept such
a rule because allowing forearm strikes was a roundabout way of allowing the
forbidden punches and elbows, like what happened in the Dudu-Omori fight;
George withdrew so as not to end up in the same mess. Moreover, he challenged
Dudu to fight Hélio Gracie, but this time vale-tudo rules.

In the two months leading up to the fight the smack talk between
Hélio and Dudu was intense. The wrestler would say he was willing to take on
all four Gracies on a single night if need be. In his own words, "... I'll
beat Hélio just like I rightfully beat George. Just this time the win won't
just be rightful, it'll be material, positive and painful..." But there
was one serious obstacle yet to be surmounted for the event to take place: vale-tudo
fights were still banned by the Pugilism Commission since the bloody clash
between George Gracie and Geo Omori. In late January 1935 the agreement for the
Hélio-Dudu bout was signed. On it was the stipulation that all strikes were
allowed except "eye-gouging and groin shots." The contract was
submitted to the Pugilism Commission, which after consideration accepted the
terms. There was no lack of criticism for the commission's decision and the
very essence of no-holds-barred combat. In the edition dated February 2, the
day of the fight, Jornal do Brasil printed a piece harshly condemning the show
and the Pugilism Commission's stance:

"Unfortunately the
police, with the criminal collusion of the Pugilism Commission in permitting a
bout under conditions that make it a BRAWL and undermine all sporting qualities
in the encounter. The so-called ‘vale-tudo’ fights should be eradicated once
and for all as they mean nothing to any species other than refined
barbarians."

In spite of all the criticism, that evening of Saturday, February 2,
1935 Hélio Gracie and Dudu faced off in another vale-tudo fight. Hélio
entered weighing 66kg, clearly smaller than the 85kg Dudu. At the sound of the
bell, Hélio takes the initiative with a slap to Dudu, whose response has little
impact. The two tangle up and hit the ground, where Hélio immediately takes his
usual guard-playing position. Unable to pass guard, Dudu attempts a flurry of
ground and pound consisting of punches and headbutts, but without much effect
beyond breaking the Gracie's nose. As for Hélio, he runs through a string of
ground positions, at times closing guard and drawing Dudu close to him, at
others opening guard and placing his knees on his opponent's torso while
holding his wrists not to get hit. From the bottom, Hélio proves more effective
at landing strikes to the face, though every now and again he does eat a hard
shot or two. Thirteen minutes into the fight, Dudu is clearly on his last legs
as the two roll out of the ring. At the referee's command, they return to their
feet at center ring. Both men are quite battered. Dudu bleeds profusely from
his nose and mouth, two teeth missing and a broken rib. As for Hélio, his nose
is broken. Upon restarting on their feet, Hélio lands a potent kick to Dudu's
face and follows up with another at his waist. Dudu feels the full brunt of the
blows, and it's all over; he asks the ref to end the fight. Something
extraordinary happens, though: Dudu's manager, Mr Diniz, who had bet a
considerable sum on his fighter, jumps into the ring and lands a punch that
staggers Dudu, so outraged was he at losing his wager... In the days to come
Hélio receives plenty of praise for his valiance, and the criticism of vale-tudo
events doubled. It seemed like no way were the authorities going to allow more
such events to be held in Rio de Janeiro.

Months before the Hélio-Dudu fight, on the 9th of August 1934 Takeo
Yano disembarked at Rio de Janeiro Port, arriving from Pará. It wasn't Yano's
first visit to the nation's capital. Years earlier, in June 1931, Yano, sailing
from Japan on board the Santos Maru along with 42 other Japanese agronomists,
paused in the city as they made their way to Amazonas, where they were planning
to found a colony. Yano's stay in the inhospitable north of the country didn't
last long, but while in the region he did make contact with the already aging
Satake and later Maeda. While in Pará, Yano was the jiu-jitsu instructor for
the Amazon River flotilla, and for that reason he was taken by Lieutenant
Captain Luiz Souto from Belém to the Navy Sports League in Rio de Janeiro to
teach there, which was what took him to the city[58] in 1934. It may seem a senseless move the Navy import a Japanese
jiu-jitsu instructor from Pará when the Gracie family was already in town and
very well known. Obviously there was no lack of criticism about the decision,
forcing the naval command to provide an explanation. Captain Attila Monteiro
Aché, league president, on that very 9th of August published an official communique
revealing his motives. Aché didn't question the Gracies' technical mastery, but
he did allege that having a clean police record was mandatory for someone to be
an instructor in the navy. The Gracie, he said, was recently let out of jail by
presidential pardon, but it was not for having been proved innocent of causing
Manoel Rufino dos Santos bodily harm. Therefore, for being condemned criminals,
they were not eligible for the position. Furthermore, Aché continued, for the
price Carlos Gracie had proposed (this had been prior to his sentencing) for a
single class a week, Yano would teach every day of the week.

As could be expected, the Gracies' and Yano's paths were bound to
cross. Two months on the button after the Japanese instructor arrived in Rio de
Janeiro, just after George's loss to Zbyzsco, the prospect of the two facing
off was raised, but the plans didn't reach fruition. At the time, Yano had
started doing public demonstrations to present his technique. But he felt the
competition bug biting, and in early April 1935 he went to the press to make
known that he was looking for an opponent willing to face him. His debut would
have to wait a little longer, though. In July Clube de Regatas do Flamengo club
inaugurated two new sports departments, boxing and jiu-jitsu[59], and Yano would be the one teaching the Japanese art. The launch
was held on July 9, 1935, with an historic exhibition by Takeo Yano and Geo
Omori.

After the event, talks for the fight between Yano and a Gracie
resumed. Initially the family representative was to be Hélio, but the purse
Carlos was asking on his behalf was exorbitant. The restless George[60], however, already a few months fight-less for the suspension (which
had been mitigated by the Commission) incurred after the Dudu debacle, announced
his availability for an immediate showdown with the Japanese fighter. George
was saying that one time he was psychologically defeated before entering the
ring and ended up losing for real (it was the Zbysco fight). This time would be
different, with a fighter his same size and wearing a gi. Yano – George claimed
– had made a statement saying that if he were to lose in Rio de Janeiro he'd go
back to Pará to teach with Count Koma. "... I think Yano's going to take
... that long trip to the northernmost end of the country."

The Japanese fighter is truly between a rock and a hard place. Luiz
Souto had said that if Yano were to lose he'd end his navy contract. But the
public had more faith in the Japanese fighter than in the Gracie, with the
betting lines opening at a 3-1 advantage for Yano. In the weeks leading up to
the fight, though, George's rhetoric combined with Yano's silence pushed the
odds down to 2-1. To preempt the gi controversy, this time around the Pugilism
Commission decides to provide the uniform, which has long sleeves and pants,
like the ones used in present day.

The fight is held at Stadium Brasil on September 28[61]. George Gracie weighs 66.5kg, with Yano a hair heavier at 69.3kg.
It's a classic judo match, with Yano in complete control. In the opening round
he throws George five times. In the second round he adds another two throws.
George tries a tomoenage. It's unclear whether the intention is to throw
Yano or only pull guard on him, but once on the ground Yano tries
unsuccessfully to pass guard until the two are tangled up against the ropes and
made to return to center ring (keen to how good his opponent's ground game is,
Yano never strays far from the ropes). Another two throws from Yano in the
third round and more guard play from George. In the next round, the fourth, the
crowd's patience has already worn thin and they start to filter out. A sparse
few spectators remain for the fifth and final round. During the rare few
moments of grappling, what they see is two fighters trying in vain to strangle
each other. As per "submission or loss of consciousness" rules, the
fight is deemed a draw and Yano hangs on to his job in the navy. Plus he
notches more than 20 throws on George in the fight.

Incognito and accompanying Yano at Stadium Brasil that evening was a
young Japanese fighter visiting from São Paulo named Yassuiti Ono[62], where he was an instructor. Ono was the star of the Landory
Chomukan troupe. In Japan he'd been a student of another Kodokan master, named
Kanemitsu Yaitibe. He had had a number of behind-closed-doors fights in the São
Paulo's burgeoning Japanese community and taught at an academy of his own. Ono
wants more, though, and when the troupe draws the curtain on its appearances,
Ono goes to the newspapers and introduces himself, keen to accept any
challenges that may arise. He explains that he practices "giudo" and
that the name jiu-jitsu has fallen into disuse in Japan. In seeking opponents,
however, he warns that if any managers intend to approach him about worked fights
they needn't waste their time, as he only wants to hear about for-real, no
duro, fights. With no opponents at his level in São Paulo, though, he heads
to Rio de Janeiro in hope of lining up some worthwhile challenges.

Right after the George[63]-Yano fight, Ono gets to work needling the Gracies. The promotion of
a hoped-for fight degenerates into a series of insults that nearly result in a
bout of fisticuffs between the two while doing an interview for a Rio de
Janeiro newspaper. Hélio suggests Ono and he fight vale-tudo and without
pay and with open admissions at a stadium. But this time the two foes go too
far in the eyes of the Pugilism Commission, which hasn't the slightest interest
in giving the go-ahead for another inevitably gory affair. A bout agreement is
signed for a December 5, 1935 jiu-jitsu match between the Brazilian and
Japanese fighters.

The fact that the fight isn't vale-tudo doesn't diminish the
rivalry between the two any. The presence of the mayor of the Federal District,
Pedro Ernesto, and the Japanese ambassador at Stadium Brasil that night does
nothing to smooth over the bad blood between them. It ends up being something
of a rerun of the George-Yano fight. The fighters spend practically the entire
time on their feet, with Hélio getting tossed numerous times and trying to get
his Japanese rival to stay put in his guard. Impatiently, Carlos barks and
barks at the referee not to break the fighters up as they're tangled up in the
ropes, but ends up just leading to them tumbling all the way out of the ring.
There's even a brief timeout to reprimand Carlos for his complaints. Ultimately
the match ends in a draw. The Pugilism Commission at that point, fed up with
Carlos Gracie's constant haranguing during his brothers' fights, slaps him with
a three-month suspension.

The year 1936 started out calmly in Rio de Janeiro. But in Belo
Horizonte George found some fights and beat all his adversaries. Short on
opponents who could fight on even terms with him, he took a number of trips
back to Rio de Janeiro in search of a fighter who could make him earn his keep.
But Hélio was the one who ended up kicking off the season there. Takeo Yano,
still an instructor for the navy, had tested himself against George Gracie, and
time had now arrived for him to take on his brother Hélio. The fight would go
down at Stadium Brasil on Saturday, June 13, 1936. Hélio did his training with
George, who was already familiar with Yano's game. Not to break from the norm,
discussion of whether or not gis would be worn took up a good chunk of time in
the days leading up to the fight[64]. To avoid endless bickering from Carlos at the time of and during
the bouts, they came to an agreement on gis a full day before the fight. There
was still another always contentious issue they dealt with beforehand. Carlos
insisted that the fighters not be separated when they lock up against the
ropes. Thusly he hoped to keep the fighters from getting around having to go to
the ground. Carlos got his way. The pre-fight weigh-ins showed how evenly
matched an affair it was: Hélio was 65.9kg, while Yano was 69.3.

The three 20-minute rounds of the Hélio-Yano match turned out to be
a replay of the previous Yano and Ono performances: the Brazilian gets flung
around the ring by the Japanese judoka (in the third round alone Hélio gets
thrown six times), who shirks the grappling every time they end up on the
ground. The legacy left by the Hélio-Yano match comes in the form of a
challenge, issued in the immediate aftermath: Ono calls out any Gracie willing
to face him, preferably Hélio, with whom he has a score to settle.

Just after the fight, George Gracie manages to set up his hoped-for
return to the rings of Rio de Janeiro. He would take on three low-end opponents
on the same June 23 night, gi-less and with each fight set for two 20-minute
rounds. Come fight time, he swiftly taps out Geroncio Barbosa and Antônio Roque
(who answers to the peculiar nickname "o Sulphuroso" ["the
Sulphurous"]), but unexpectedly runs into a rough patch in his third
fight, against the navy man José Amorim. Amorim holds the advantage the entire
first round, pinning George on two occasions. During the break before the
second round, he refuses to return, saying George told him that if he hung on
for more than one round he could consider himself the winner. Besides, it had
been his second fight on the night (and George's third).

Still living and teaching in Belo Horizonte, George returns to Rio
de Janeiro for another fight. His next challenge is an old acquaintance of the
Gracie clan. The seasoned Syrian Roberto Ruhmann is back. Surprisingly, Ruhmann
resurfaces to challenge the Gracies to gi-clad combat under jiu-jitsu rules. He
claims to have spent a year training under Miyaki and is thus ready. And the
relentless George is the one who steps up to face him. George offers a heads
up: he warns Ruhmann that in the gi his supernatural strength is useless and
that a year's training isn't enough to get him over the learning curve. And
George is right. At Stadium Brasil on the 5th of September 1936 it is the gi
that George uses to in the seventh minute strangle and beat Ruhmann, who
failed to tap and passed out cold on the ring floor.

At around the same time, another Japanese judoka would show up in
Rio de Janeiro. Massagoichi first made the trip to São Paulo State with the
droves of Japanese immigrants and works under inhumane conditions in the coffee
plantations in the northern reaches of the state. Unlike his fellow countrymen
there along with him, he is thick-framed and robust[65]. Aware of the lack of prospects working in the field, Massagoichi
leaves the hinterland for the nation's capital after perhaps catching wind of
how jiu-jitsu fighting has gone mainstream there. After the customary challenge
to the Gracies, Hélio is put to face him; however, his very own countryman
Takeo Yano sounds off with questions regarding his level of proficiency. The
reasons for Yano's objection are a mystery, but it's possible that, unlike Ono
and Yano, Massagoichi's lineage doesn't trace back to Kodokan and thus subjects
him to discrimination in some form. For the criticism having come from someone
so highly regarded as Yano, the Pugilism Commission requires Massagoichi
perform a test to gauge his skills and make sure the crowd won't be getting
hoodwinked. The evaluation is to be conducted by Yano himself. As it happens,
on September 9, Yano declares Massagoichi fit to fight Hélio. Apparently Yano
is pretty far off target in his assessment: at Stadium Brasil that September
12, Hélio quickly puts his stouter opponent away with an arm-lock. Because of
his dismal performance, the Pugilism Commission judges Massagoichi to have
thrown the fight and penalizes him by suspension, causing Hélio and Carlos to
take some flak because, although no fingers are pointed directly, the accusation
cheapens the win.

The next challenge to Hélio isn't long in coming, in the form of an
already familiar Gracie adversary: Yassuiti Ono. On that October 3, 1935 at
Stadium Brasil, what transpires is virtually the spitting image of the previous
fights Ono and Yano had with the Gracies. As if by habit, just as the fight is
about to begin Carlos gripes about Ono's gi, forcing him to return to the
dressing room and swap it. The battle underway, again Ono flings the Gracie
around the ring, though it seems that this time Hélio is more effective in
defending at least some of what the judoka is trying on him. Once on the
ground, Hélio as usual sticks Ono in his guard and is hardly troubled at all by
his attempts to pass. Irritated that he's not getting anywhere, on a few
occasions Ono chucks Hélio between the ropes and out of the ring. Almost at the
very end, Ono pulls off yet another hip throw, but before Hélio has his guard
in place the Japanese fighter catches him with a surprise arm-lock. Hélio won't
be folding so soon, though, and twists out his arm and foils his opponent's
leverage to escape. It's another draw.

The best description of the fight may well be Ono's own, from an
interview printed in the October 6 issue of A Noite newspaper:

"Despite not
satisfying my desire to win, I enjoyed the fight with Hélio Gracie. On Saturday
my opponent showed that he is a fighter with vast resources. I speak in praise
of his extraordinary value because to beat him I put to practice everything I
know in jiu-jitsu. Hélio's guard is indeed formidable. I'd never fought a man
with such great defensive skill. He doesn't seem like the same man I faced in
our first fight. He improved a lot, and right in the very first minutes I
realized that it wouldn't be advisable to attack, because doing so would
deplete my energy, and I don't know what the result would have been if I had.
Even in defending the throws Hélio surprised me. Given all that, I decided to
wait for the third round, then after wearing him out, attack decisively. But
that impenetrable guard of his nipped my plans in the bud, and I had to settle
for the draw."

Indeed, he'd arrived at a problem with no easy solution. Shigeo and
Miyaki had been caught unprepared for George and Hélio's "back on the
ground" game and fallen prey to choke holds. Yano and Ono, however,
besides being more skillful, were well familiar with the outcomes of those two
fights and so kept on their toes. They'd done a good job of covering the
Gracies' main submission holds. On the other hand, the barrage of takedowns
they threw was innocuous under "desistance or loss of consciousness"
rules. Without the wherewithal to pass the Gracies' guard, when on the ground
they tended to go for chokes when in guard-passing position, which is a
significant technical mistake, as besides being ineffective, they're risky for
the one attempting them. As far as entertainment value, though, the
back-to-back draws were making it hard for the promoters to keep the audience
interested.

The whole issue of fight dynamics wasn't going unnoticed. Months
before the second fight between Hélio and Ono there were ideas going around
about attributing points in jiu-jitsu matches. There was also talk about other
ways, already in use in other countries, of determining a winner other than via
desistance or loss of consciousness, such as "... number of takedowns [or]
immobilizing a fighter with a hold for a determined period of time..."
Days after Hélio's fight, Ono himself addressed the topic in an interview in
the October 10 Diário Carioca:

"I am displeased by
the decision, despite going along with it, but I'd rather there have been a
winner at least on points, according to Brazilian Pugilism Federation[66] [and] incidentally international criteria for jiu-jitsu
matches."

The fact of the matter is, for as much as Kano's art was taking over
the world, it was hard to reconcile it with what was going on in Rio de Janeiro
in the 1930s, which itself was derived from the style that developed out of the
Japanese being challenged to square off with wrestlers at the turn of the
century. Curiously, this entanglement of Ono, Yano and the Gracies would begin
to unravel not in Rio de Janeiro, but in Belo Horizonte...

Just after the Hélio-vs-Massagoichi fight, on September 24, Takeo
Yano hopped off the night train from Rio de Janeiro in Belo Horizonte. What
brought him to the Minas Gerais State capital  was Loanzi Academy, the same one
where George Gracie taught “MMA”, for a series of demonstrations in a ring
newly installed at the Feira Permanente de Amostras amusement park. He'd make
his debut two days later against an unknown fighter named Braga. Being in the
same city, however, it was inevitable that his path and George's should cross.
And that did indeed happen, on November 29, interestingly without the gi. Far more
experienced in the modality, George beat Yano by choke after fighting for 52
minutes.

The year 1936 wouldn't reach an end without controversy seizing the
attention of the newspapers. And so great was it that it would shape Brazilian
jiu-jitsu philosophy forever. In an article printed on the 9th of September,
Diario da Noite newspaper raised a question: who was the Brazilian national
jiu-jitsu champion? The Japanese were out of the running, for not being born
nationals. The obvious conclusion was that there were only two potential
candidates for the title: Hélio and George Gracie. The newspaper went one
further and even proposed the two face off to settle the matter. The
explanation for why the matchup could justifiably take place was simple:

"In soccer,
basketball, track, tennis and all other sports we see brother competing against
brother without the slightest harm done to the fraternal esteem that binds
them. In sport by no means can brotherly regard be a hindrance, when it is
common knowledge that sport is a school of chivalry and respect."

What would have been an unpretentious piece of writing blossomed
into something altogether more significant when, some weeks later, George
asserted that if it were up to him a showdown with his brother would never take
place, but that he wouldn't turn it down if it had to happen. However vague,
George's statement was devastating to their family relations. With no diplomacy
to speak of, a lifelong personality trait of his, Hélio fired back saying the
fight needn't take place to begin with, as he was already Brazilian national
champion. In response, George went on to claim he was all for the fight,
fanning the flames of animosity further by saying that it in fact had to take
place. Spotting a chance to cash in big, Empresa Pugilistica Brasileira, that
company that owns Stadium Brasil, started pushing for the fight, which just
served to embitter the brothers all the more. Ultimately, Carlos was the one
who put in the last word. He said he'd rather George be considered Brazilian
national champion than agree to the two facing off in competition. The
Hélio-vs-George match never made it off the drawing board. In Carlos and
Hélio's philosophy, jiu-jitsu was a fight and not a sport, and brothers don't
fight. As a result of the imbroglio the rocky relationship George had with his
brothers fell to pieces once and for all. And the rule that two fighters from
the same academy not face each other took form. To this very day, it's not at
all unusual for the winner of a tournament final to be determined by "odds
and evens," something unprecedented in sport. In a way, on a greater or
lesser scale this philosophy permeates other combat sports in Brazil, and even
in MMA we can see Brazilian training partners reluctant to fight each other outside
the gym[67].

In early 1937 it was Belo Horizonte's turn to be overrun with
professional fights. The manager Aluizio Nogueira Loanzi had one year earlier
brought George Gracie in to teach class at his gym and put in an appearance at
Feira Permanente de Amostras. On George's coattails came Takeo Yano. With
Loanzi doing the promoting, the number of fights in the state capital
multiplied, and seduced by a market until then untapped, more fighters followed
suit, like Ruhmann, Manoel Fernandes, Dudu, Mossoró and others. Now, at the
turn of the year, George Gracie was already back in action, taking on Dudu, the
same one who'd lost a vale-tudo to Hélio Gracie, but this time it would
be under luta-livre rules. It was an evenly matched affair, with George
getting the better of the action until when in the sixth minute Dudu snared him
in a guillotine. To escape the fateful chokehold George violently slammed a
fist into Dudu's face and was immediately disqualified by the referee for the
illegal move. The disqualification not sitting well with him, George challenged
Dudu to another fight, this time no holds barred. No records exist of the
rematch ever taking place.

Meanwhile in Rio de Janeiro, naturally, with all the fighters having
picked up and left, professional events became scarce. In March of that year,
the public at large and fighter community were surprised by the news that
Empresa Pugilistica Brasileira had declared bankruptcy. A run of
less-than-successful shows flattened the company to which Stadium Brasil belonged.
With so many fighters in Belo Horizonte, it seemed the 1937 season would just
plain not happen in Rio de Janeiro. It was then that amateur jiu-jitsu
championships started to crop up, since by then there were enough academies in
the nation's capital to make competitive events feasible. Besides Gracie and
Geo Omori's academies there were also Liga de Sports da Marinha, Clube de
Regatas do Flamengo and Fluminense Football Club. Those were the very first
academies to sign their students up for the first events. Now, the competitions
weren't exactly tournaments, but usually handpicked jiu-jitsu and even luta-livre
matches. To preserve the intimate relationship with "gi" and
"no-gi" fighting, the academy instructors, including the Gracies,
always kept very much alive in their jiu-jitsu students the no-gi,
submission-grappling "technology" developed through the meeting of
the Japanese fighters and their wrestling counterparts decades earlier.

With Empresa Pugilística having gone under, the businessman Bernardo
Wull, back in Brazil after an extended absence, leases Stadium Brasil and
founds Brasil Ring with the aim of putting together the upcoming fight seasons
to fill the lacuna left by the failed company. Thus the temporary lull in Rio
de Janeiro's fight scene came to an end. In August Yassuite Ono sends a message
from São Paulo: he challenges any Gracie at all to engage him in combat again.
Hélio doesn't show much interest in a third fight, but George, returning to Rio
de Janeiro at about this time, promptly gives the green light for Ono's fight
to go through. What plays out over the next few months is the most intense
series of bouts ever held in Rio de Janeiro. A frenetic string of fights
starring the bound and determined George as the hero of the Gracie clan.

This time, to avoid ending in a draw both fighters agree to allow
the "submission or loss of consciousness" rule to also include
points. Obviously, in those days there was no scoring framework for the
jiu-jitsu done officially in Rio de Janeiro's rings. As we've seen, judo rules
had started to gain sporadic mention, but there wasn't yet any talk of
employing them in the professional fights held around the city. The
"points" match-decider they ended up coming to terms on was actually
set along the lines of boxing matches, with three judges assigning points based
on subjective criteria. This methodology raised some questions. One comment
from the September 8 issue of A Noite newspaper is particularly interesting.
The columnist draws attention to some of the peculiarities of jiu-jitsu that
judges should consider when scoring a match:

"... the
presumption of those with less understanding of what is going on ... when a
fighter is under his opponent he is at a disadvantage. In reality, though, the
apparently inferior situation is only the result of pre-established tactics for
working efficiently on countering or annulling the adversary's attacks. At
other times, furthermore, one fighter's takedown might not be the result of
intentional unbalancing but the opponent's desire to go to the ground where he
knows he will be better able to attack or counterattack[68]."

Indeed, the Gracies would naturally be at a disadvantage in a points
match since the dramatic effect of their opponents throwing them would
influence the referees, and at the same time their guard game could confuse
them. Unlike Hélio and Carlos, though, George was a brasher sort and cared more
about fighting than wasting time discussing the intricacies of the rules. The
issue of wearing gis in his match with Ono, however, was something George
actually cared to address. This time it wasn't about sleeve length, but about
fabric thickness. The Japanese gis were thicker (equivalent to the woven gis of
today), while the Brazilian ones were thinner (like a common light gi). George
insisted that Ono wear a Brazilian gi. The real reason wasn't explicit (he used
the weak argument that Brazil was too hot for thick gis), but we can conjecture
that it's a lot easier to execute collar chokes on an opponent if he's draped in
the thin fabric of a light gi[69].

On September 11, 1937 at Stadium Brasil, George Gracie and Yassuite
Ono meet in combat for the first time. The public is excited not just because
of the dry spell their appetite for fights has been subjected to but because
this time there has to be a winner, even if just designated so by points. The
fighters are evenly matched: both weigh 67 kilos on the dot. The first round is
hard fought, with the Gracie getting tossed around the ring as was the custom.
George has done his homework, though, and does manage to take Ono down a few
times, himself. The fight continues tooth and nail into the third round, with
neither having the upper hand during the opening two, when while up against the
ropes the fighters tumble toward the edge of the ring. George lands first, his
head crashing violently on the ground. Ono clings to the bell for an instant
before following him down, the brunt of his fall landing on the Gracie. Ono
gets up and back in the ring, but George is seriously hurt. Stumbling, he
slowly makes his way to the ring. He's in no shape to fight, practically
knocked out on his feet, but still the ref signals a restart. Easy prey, George
is caught in an Ono guillotine within seconds, and the fight ends four minutes
into the third round. The time hasn't come to test the point-scoring criteria.
Ono finally beat a Gracie.

No two ways about it, days after the fight George was calling for
his rematch. To everyone's surprise, Ono accepted, but under one condition:
George fight and beat his brother, Naoite Ono, first. On one count the proposal
seemed unworthy. Naoite Ono, oft-called "Oninho", the Portuguese
diminutive differentiating him from his older brother, is the youngest of the
Yassuite family. Oninho was just 17 years old and weighed a mere 55kg. George,
meanwhile, was a veteran with a deep record, nearly everyone on the list
stronger and heavier than he was. For a while it seemed George would never
accept such an imposition, but to everyone's surprise, the Gracie agreed to it,
such was his desire to get another crack at Ono the elder.

It wouldn't be long before they scheduled the fight, set for October
2 date at Stadium Brasil[70] and under the same rules as George vs Yassuite was, or in other
words, with point counting a likelihood for determining a winner. It wasn't a
typical fight for George, who, weighing 10 kilos more than Oninho did, was
performing under tremendous duress. It was a hard-fought affair throughout the
six rounds. While it was anybody's guess who would get the nod from the judges
should it go to a decision, the crowd was ecstatic with how nimble little
Oninho was and how hard a time he was giving the Gracie. But two minutes into
the sixth round, George saw his chance and didn't let it slip through his
fingers: he latched on to an arm, and his Japanese opponent had no way out of
the arm-lock but to submit. George earned his right to rematch Ono.

George is beside himself in craving revenge for the loss he'd
suffered. He wants a vale-tudo match and proposes that karate chops be allowed,
about which Ono is adamant: "Karate chops aren't a jiu-jitsu move. George
should try to beat me under the same conditions in which he was beaten."
The Japanese fighter refuses the rule addition: the fight should be just like
the last ones: submission, loss of consciousness or points. The bout is set for
exactly two weeks after the George-vs-Oninho fight.

On Saturday, the 16th of October 1937 George Gracie and Yassuite Ono
face off for the second time. The rivalrous nature of the matchup is palpable.
For displaying greater aggression, George, though on the wrong end of a number
of takedowns,  has the upper hand and could possibly win on points. In the
final round, he manages to catch Ono in a chokehold, and it looks like he's
bound to squeeze out the finish. Clean out of options for defending, Ono sends
a fist into George's face. The ref gives him a warning, but the judoka repeats
the offense and is disqualified. The Gracie wins the rematch. Days later, at
the behest of Ono's manager, who questions the referee's decision to disqualify
his fighter, alleging George had committed a number of transgressions himself,
the Pugilism Federation gathers and unanimously decides that Ono's punches had
been intentional; therefore his declassification would hold.

If anyone was under the impression George would finally take a break
after three fights in close succession, they were wrong. Right after his
brother lost, Naoite Ono called the Gracie out a second time. Oninho's stellar
performance in the last fight surely qualified him for a rematch, and George
accepted outright. November 13 was the chosen date for the second battle of
George and Oninho.

Again the crowd in attendance at Stadium Brasil are treated to a
true barnburner. Perhaps helped by his 10kg weight advantage, George succeeds
in getting some splendid throws of his own on Oninho, who displays a stellar
ground game in his own right. The fight starts out balanced, but slowly George
starts to impose his will, gaining the upper hand. At last a points decision is
awarded in a professional jiu-jitsu match in Rio de Janeiro. Bragging rights
for the historic achievement go to George for outpointing Naoite Ono via
unanimous decision, but the booing crowd doesn't see eye to eye with the three
judges, and Oninho's manager grumbles of their friendly ties with the Gracie
family.

His business with the Onos out of the way, the untiring George calls
out Portuguese fighter Manoel Grillo. Grillo earned his stripes as a fighter by
throwing out of the ring and beating Geo Omori in October of 1935, and he
accepts the challenge immediately. Clearly unsure of himself where gi-fighting
is concerned, despite being a self-described jiu-jitsu fighter, Grillo proposes
a luta-livre-rules, no-gi bout. George, quite at home in the style of
combat, agrees to the challenge. Their rivalry heats up when Manoel Grillo
proposes George and he, beyond the winner's purse, hold a personal wager of
5,000 réis, a hefty sum in the currency of the day. George considers the
proposal an affront. He immediately takes to the press to say he accepts, but
demands it be a vale-tudo fight, no holds barred. Grillo won't go for a vale-tudo,
and presents his reasons:

"When I accepted
your challenge to fight it was for a sporting competition, not a scandalous brawl.
I'm no miscreant or street tough; I pride myself on being a sportsman..."

On the 11th of December 1937, a drizzly Saturday in the city, George
Gracie again steps up to the Stadium Brasil ring. That evening he weighs 66.4kg
to his opponent's 80.4. To the astonishment of everyone in attendance, before
announcing the fighters the ring announcer is summoned over to a corner by the
head of the Pugilism Federation. On returning to center ring he makes an
announcement: the winner of the bout shall be determined by shoulder-pinning!
The last-minute rule change is met with a roaring barrage of boos, but the
decision is final. Without Carlos by his side to cause the usual pre-fight
brouhaha, George keeps to himself and seems to accept the order. There's no saying
why he accepted the rule, perhaps he was overly confident or just wanted to
avoid an awkward situation after having already abandoned the ring once in a
fight with Dudu and been punished for it. The fact is that when the fight gets
started George's chances of winning seem remote at best. Valiant and
aggressive, George doesn't wilt and wins the first two rounds. Early in the
third, though, Grillo's strength advantage makes itself known. Slowly but
surely he pins George's back to the ground and wins the fight.

As could be expected, George is none too pleased with the result.
Interestingly, his protest doesn't have to do with the back-pin rule per se,
but with what he claims to be a refereeing error in declaring him pinned while
his shoulders hadn't fully touched the floor. The obvious challenge to a
rematch comes next, and Grillo consents so long as it happens as soon as
possible. The second George-Grillo bout is thus set for December 16.

In theory the fight is to be vale-tudo this time not
regulated by the Pugilism Federation; however, a number of moves are nixed to
keep it from being as violent as prior vale-tudo matches. Indeed, the
first round goes by within the bounds of normalcy. In the second, George nails
Grillo with a knee, which isn't allowed in the rules, and gets a referee
warning. At one point, George falls out of the ring. On his way back in, before
getting through the ropes, Grillo advances on him and catches him off guard
with a brutal right. The Gracie hits the ground in a daze, and the Portuguese
fighter pounces on him and continues to pound away. In the ensuing commotion,
the referee struggles to pry Grillo off of George. The ring gets invaded, and
the referee declares George the winner by disqualification.

The tumultuous ending leads to expectations of a third encounter.
This time George wants to fight Grillo in the gi, but the match is never made,
because the Portuguese fighter has taken a different challenge, proposed to him
just days earlier: Oninho has stepped up to face him in the gi under jiu-jitsu
rules (including points decision). If Grillo was remiss about facing George in
the gi, he didn't show the same squeamishness in taking on Oninho. The boy was
green, was 25 kilos lighter than him and was practically a teenager. What could
go wrong for the Portuguese veteran, who claimed to have learned the ropes in
gi-clad combat from Raku? When asked to comment on the match, George is
categorical: Grillo wins it.

It's in that spirit that Manoel Grillo and Naoite Ono lock horns in
combat on Christmas day at Stadium Brasil. And George couldn't have been
farther off base in his prognostication. The fight has hardly begun, just three
minutes in, and Oninho tosses Grillo with a tomoenage and lands on top
with a choke already in place. The Portuguese fighter doesn't even get a chance
to tap before he's passed out unconscious. Incontestably victorious, Oninho
immediately exits the ring. Once he's back to his senses, Grillo gets up and
looks for his adversary, without a clue what happened or that the fight is
over. He hasn't a clue why the crowd's jeering him...

His disqualification the last time he faced George compounded with
the Gracie's predicting Oninho would lose have Yassuite Ono really ticked off,
and he proposes they fight yet again. Ono says he's opposed to the vale-tudo
style for it being unsportsmanly, but as he claims George struck him illegally
in the fight where he was disqualified, he leaves the choice of modality to his
opponent to make: either vale-tudo or jiu-jitsu rules. The challenge is
music to the Gracie's ears. Always up for a good "throw down," his
reply comes right away: no-gi vale-tudo. The fight is scheduled for
January 15, 1938. Two days before the bout, though, untimely news: Ono
announces that he has injured his knee and won't be able to fight on the 15th.
He says the fight can be rescheduled, but oddly states that he won't be doing
any vale-tudo: if George wants to fight him it will have to be in the gi
and under jiu-jitsu rules. George doesn't mince his words in addressing Ono's
about-face, calling him a coward, a wuss and all the other derogatory
adjectives he can come up with. Ultimately the fight isn't rescheduled. Ono's
attitude shift remains a great mystery never properly explained. It's highly
unlikely lack of courage was a factor in pulling out from the fight. Perhaps
upon greater reflection Ono came to the conclusion that taking part in public
jiu-jitsu challenge matches is a greater transgression of Kano's principles
than he could tolerate. No-holds-barred fighting, however, would be going too
far and would mean crossing a line that he wouldn't at that point be ready to
cross.

His fight with Ono scrapped, George heads to Belo Horizonte in
search of opponents. A bit later, in early March, Geo Omori dies. That isn't
the only major loss in store for martial arts fans that year. In November
Orlando Américo da Silva, "Dudu", passes away in a cot at Santa Casa
de Misericórdia hospital, a few meters from Stadium Brasil. He never did
recover professionally after his decisive loss to Hélio Gracie, and now he
abandons the ring forever.

In April, George and some other Brazilian fighters do a brief tour
in Salvador, introducing fight sports to the city. Two months later in Rio de
Janeiro Brasil Ring announces its big attraction for the 1938 season: a troupe
of pro-wrestlers on tour in Argentina and Chile, among them some who were on
the road with the Zbyszcos four years earlier, will be visiting Rio de Janeiro
for a spell at Stadium Brasil. Brasil Ring's strategy of excluding the Brazilians
and building up the foreigners comes off badly and at first sets the events
back some. To remedy the situation, Bernardo Wull calls on some Brazilians to
perform alongside the foreigners. Among them, as necessity dictates, is George
Gracie. After some intense pay negotiations, George signs on to fight Jack
Russell, a hulking wrestler weighing more than 100 kilos best known for his
unscrupulousness in fighting.

The bout is set for August 2 and is most likely a work. Back-pins
win it, no gis to be worn, and chokes count (which tended not to be the case in
fights between foreigners). George weighs in at 68kg to Russell's jaw-dropping
103. The American does as he pleases with George in the fight. At eight minutes
of the second round, George meekly fastens a chokehold, possibly a guillotine,
as Russell hoists him into the air and power bombs him landing with all 103
kilos of flesh on top of the diminutive Brazilian. The three seconds tick away
and Russell rises victorious. George lies there sprawled out on the ground.
Their inevitable rematch comes right away, on August 13. This time will be in
the gi. George dominates the fight for four rounds and wins on points.

George's next fight, against another member of the troupe, is
against the Englishman Joe Campbell. This time George puts his foot down and
manages to get it so a back-pin won't win it. The win shall be by submission,
loss of consciousness or points. The fight is set for August 25. Before a small
crowd (in the same time slot is the soccer match between Rio de Janeiro
crosstown rivals América and Vasco), the first round is a monotonous yawn. In
the second, George ups the aggression, tries an arm-lock that Campbell defends,
but still manages to pry the arm out for the win after six minutes of fighting.
On an evening marked by a boring fight and tiny audience, the big thrill comes
when Takeo Yano, then a resident of Belo Horizonte where he did some fighting,
gets into the ring and challenges anyone willing to face him. George is the one
who promptly obliges.

The George Gracie-Takeo Yano fight is a symbolic one. At the time,
the divergence between the styles of typical judokas (like Yano and the Onos)
and ground-fighters like the Gracies was already a glaring one even to the
layest of spectators. The styles were already considerably disparate and had
started to become irreconcilable. It was a common sight to see the Gracies
getting sent soaring through the air by Yano or Ono, and the press picked up on
the style difference, as manifest in the following comment from August 31 in A
Noite newspaper:

"The Japanese
fighter's skill at reap throwing from standing position is extraordinary.
George Gracie has exceptional quality when fighting on the ground, where he is
very dangerous."

The September 1 issue of A Batalha newspaper poses a question for
the fight:

"His [Yano's] knack
for taking his adversaries down is extraordinary. In the thrilling fight he had
with George [the first between the two] he managed to take our countryman down
more than twenty times. He lets out a shrill screech and lunges into his
opponent and reaps his foot, resulting in a spectacular throw. He makes a point
of battering his adversary's body by repeatedly slamming him. George prefers to
fight on the ground, where he is extremely dangerous, especially when he mounts
his opponent. Whose technique will prevail today, Yano's or George's?"

What's interesting is that the press at times attributes the style
difference to the fighters' nationalities, as though intrinsic to a people:

"Yano, like most
Japanese fighters, specializes in throws. George bears the characteristics
common to jiu-jitsu specialists not from the country of the chrysanthemum
[Japan]: he has a closed guard that he wields with great efficiency in ground
fighting, that is, lying on his back."

There was one aspect that united them, though: both were in some way
connected to Count Koma. Before going to Rio de Janeiro, Yano spent around a
year training with Maeda in Belém. Now, George's connection to the Japanese
master was through Carlos.

The fight, on the 1st of September 1938, is certainly one of the
most exciting ever held. The two are the same size (George weighs 68.5kg; Yano,
70.0kg). Throughout the first five rounds, in grand style, Yano dominates the
action. A good portion of the crowd loses count as Yano tosses his adversary
around the ring approximately 20 times. Already well into the sixth and final
round, Yano loses focus for a split second. He thinks he has it in the bag,
with his opponent showing clear signs of fatigue. He's already used to
thwarting the Gracie's trademark chokes and arm-locks, but George out of the
blue latches on to his leg. With a foot-lock in tight, it suddenly strikes the
surprised Yano that the fight is over for him, and he taps in desistance. The
victory is a crowning achievement for George. To Yano, it's his first loss in
the gi.

Almost immediately after the fight a forlorn Yano demands a rematch.
George obliges. Yano says he'll take George down at least 20 times again. Days
before the fight, set for September 24, by chance they run into each other at
Stadium Brasil. George tells Yano that he doesn't appreciate the taunting
regarding the throws, and the two nearly come to blows right then and there,
were it not for the people accompanying them breaking it up. So Yano proposes a
wager: He'll pay George 100 réis for every takedown short of 20. As for George,
he'll pay Yano for every throw Yano completes in excess of 20. George agrees,
and the rivalry between the two reaches a peak.

If their first fight was riveting, there aren't words to express the
one that goes down on the 24th. George is surprisingly improved in the takedown
department in the first (6-3) and second (3-1) rounds. It could be that this
initial superiority is facilitated by Yano to give George a false sense of
confidence in his standing game. The truth is that in the four rounds that
follow, Yano has his way with George on the feet, landing seven takedowns in
the third round, six in the fourth, five in the fifth and wrapping up the sixth
round with a whopping eight throws on the Gracie. An undisputed victory for
Takeo Yano in the fight and the bet...

Afterwards, Yano and George head for Belo Horizonte, as the fights
have dried up for them in Rio de Janeiro that season. Days later, in early October,
the two are already fighting in the Minas Gerais State capital, with Yano again
outdoing George. That same season in Belo Horizonte the Gracie has some other
fights, even a third encounter with Jack Russell, in which he has the upper
hand for much of the fight but ends up knocked out by a kick from the American.

Early the very next year, 1939, George, Yano and a number of other
fighters are suspended indefinitely by the Minas Gerais Pugilism Federation.
Unable to fight in Belo Horizonte, George picks up and leaves for São Paulo. In
that year of 1939, Brazil's professional-fighting hub shifts between the cities
of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, mainly the former. In Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Ring goes out of business in March, which puts the brakes on the next season.
Event promotion at Stadium Brasil is left to a new company, Brasil Box, which
with a tight budget isn't able to bring in the bigger-name fighters to do
battle in the nation's capital. Several fights between the usual characters go
down: George, Ono, Ruhmann, and others; almost all the marquee professionals
take to the ring in São Paulo, where even veterans like Benedicto Peres and
Oswaldo Gracie join the mix. The latter, quite out of shape, loses to Roberto
Ruhmann via guillotine choke, preferring to pass out than tap. Takeo Yano
remains in Belo Horizonte, where he will still fight again after completing his
suspension.

By that time understanding of the differences between jiu-jitsu and
judo was tenuous overall. As we've seen, word of Jigoro Kano's method and the
"international rules" of competition jiu-jitsu like back-pinning and
victory by immobilization had already made it to the country. The
incompatibility between the Gracie and Japanese styles of fighting (as in the
several matches between George and Yano) was already stark. Starting with the
end of the decade, however, three important events held over a 12-year span
would change the face of martial arts in Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. After this
period, judo and what would come to be known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu would head
in separate directions, becoming ever more distant from each other.

The first event occurred in July 1939 when, as part of a tour of
South America, a government-backed delegation from Kodokan comprising two
judokas, Sumiyuki Kotani and Chugo Sato, arrived in Rio de Janeiro. As will be
later evidenced, Hélio Gracie actively participated in the events pertaining to
the visit, and this quite possibly was his first formal contact with Kano's
system. Even with the benefit of hindsight, it's hard to gauge just how
significant and impact the visit had on judo's development in Brazil, but on
the heels of the massive wave of migration from Japan, it was the first time
judo was formally introduced to the Brazilian people with official backing from
the Japanese government.

Chapter 9 – Kodokan Takes over Judo in
Brazil

T

he wave of Japanese immigration of the 1930s brought to Brazil,
almost exclusively to São Paulo, numerous martial artists with direct ties to
Kodokan. Judo was still an almost unknown denomination at this point, though.
By the end of the ‘30s it was Argentina that had taken the lead in the process
of consolidating the sport of judo. With help and incentive from the Japanese
ambassador to the country, a number of “jiu-jitsu” academies, like Macaby,
Langun, YMCA and others, unified in the Liga Argentina de Judo, or Argentine
Judo League, headquartered at the Buenos Aires Young Men’s Association.
Galvanized by this happening and aware that the time was right to foment the
process in other countries, in 1939 Kodokan decided to send envoys to South
America, to promote and consolidate judo under its auspices in the region.

The arrival of the representatives was awarded the status of a state
visit and was sponsored by the Japanese embassy. The two envoys from Japan were
Sumiyuki Kotani and Chugo Sato. Kotani was born in 1903, just a year before
Maeda left Japan to never again return. He was, at the time, a seventh-dan
black belt (Sato was a sixth) and would in 1984 join the select group of
judokas to reach 10th-dan under Kodokan. The duo’s port of entry
into South America was Rio de Janeiro (they would later spend a year visiting
Argentina, Chile, Peru and Ecuador). And on the 29th of July 1939
the Buenos Aires Maru, carrying the Japanese delegates, made its way into Rio
de Janeiro Port, skimming in between Santa Cruz Fort and São João, the fortress
at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain.

Far from being
an impromptu tour, the way Count Koma and his group’s had been 25 years
earlier, their stay in Rio de Janeiro was meticulously programmed from the
get-go, sponsored by the Japanese embassy as well as by the Brazilian Navy
League, Liga de Sports da Marinha. It consisted of four presentations, each for
different audiences:

“Mon. 31/7/39: Exhibition
for the Navy, at Marine Headquarters at 1600h

Tue. 1/8/39: Exhibition
at Fluminense Foot-ball Club at 2100h, only for members and guests

Thur. 3/8/39: Exhibition
at Stadium Brasil at 2100h, open to the public

Fri. 4/8/39: Exhibition
at Army School of Physical Education, at Urca Fort at 1030h”

The group’s first presentation was heavy on formality. There at
Marine Headquarters were, among other officials, the Japanese ambassador and
consul, Minister of the Navy Admiral Guilhem, and the commander of the Marine
Corps. There were also a few illustrious guests, among them Hélio Gracie. In
the lead up to the activities, the Japanese consul, Dr Komine, made a short
speech about judo and its significance, a speech that survived time for having
been published in the 2/8/39 issue of Correio da Manhã newspaper.

“Dear sirs—I have the
honor of introducing to you Sumiyuki Kotani and Chugo Sato, who will
demonstrate to you some of the more interesting aspects of ‘jiudo,’ a Japanese
sport known worldwide of which there are many adepts in Brazil. I would first
like to thank the high authorities at the Navy and its Sports League for the
great interest they have shown in the arrival of my compatriots, as well as for
the affection [these compatriots] have been given and that I interpret as yet
another facet in the sincere friendship that unites our two nations. Before the
demonstration begins, I ask that you let me say a few words about this Japanese
sport. ‘Jiudo,’ which is also known by the name ‘jiu-jitsu,’ was long ago called
‘jiu-j[u]tsu,’ and its main objective was the learning of self-defense moves to
be used in the event of emergency or aggression. At the same time, though, the
practice of it was meant to hone moral and spiritual qualities in the
practitioner, leading them to possess the true spirit of the ‘samurai,’ as the
old warriors of Japan were known. The ground rules of this sport are modesty
and pride, and therewith come the extreme courtesy allied with the great
perseverance and bravery with which ‘jiudo’ fighters face their adversaries.
‘Ju-jitsu,’ as this sport was once known and translated means ‘technique of
flexibility,’ spread quickly through the military class and divided into
different schools, all of them valuing the same guidelines of morality and dignity.
In 1882 the grandmaster that was Jigoro Kano, who passed away recently, founded
the school by the name of ‘Kodokan,’ and he gave the sport the name ‘jiudo,’
which translated is the ‘art of yielding.’ This school is now known worldwide
and creates for each individual a technique proper to their biological and
anatomical conditions. But ‘jiudo’ isn’t just an intelligent tactic for
overcoming a difficult situation, when faced with a powerful enemy. It’s a
principle that can also be applied to all fields of human activity. It isn’t
merely a self-defense weapon for men, but also for women. It is based on the
theory of using the enemy’s strength to your own benefit. Thus, it demands much
more intelligence, discipline, memory and creativity than does brute force
itself. ‘Jiudo’ is an exercise of the spirit and body, and in it agitation,
anger are merely signs of impending failure. It is known that ‘jiudo’ comes in
the form of two distinct exercises, called ‘randori’ and ‘kata.’ The former is
a kind of freeform exercise, where the practitioner becomes familiar with all
‘jiudo’s’ tricks and rules. The latter is a sort of preconceived exercise,
wherein opponents know beforehand what moves will be used against them. Hence,
this latter form of exercise constitutes, in short, an exercise in defense,
while the latter involves defense and attack. My countrymen will now have the
great honor of demonstrating in practice some of the more exciting aspects of
‘jiudo.’”

What stands out in the consul’s speech is how little emphasis he
places on the differences between ‘jiudo’ and ‘jujutsu.’ Nor does he address
the nobility of traditional ju-jutsu. What he actually ends up doing is give
the impression that ‘jiudo’ is ‘jujutsu’ and was renamed by Jigoro
Kano’s school. That’s quite a notable difference from the words Tsunejiro
Tomita used to explain the difference in the NYT interview back nearly 35
years:

“... Jiu-jitsu is an
almost extinct art, and a savage one that were better extinct. The real art of
selfdefense is ju-do...”

One can imagine that Kotani and Sato might have felt a certain
discomfort in hearing what the consul had to say; or it could be that the
wording was premeditated, the premise being that underscoring the differences
between judo and ju-jutsu wasn’t of key importance at the moment.

The presentations were, as to be expected, a smashing success. On
the afternoon of Friday, August 4th, after the final presentation at
São Sebastião Fort, at the Urca neighborhood, the Japanese duo was received at
the Japanese embassy, in the Botafogo neighborhood, with great pomp and
circumstance by Ambassador Kuwajima. It was the pair’s last appearance in Rio
de Janeiro, following which they would set their way to São Paulo. Hélio Gracie
also headed to the city, where again he would cross paths with the Kodokan
representatives. Already there, George Gracie was just observing and waiting
for his moment to step in.

There was one characteristic of the pair’s presentation in São Paulo
that differed from the ones in Rio. The current capital of Rio de Janeiro State
was then the nation’s capital, and as the visit was backed by the Japanese
government, it was clearly regarded as a state visit, with direct involvement
from Brazilian officials and Japanese diplomats. As for the São Paulo visit,
the underlying purpose was different, as it was meant more to please the
already significant local Japanese population. While on the one hand the
‘sponsor’ in Rio de Janeiro was the navy sports league, in São Paulo it was the
Jukendo[71]
Federation of Brazil, which was headquartered there. Like in Rio, almost all the group’s presentations were private
affairs. Just as in the federal capital there had been a public presentation
(at Stadium Brasil), in São Paulo the public presentation was held at the
Associação Athletica São Paulo gymnasium, which was situated at Tiradentes
Avenue and was also a regular venue for other martial arts meets. It took place
on August 13, 1939.

The presentation at Associação Athletica was a success. The program
kicked off with Jukendo Championship VII, which someone by the name of Kimura[72]
won, and was followed by a
demonstration by Kotani and Sato that included a randori sequence with some
local judokas, none of whom were able to keep their feet for more than 30
seconds (that’s no surprise, considering the stage of development Japanese judo
was at compared to Brazilian judo at the time). Among the locals who tested
their mettle against the Japanese was Hélio Gracie (who also tried his hand in
the jukendo championship but got mixed up by rules unfamiliar to him), the only
born Brazilian participating in the event. On this encounter, it’s worth
transcribing Gracie’s own words, from an August 20 interview with Correio
Paulistano:

“In my life as a fighter
I’ve known adversaries of the strongest and most agile sort, and nevertheless
never worried out their methods of fighting; but in regard to the black belts
Sato and Kotani I haven’t superlatives enough to describe their class and
knowledge. What impressed me most was the firmness with which they execute
throws and the elegant manner with which they treat their opponents. They are
perfect gentlemen, worthy of the honorable mission entrusted to them by the
government of Japan.”

The presentation in São Paulo had a few notable curiosities in store.
The first had to do with the praise the pair heaped on Takeo
Yano[73], who attended the event and whom both
considered to be the “Japanese person with the greatest knowledge of jiu-jitsu
in Brazil,” a compliment we can imagine might have caused the Gracie a slight
pang of envy. A few weeks later Yano would have another encounter with George
Gracie at that same gymnasium on 7/10/39, a fight ending in a draw.

Left out of the events that punctuated the Kodokan envoys’ visit to
Brazil and estranged from his family, George issued a challenge to the Japanese
duo via the press, saying he would fight them any time. They turned down the
challenge with the argument that the nature of their mission in Brazil was
exclusively demonstrational, and Kodokan had not authorized them to accept
challenges. Having wrapped up their commitments in Brazil and declined George
Gracie’s challenge, the Kodokan delegation forged ahead in their tour of South
America, which would go on for another year.

Chapter 10 – Collapse and Ressurrection

T

he second landmark event occurred the following year. In 1940 the
fight season in Rio de Janeiro was back in full swing. George, Yano, Ono,
Oninho and the wrestlers were all there[74]. Fights were held one after the other until the end of July, when a
figurative bomb gets dropped, and in its wake martial arts in Brazil suffered
dramatically.

It was on the night of July 22, 1940 in São Paulo. That same day in
Tokyo General Hideki Tojo was nominated Japan's minister of war, making
conflict with the United States inevitable. George Gracie shows up at the
newsroom of O Estado de São Paulo newspaper. "O Estadão", as it is
known, is one of the harshest critics of fight events in the state capital.
Perhaps for that very reason George takes his message to the daily: he knows
that whatever he says to them will be printed in its entirety. He's resolute in
his statement to the newspaper: most professional luta-livre and
jiu-jitsu fights in Brazil are works. He asserts that this is due to "...
the skullduggery of managers and also some fighters who, though they possess
appreciable techniques, are not of the moral fiber to put on real fights."
The honest fighters – George proceeds – can't get contracts because there
aren't enough opponents with the courage to duke it out for real and because
the public prefers and is hooked on the goofy buffoonery of the 'champions' so
worried about their physical integrity and docile in acting on with their
managers' wishes. George is especially cruel when addressing, for example, Roberto
Ruhmann, who "... will under no circumstances accept a no duro
[real] fight, and the works he's in are pre-arranged to be sure he wins. If
it's any other way, Ruhmann won't fight, and to not lose sleep at night,
besides the purse, he demands 2,000 réis plus another six in advance as
guarantees his 'opponent' will fight the way he wants them to." Lastly,
George wraps up with a surprising confession: he too has taken part in works,
and reveals his reasons:

"I owe an
explanation of my role in these 'works.' Because of the public's preference for
flashy fights, though they were nothing more than farces, and the iffy
professionalism in the sport of fighting, where progress relies a great deal on
amateur activities, I believed that by spicing up the show by such means I
would help improve the situation for luta-livre and jiu-jitsu. Now I'm
convinced that that state of affairs will never end unless a serious move is
made against the farces that happen here every week in these parts."

George ends by saying that there are a slim few fighters with real
technical skills, naming specifically Yassuite Ono and French wrestler Charles
Ulsemer.

The effect George's statements have, printed the next day in O
Estado newspaper, is devastating. The press in Rio de Janeiro immediately
approach the Gracie, asking him to confirm the declarations. George doesn't
just confirm, to A Noite newspaper the next day he provides even more details
of what goes on behind the scenes at the events. According to him, almost all
the fights post-1934 were fixed by the managers. Usually a fighter would show
up at the newsroom of some newspaper or another and issue a
"challenge" to a given opponent, who would then show up at the
newspaper and say he's outraged, accepting the challenge. After that it was
just a question of scheduling the fight and negotiating between the managers to
figure out who'd win.

The shockwaves from the revelation continue to ripple over the days
to come. George recounts how he ended up getting in on the scheme:

"I was always
well-meaning. As time went by, though, I realized that my way of doing things
only did me harm. On a certain occasion I faced Geo Omori in a vale-tudo
bout[75]. I massacred my opponent, deforming his face with punches. Just
because we were jiu-jitsu fighters and the fight between me and Omori played
out entirely on the feet, there was a public outcry. I was indignant to find [only]
the aficionados liked the show, and so I decided to go in and accept the works
because I saw that you could only put on a show if the fights were fake."

This narrative of George's reveals a cruel aspect of the business:
real fights were ugly, bloody and nothing spectacular. Not realizing it's what
they were doing, the public implored for a choreographed spectacle that only a
work could provide. And the managers and fighters, with loose moral standards,
rushed to meet the demand. Curiously, George, still estranged from Hélio and
Carlos, exonerated his younger brother, stating categorically that he never
took part in worked fights:

"I make a point of
declaring to A Noite that my brother Hélio never participated in a work. His
conduct has always been proper, for when he'd get into the ring it was to beat
or be beaten[76]."

With George's statement came immediate consequences. Managers, fighters
and the Brazilian Pugilism Federation sought to clear themselves of blame. The
main consequence couldn't have been anything but a near-outright ban on
professional fights. To make it even harder to hold professional fights in Rio
de Janeiro, in 1942 Stadium Brasil was demolished as the result of a boom in
the price of real estate around where it was situated. Rio de Janeiro was left
without a proper venue for holding large-scale events. The effect George's
statement had was disastrous for wrestling, or luta-livre, which were
somewhat curbed in their practice. As for jiu-jitsu, the sport's sullied image
and the much better-organized option of judo led to the academies adopting the
nomenclature "Jiu-Jitsu, Judo and Self-Defense Academy" first in São
Paulo and later on in Rio de Janeiro. It wouldn't be long before the word
"jiu-jitsu" started to disappear.

As for the Gracies, Hélio escaped the controversy relatively
unscathed. First because he stopped fighting early, before worked fights
plagued the scene, and second because his name was explicitly cleared by his
brother and detractor. Gracie Academy continued to focus on amateur fights,
where there was no incentive to fix results. Moreover, the refusal to make
contact with the judokas resulted in the art of "fighting with your back
on the ground" evolving on its own over the course of the 1940s.

Now, as for George Gracie, he would never again be the same fighter.
The Gracie with the most ring time, who relentlessly accepted any challenge
regardless of the rules or size of opponent, would leave the spotlight once and
for all and ultimately fall into forgottenness. We'll never know which of his
fights were real or not. As he himself said, there were hardly any works before
1934, and he didn't take part in any before the vale-tudo with Omori. He made
no mention of the fighter with whom he had the most fights, Takeo Yano. We bid
farewell to George and Yano with the narrative from a fight that took place in
March of 1940, one of the last of their many encounters, just four months
before George broke the bombastic story. A fight that shows the balance and
desire to win (or, if you'd rather, refusal to lose) of both of them.
Hopefully, for the sake of combat sports, it had been a real fight, or "no
duro," as they would say back in those days.

On the 17th of March 1940 George Gracie and Takeo Yano again face
off at Stadium Brasil. It is just one of the many fights in Rio de Janeiro and
Minas Gerais that they share. The bout has all the makings of being just like
the last ones: George gets thrown around the ring by Yano and tries to resolve
things by fighting "with his back on the ground." This time, George,
wanting at all costs to avoid Yano's throws, keeps the fight on the ground the
entire time. In the fifth round the two are on their last legs, Yano trying to
get up off the ground and George doing all he can to keep him there. In a
curious reversal of roles, Yano ends up on bottom, with George in his guard.
The judoka sinks a choke, the Gracie's very own specialty, catching him by
surprise. Instead of defending, George attacks right back with the same hold.
Yano squeezes with all the might he has left, as George does the same. Pushing
their very limits, the two lose consciousness simultaneously, George crumpling
over his rival's inert body. Aghast, the referee hasn't a clue what to do.
George comes to first and staggers to his feet. At that moment the referee
raises his hand in victory. Yano himself gets up as George, rather than
celebrating, protests to the ref, saying he didn't win the fight. The decision
is revised, and the fight is declared a draw. Nothing could be fairer than
that.

The third landmark event occurred in 1951, and its ripples went well
beyond Brazil's borders.

Chapter 11 – Masahiko Kimura

O

tavio Mitsuyo Maeda Count Koma died in Belém, Pará State, on
November 28, 1941. In one respect Maeda was lucky. A few days after his death,
on December 3, Tojo, who since October had come into the position of prime
minister of Japan, ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. Four days later, just as
it did with Russia 37 years earlier, Japan attacked the United States without
declaring war beforehand. A little under a year later Brazil would enter the
Second World War. Maeda was spared the hard times Japanese people were
subjected to in Brazil. Just like him, many were split between the land of
their birth and the one they had learned to love. Until the end of the war all
things Japanese in origin were reacted to violently. Just after the war ended
the country would also be shaken by the fall of the dictator Getulio Vargas.

At the start of the 1940s, Carlos Gracie leaves Rio de Janeiro and
spends a number of years living and teaching in Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará
State. He hopes to make an accusation of sexual harassment against his underage
maid go away and leaves Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro to his brother Hélio's
charge. Due to the worked-fights scandal, the burnt-out public and World War II
itself, professional fights had practically ceased to exist and jiu-jitsu was
all but forgotten. In Rio de Janeiro jiu-jitsu seemed doomed to repeat the fate
it met in so many other places over the preceding decades. During this period
running the academy on his own, Hélio faded from the sports headlines. One
interesting anecdote worth recounting from that time happened in 1943. In
September that year, a former Gracie Academy student named Azevedo Maia, who
had started teaching at Tijuca Tennis Club, in hopes of promoting his lessons,
innocently issues a public challenge. He says he has two promising students[77] named Murilo Reis and Artur George who'll fight any takers so long
as they're from the same weight group and it's under jiu-jitsu rules. A few
days later, Hélio Gracie, kind of unstable in his reaction, launches a serious
attack on Azevedo Maia. He asserts that behaving as he was, Maia is "going
against the interests of true jiu-jitsu." He goes even further and
discredits Maia altogether, calling him a "fake jiu-jitsu teacher"
and saying he could fight him with one arm tied behind his back. The climate
between them becomes even more tense when Azevedo counters his criticism by
saying that "... Hélio is nothing more than an inveterate egomaniac who
thinks he's the only jiu-jitsu instructor in Brazil." Adding further fuel
to the fire, he claims, "Hélio once said to me that only he has the right
to advertise himself as a jiu-jitsu instructor in Brazil. Well, Mr Hélio,
that's just not possible." In the days that follow, the direct conflict
between the two (on the mat or in the street) seems imminent until they're
invited to come to terms in a civilized manner at a Rio de Janeiro newspaper's
headquarters. The following dialogue paints a picture of the animosity between
them:

- What right have you, Maia, to call yourself a jiu-jitsu
instructor?

- Mr Carlos Gracie gave me a letter authorizing me to teach
jiu-jitsu.

- But how can you teach something you don't know?

Continuing his verbal assault on Maia, Hélio opens his coat and
shows he's wearing a gi and black belt underneath. He continues:

“Look at this here,
Maia. You know what that means? That belt is the title of absolute jiu-jitsu
champion of Brazil. The only Brazilians who have that title are us, the
Gracies. And even if I didn't have it, all you need to do is back up what you wrote
for me to prove you wrong here, in the ring or anywhere else at any time.”

Maia didn't accept the challenge. This episode was the first
indication of what was to come in the years that followed. Hélio escaped
scot-free from the worked-matches scandal broken by George not just because his
brother cleared him, but also because he'd hardly fought professionally at all
during the post-1934 period, when works, according to George, became the rule
and not the exception. There's still confusion between the terms jiu-jitsu and
judo in the city at this point, but the difference in style is very distinct:
the jiu-jitsu practiced at Gracie Academy was already, in essence, the
Brazilian jiu-jitsu practiced today. At the end of the decade, with Carlos back
in Rio de Janeiro, time has come to emerge from forced isolation and resume the
offensive: emblazoned  on the headline of the July 28, 1949 issue of O Globo
newspaper: "JIU-JITSU MORALE-BUILDING CAMPAIGN." Carlos and Hélio
explain what it's all about:

"We can't sit back
and accept that such a noble sport as jiu-jitsu be defiled by poor sportsmen
and inept instructors. We relinquish our voluntary isolation to protest the
decadent atmosphere in which we've found ring sports. Even in amateur
championships we've witnessed in consternation how widespread 'worked fights'
are. To be sure these evils don't spread and take root, contributing to the
destruction of the moral fabric of the generations just beginning the practice
of attack-and-defense sports, we decided to go ahead with this morale-building
campaign."

The "morale-building campaign" to which they referred, in
practice, was the first step on the way to establishing a sort of
"monopoly" for their academy over the style they practiced. As we'll
see, as judo gained ground and became more and more incompatible with this
style of fighting "with your back on the ground," the success or
failure of the initiative would determine whether the process that began with
Maeda and other Japanese fighters at the start of the century would end up
surviving. Carlos and Hélio concluded, as always, with a challenge: they
offered a 10,000 cruzeiro purse to anyone who could beat a Gracie student.

At the start of the 1950s the opportunity Hélio and Carlos so keenly
awaited to promote their art surfaces. The second fortnight of April 1950
features a series of exhibitions by the boxer Joe Louis, brought to Rio de
Janeiro by the manager Bernardo Wull. Two days before the American's arrival,
Hélio goes to the newspapers and challenges Louis to face him in a no-gi fight.
"I'll fight under any conditions, as my aim is to demonstrate the
superiority of my weapon." Hélio claims he wants to defend the prestige of
jiu-jitsu, the most effective martial art there is, according to him. He affirms
that a number of his past rivals (Azevedo Maia included) have offered help in
training for the bout, showing that, even as far back as then, the
philosophical concept of putting defense of the art above inter-academy
rivalries is already firmly entrenched. Hélio issues the challenge to promote
jiu-jitsu, but to reduce his objective in issuing it only to that would be too
simple. He truly believes (as he has his whole life) that the art he practices
is the most efficient form of hand-to-hand combat, and he seeks to prove it.
His own attitude, however, comes right back to bite him. The press reacts to
Hélio's challenge with a mixture of indifference and disdain. Some journalists
bring up how vale-tudo has been banned in Rio de Janeiro. Joe Louis
himself, when at the press conference held upon his arrival he was queried as
to whether he'd accept the challenge, replies laconically: "I'm just a
boxer." Bernardo Wull offers an elegant response to Hélio's challenge. In
a well-thought-out manner he explains that he can't speak for Louis but feels
the proposal is out of place. It would be as if, says Wull, the Flamengo
basketball team plays Vasco's soccer team to determine which is the best sport
played with a ball. But other reactions are more aggressive. "FOOLISHNESS"
prints Diário Carioca in its April 23 edition. When in May Hélio resumes
badgering Louis after he's moved on to São Paulo, Diário de Noticias posts in
its May 12 editorial "CHAMPION OF RIDICULOUSNESS," lambasting Hélio,
deriding him with harsh words in its conclusion:

"This foolishness
has to stop. If Hélio Gracie doesn't have anyone with whom to fight jiu-jitsu,
a lifeless sport in our country, he should get a job at a nursery where he can
be plenty useful[78]."

In reality the final result of Hélio's challenge of Joe Louis is a
public relations disaster. But a twist of fate would change the tides not long
thereafter.

Hélio would promote "his" jiu-jitsu by issuing challenges
like the one targeting Joe Louis. By the same token, he'd also receive
challenges from fighters hoping to make a name for themselves. That's what
happened shortly after the stir caused by Louis's July 1950 visit to Brazil
died down. Passing through Rio de Janeiro on his way to Argentina, a
23-year-old pharmacology student from Bahia State named Landulfo Caribé made
Hélio Gracie a challenge. Caribé, who answered to the moniker "Maravilha
da Bahia" ("Marvel from Bahia"), wants to face him in a
jiu-jitsu match behind closed doors and with no purse involved. He says he has
a 28-fight record with no losses, and that he's been practicing jiu-jitsu since
he was four years old under someone by the name of Juarez Xeron with the
"world jiu-jitsu runner-up" in his description. Surprised by the
young man's boldness, Hélio, who usually turns down such invitations (for the
same reason Joe Louis turned down his), accepts the fight. He weighs the fact
that Caribé proposed they fight behind closed doors and with no purse, which
proves in theory that he isn't just after "fame and fortune." Hélio
puts forth his own conditions, though: the fight shall be behind closed doors,
no purse or crowd,  and only journalists in attendance, as Caribé had wanted.
No rounds or points. Hélio puts it in his terms: "The winner taps thrice
or waves an arm[79]. No referee, that's for girls." Caribé suggests they fight in
five days' time, on July 22, but on that point Hélio's adamant:

"No! We have to
fight tonight or tomorrow at the latest, at whatever time you please. I'm the
one being challenged, so I have the right to make demands. The people want to
know the result of the fight, and it's taking too long in coming already."

Hélio Gracie and Landulfo Caribé's fight goes down on July 18 at the
National School of Physical Education. Running slightly behind schedule, the
fighters both show for the contest. The first to arrive is Caribé, who appears
to have a limp in his right leg. He claims he injured it in training the day
before. Shortly thereafter comes Hélio. At 9:30pm the bout gets underway. The
match area is a boxing ring stripped of ropes. Caribé immediately pulls Hélio
into his guard, probably to prevent the Gracie from doing so first and playing
bottom position, his specialty. With Hélio on the attack, the Northeasterner
quickly squirms his way out of the ring. The fight restarts in the middle, and
Hélio attacks the whole time, with Caribé again fleeing the fight area. Another
restart and another retreat, the third. The fight restarts for the fourth time,
Caribé tries to flee again, but Hélio drags him back to center ring. The Gracie
then passes his opponent's guard, getting his knee on his belly and sinking a
frontal choke. Caribé desists. In all the fight lasted four minutes. Wryly,
Hélio suggests they start over, this time with one arm tied under his gi.
Caribé declines. He says he'll be back in Rio de Janeiro in October and would
like to fight Hélio again then. Hélio retorts: "Only if you undertake a
test of worthiness with a student of mine – a 17-year-old young man, my
nephew." The nephew to whom Hélio referred was Carlson Gracie.

The spat between Hélio and Caribé should have been just another
event lost in the margins of history for its insignificance, a seasoned fighter
teaching a brazen young man a lesson[80], were it not for statements made by José Ernesto Rodrigues, the
president of the Municipal Pugilism Federation[81], after the fight. Rodrigues classifies the bout as being
"foolishness" (Hélio must have been growing accustomed to that
adjective). He also says the fight hadn't been authorized by the Federation,
tagging it, therefore, as being illegal. Clearly the president's statements
weren't pertinent, as it was a private event held behind closed doors and with
no audience. It could be that he felt insulted that the Federation hadn't been
notified of the fight beforehand. Hélio might not have thought anything of the
complaint had Rodrigues not concluded his attack touching on a wincingly sore
point: he contradicts Hélio's own assertion by saying that he isn't jiu-jitsu
champion of Brazil for not having the title registered at the Federation. After
all, there's never been a Brazilian national jiu-jitsu championship. On this
point, in the Gracie's view, Rodrigues has overstepped his bounds. To Hélio's
ego, questioning him like that cannot be tolerated; after all, he parted ways
with his brother George for precisely that reason.

Incensed, the next day Hélio sends the president a sharp response:

"If anyone's a fool
it's this Mr Rodrigues – and fool with a capital ‘F’ – because he heads an
entity known for foolishness of the ring, demoralized because it leads young
people down the wrong path, hooking them on such reprehensible and undignified
processes as fake fights."

More importantly, Hélio offers his rebuttal to his champion status
being refuted:

"God forbid I have
a diploma from an entity dealing in faking fights... I have a title bestowed on
me by the people and the press because for the last 20 years I haven't found an
opponent who can beat me. If Mr Ernesto and his 'federation' colleagues want
proof that I am or am not the champion, let them pick one of their fake
fighters to challenge me. I'll be overjoyed to make his acquaintance..."

Hélio's attitude in regards to the "works" is noteworthy.
Ever since being spared his brother's whistleblowing on fake fights ten years
earlier, Hélio has always been a harsh critic of match fixing. And it is thanks
to such trace of character that Brazilian jiu-jitsu hasn't taken a path similar
to pro-wrestling's in the United States. However, it was Hélio's statements that
set back the Gracies' already thorny relationship with the Federation once and
for all. Cleverly, Ernesto Rodrigues spies opportunity in the bickering. Toning
it down some, the next day he gives an interview that is more reconciliatory,
saying it was never his intention to insult Hélio and suggesting that they
settle the issue of the title: the Federation would organize a Rio de Janeiro
jiu-jitsu championship, history's first. The fighters would, of course, sign up
at the Federation in order to compete. And therein would arise Hélio Gracie's
challenger.

Hélio and Carlos, the latter already back in Rio de Janeiro for
good, like the idea of the Rio de Janeiro championship, open to anyone wishing
to take part, be them professionals or amateurs. Pleased, the Federation gets
ahead of itself and even starts talking about later holding a Brazilian
national championship and then a South American one. However, after the initial
excitement dies down, the Federation starts foot-dragging because it wants to
run the boxing season before dealing with the championship, to preclude
"competition" between the two styles. A few weeks go by and Hélio and
Carlos's patience wears thin. Eager as they are about the tournament, they
threaten to create a Jiu-Jitsu Federation and thus get out from under the
Pugilism Federation's tutelage. This way, they say, they may one day be able to
hold a world championship[82]. What's more, they'll be able to prevent the disorderly
proliferation of "second-rate academies." A very pragmatic move, the
creation of a jiu-jitsu federation would allow the Gracies total control over
the sport.

Hélio and Carlos's threat works. At serious risk of losing control
of jiu-jitsu the Pugilism Federation gets moving immediately, and preparation
for the championship begins late in August. On the 29th of that month, the
first of a string of meetings between Rio de Janeiro's academies are held to
define the foundations for the championship. Hélio and Carlos are there for
Gracie academy. Two former Gracie students who maintain independent academies,
Azevedo Maia and Carlos Pereira, represent their own academies. Augusto
Cordeiro is the fourth academy in attendance, represented by its eponymous
owner and head instructor. Keeping with the status-quo, a large chunk of the
meeting goes to discussing the rules. Augusto Cordeiro present the
"jiu-jitsu" rules en force in Japan (the rules of judo). Carlos and
Hélio are vehemently opposed: No way to points or limiting the ground game.
Match outcomes are to be determined by "submission or loss of consciousness."
If during the fight's duration (three five-minute rounds) no one taps out,
there will be up to three extra rounds where points will be scored, and only if
a winner doesn't arise in the three extra rounds will points be counted.
Needless to say the Gracies' demands prevail. It's tough to go against them,
given the tremendous prestige they enjoy. The point scoring in the first-ever
jiu-jitsu championship is simple. Points are to be awarded for the following
positions:

* Perfect throws

* Immobilizations lasting 30 seconds

* Apparent combativeness

* Holds putting the opponent in danger (submissions)

* Mount

As for on-the-ground fighting, the proposed regulations are clear:
once the match is underway the referee cannot interfere with the fighters
unless they are entirely outside the competition area. That makes sure the
action transpires almost entirely on the ground.

Another point making it into the regulations, certainly at the
Gracies' insistence: two fighters from the same academy cannot face each other
unless it's the final. The way the champion is to be determined too is the
subject of debate, with the knockout-tournament format prevailing, as it still
is today in jiu-jitsu and judo championships. The competition will be
restricted to amateurs spread across three weight divisions in the knockout
phase only: lightweight (up to 65kg), middleweight (between 65 and 78kg) and
heavyweight (over 78kg). After the knockout phase the second-placed heavyweight
faces the second-placed middleweight, and the winner goes on to face the
second-placed lightweight. The winner of that phase joins the first-placed
athletes from each division in the finals. No distinction is made between belt
colors.

The championship is to be held at Teatro República, the same venue
where Oswaldo Gracie beat João Baldi nearly 20 years earlier, and September 30
marks the start of the first round. However, two problems have to be ironed out
first. The first has to do with Hélio's appeal: he wants his title of Brazilian
national champion recognized by the Brazilian Pugilism Confederation. The
Municipal Federation is prepared to accept this request, but with its
jurisdiction not extending to national level, it has to wait to find out the
Confederation's position[83].

The second problem has to do with Augusto Cordeiro. Though the owner
of a "jiu-jitsu" academy, he's been flirting with Kano's judo and
claims his students will only participate if so authorized by the São Paulo
judo academy with which his academy is affiliated. Without proper authorization
there's nothing he can do. Authorization gets given, and Cordeiro is clear to
sign up his students. Deemed the team with the greatest chance of beating the
Gracie students, from the get-go an intense rivalry strikes up between Cordeiro
and Gracie academies.

A total of 37 competitors signs up for the championship. Gracie
academy sends 12 students; Augusto Cordeiro, 8; Carlos Pereira, 10; Azevedo
Maia, 3; Fadda academy, 2; and there are two "freelance" fighters in
the mix. Among the Cordeiro Academy representatives are two Japanese fighters,
named Takeshi Ueda and Mitsuo Ioshida. Representing Gracie Academy are two of
Carlos's sons: Carlson, his firstborn, and Robson, the youngest participant, at
15 years of age. Carlson along with Pedro Hemetério and José Marinho are the
stars of Gracie Academy. Passarito is the big name out of Maia academy.

On the big day, at 9pm on the dot, the first-ever Rio de Janeiro
jiu-jitsu championship[84]
gets underway. The first match is a lightweight bout between Arthur George
Pereira Lima of Maia Academy against Luiz Roberto Moreira of Cordeiro Academy.
At the outset Arthur takes the initiative shooting for takedown, but the
attempt fails and he ends up under Luiz, who immediately mounts and tries for a
chokehold. Though Luiz is proved the more technical, the round ends without a
winner. Two minutes into round two, though, Luiz manages a takedown on Arthur,
who gives up his back. The Cordeiro student is quick on the trigger, taking his
opponents back while at the same time slipping his hand around to grab the
collar and initiate the choke. Arthur defends with his chin but the submission
is a done deal. The next match ends in a draw, and the third one marks the
debut of Carlson Gracie, who faces José Maria de Melo of Carlos Pereira
Academy. It is the fight of the night, with Carlson displaying jaw-dropping
combativeness. Hardly a finger has he laid on his opponent and he already has
the fight on the ground, where he easily moves to the mount. He doesn't manage
to penetrate his opponent's defenses, however, and it ends in a draw[85]. Two more matches go by (including the first Cordeiro-Gracie
inter-academy showdown) before two result in injury-induced victories,
including Oswaldo Fada's losing after dislocating his arm just seconds into the
match. In a way day one of the competition is an anticlimax, as seven matches
end in draws and just one via submission. The rest go down the following day.

Day two features only one draw, the rest all ending in tap-outs. The
first two days of the event having come to completion (the championship phases
are only held on weekends), criticism starts to arise regarding organization.
The first issue raised is about ticket prices being too high for an amateur
competition. The crowd in attendance the first two days isn't all that big, so
there's talk of lowering the price. Carlos and Hélio are against it, and the
revelation of their reasoning goes a long way to explaining why jiu-jitsu
championships are the way they are to this very day:

"The crowd isn't
prepared to watch matches that are overly technical, that don't feature the
razzle-dazzle, unproductive flying sweeps, the fake moves that draw wows and
for that reason are agreed to beforehand by fighters. Honest, well-executed
jiu-jitsu is a silent sport, a grappling, almost suave martial art, with short,
secure movements. It's not a spectacle for the eyes of laymen, but for those
who understand it. Those are the reasons we believe it wouldn't be wise to make
prices too accessible: the public would pay and would not be satisfied when
they leave the venue."

Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of price gauging on the
tickets, their analysis is spot-on and rings true: real jiu-jitsu matches are
ugly. Anyone, aficionados or not, can appreciate a sweet throw at a judo tournament
or a knockout from a boxing bout. Only people with an understanding of the
sport, however, pick up on the subtleties of a well-performed guard pass. For
that reason, jiu-jitsu championships even in this day and age, even having
taken the limelight after the first UFCs, are small and attended almost
exclusively by the sport's devotees.

But the criticism doesn't end there. Organization of the event, in
the Federation's charge, is deplorable. Only at the very last minute do
fighters receive notice it's their turn to fight, and at times the federation
staff is nowhere to be found. Outright disorder would remain a characteristic
of jiu-jitsu championships for many decades to come.

The third day of the event marks the debut of Robson Gracie, another
of Carlos's kids, in what's described as the fight of the night. He goes up
against Takeshi Ueda, a 29-year-old Japanese fighter (nearly twice his 15 years
of age), who won his first match via leg-lock. Aggressive like his brother
Carlson, Robson does all he can against the experienced Ueda. The Japanese
fighter insistently tries to mount but Robson manages to escape from beneath
his opponent's legs. Still in the first round, Ueda manages to sink the same
leg-lock he used to win his first match. For two whole minutes Robson rolls and
rolls in attempting to get free, as Ueda clings to his leg, seemingly bound to
end up breaking it at any moment. The Gracie finally does break loose and
follows up mounting his opponent. The match ultimately ends in a draw, though.
In the tie-breaker between Carlson and Melo, the Gracie wins via foot-lock.

On competition day four, October 8, however, the championship starts
to implode. With a number of no-shows from the fighters, only two matches are
held (including a win by Carlson). To fill out the program, another three
exhibition matches between  readily available fighters are hastily slapped
together. On the following Thursday, October 12, a bomb blows up in their
hands: Cordeiro, Maia and Carlos Alberto send word they're pulling out of the
tournament. Without those three academies and with Fada Academy's two
representatives having been eliminated, there's no longer any reason for the
championship to exist. Hélio and Carlos, however, insist on forging ahead with
their students alone (putting a timeout on the rule students from like
academies can't face off) and give their go-ahead for the next round, the
fifth, on Saturday, October 14. The Federation, though, vetoes the round being
held on that date.

Cordeiro, Maia and Carlos Alberto bring to light their reasons for
withdrawing. The more circumspect of the three, Cordeiro explains that his
divergence from the Gracies starts with the rules (always those rules!). The
way he sees it, not adopting the Japanese (judo) rules and adopting the "submission
or loss of consciousness" rules for amateurs nullifies the sporting nature
of the competition. Nor is he in accord on ticket prices. He accuses Hélio and
Carlos of several shortcomings in organizing the event, mainly in fighter selection,
arguing that Hemetério[86] and Marinho aren't amateurs. He wraps up by accusing the Municipal
Pugilism Federation of being complacent with the Gracies.

The academies' withdrawal and subsequent failure of the championship
is an important milestone in the creation of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. From that
point on, the sport is completely irreconcilable with judo, which for its
educational and disciplinary merits is gaining ground. In time, the Maia and
Carlos Alberto academies disappear. Augusto Cordeiro Academy becomes a highly
successful judo academy in the decades to come. Outside Gracie, only the
upstart Fada Academy remains. From here on out, there's nothing left standing
in the way of Hélio and Carlos to mold jiu-jitsu as they see fit, in total
isolation. And that's exactly what they do.

As for the championship, following the cancellation of Saturday's
round, the next day, Sunday, the championship comes to a wistful end. With the
Gracies' students competing amongst themselves, Carlson Gracie outdoes
Hemetério in the final, though there's no way of telling if the latter really
made a wholehearted attempt to win the match. The event would still have an
epilogue. Whereas Cordeiro is measured in the tone (though not the content) of
his criticism, Azevedo Maia isn't. Plenty aggressive, and with a bone to pick
with Hélio from way back, Maia is hostile to Hélio Gracie in echoing Cordeiro's
gripes. The week after the championship the mood between them degrades such
that on October 18 they're invited to the Diario da Noite newsroom for a
debate. Unavoidably, the face-to-face confrontation only makes matters worse,
and at a certain point Hélio brings up what happened in 1943 and asks if Maia
is now willing to fight him. Maia says he is, suggests they do a public event,
with a purse, crowd, the works. Hélio declines. He has no intention of being a
stepping stone for Maia and says they'll have to fight right then and there in
the newsroom, behind closed doors. He has two gis in his car. Someone
interjects: "There's no mat!" To which Hélio responds: "There's
no need. Only if it's for Maia." A mat is hastily borrowed from a circus
next door. Chairs and tables are pushed aside, the fight gets underway. Maia
immediately pulls Hélio to his guard. Hélio hoists his foe off the ground
twice, with Maia saying, "That doesn't count." A furious Hélio spits
back, "Don't protest, Maia, this here's for real men!" Hélio easily
passes guard and mounts. Maia extends his arm, making a sitting duck for an
arm-bar, but Hélio wants to punish him and ignores the arm, sinking a choke,
instead. Maia taps in desistance but Hélio won't let go, shouting, "Don't
you tap, you coward!" Worried his brother is taking it too far, Carlos
leaps on Hélio, who's already letting go anyways, as Maia has been choked unconscious.

With a virtual monopoly on jiu-jitsu in Rio de Janeiro, the Gracies
pushed their combat philosophy to the detriment of the sporting aspect. As just
one example, always striving to prove superiority, a few months after the
championship, in early 1951, Carlos Gracie proposed a challenge: Two students
newly arrived at his academy, both 15 years of age, would receive three months
of instruction. After that time, to prove the superiority of their teaching
methods, they would agree to take on any representative of any other academy
willing to face them. The two new Gracie students were named Carlos Trotta and
João Alberto Barreto.

Hélio also took part in the inauguration broadcast of TV Tupi, Rio
de Janeiro's maiden television network, on the 20th of January 1951, wrapping
up the program by challenging all takers to fight him right there on stage.
Truth is, he'd already been in some test telecasts the year before, and his
closeness with the station's owner, Assis Chateaubriand, along with his
popularity secured him a spot in the programming for opening night.

The Gracies enjoyed tremendous prestige and at the same time were
the target of severe criticism, with almost nobody "neutral" when it
came to the family. They counted as students members of Rio de Janeiro's upper
crust, who tended only to take private self-defense lessons, and at the same
time maintained a "combat team" on standby to accept challenges from
and challenge opponents from any other martial art. That auspicious moment for
the Gracie family was when they crossed paths with Masahiko Kimura.

No adjectives can do justice in describing Kimura[87], one of the greatest judokas of all times. Born in 1917, the year
Tokugoro Ito achieved victory over Berne and Kervaras, Kimura was a judoka through
and through, his youth coinciding with when Kano's method had already
obliterated all the other jiu-jitsu schools, of which Kimura must only have
known existed from hearing stories of bygone days. Starting judo at 10 years of
age, by 18, in 1935[88], he was already a five-dan black belt. In 1937 he won his first
Japanese equivalent of a national championship[89], a title he would earn on three more occasions, the last in postwar
Japan in 1949[90], after which he unsuccessfully endeavored to found a professional
judo league in the country. In 1951 he visited Brazil as part of a traveling
tour putting on a mixture of judo and pro-wrestling shows sponsored by São
Paulo Shinbun, the São Paulo Japanese-community newspaper. In 1950s São Paulo
the Kano system was already widespread, and nobody associated Kimura's arrival
in the country with anything other than judo (except, of course, pro-wrestling
events). In Rio de Janeiro, however, as soon as Kimura's July 1951 visit to
Brazil was announced, the press was already speculating about (and pressuring
for) a showdown between him and Hélio Gracie for the "jiu-jitsu world
title." On his way to São Paulo, Kimura entered Brazil through Rio de
Janeiro, the final stop for his plane from Japan. He landed on July 26 at
Galeão airport, where he was met by an old acquaintance of the Gracies',
Yassuite Ono, who tagged along and served as interpreter throughout Kimura's
stay in Brazil. Kimura brought with him two travel companions: Toshio Yamaguchi
and Yukio Kato. One year prior, Kimura and 20 other fighters competed in
Japan's first-ever professional judo championship, where the fighters were paid
to compete – a no-no in the Kodokan rulebook. Kimura won the championship,
beating Yamaguchi in the final. The initiative to professionalize judo in Japan
unfruitful, Kimura looked elsewhere for ways to make money through judo[91], which eventually led him to pro-wrestling. São Paulo Shinbun his
employer, he traveled to Brazil to do judo and pro-wrestling appearances. In
Rio de Janeiro the black belt was introduced as world champion of jiu-jitsu
(which he clearly wasn't, as no such world championship existed in either judo
or jiu-jitsu at the time), with Yamaguchi said to be world runner-up, an
embellishment stemming from his second-place status at the previous year's
professional tournament. Kato in theory would be third place, which no records
have been found to corroborate. During his two-day stay in Rio de Janeiro,
Kimura was introduced to Hélio Gracie, with whom he exchanged a few brief words
(Ono doing the interpreting, as always). There and then, journalists called for
a  matchup between them, but Hélio weighed his words carefully and left without
giving a definitive answer.

On the 28th Kimura, Yamaguchi and Kato, with Ono tagging along
throughout, reached São Paulo to kick off their series of appearances. That
weekend a major judo tournament was held at Pacaembu gymnasium to honor the
visitors, with more than 200 competitors from 28 of the city's academies taking
part. After the competition, the three Japanese experts did a sparring session
with the participants, throwing them all with ease. The following week, Kimura
and his companions got underway with their pro-wrestling tour. However, part of
the crowd was unaware the pro-wrestling show was just a bunch of pre-arranged
acrobatic spectacles between Japanese and Brazilian fighters, and they reacted
with outrage. Embarrassed by the misunderstanding, Ono[92], who was the one promoting the "fights," went in search
of a fighter who could hold his own against the Japanese. The presentations
continued, mixing judo demonstrations and pro-wrestling mock fights, with
moderate success. Meanwhile, in Rio de Janeiro the scene was heating up. The
press demanded a Kimura-Hélio showdown, and then the Gracies shed their initial
restraint and themselves started pushing hard for the fight to be made.
Curiously, one of the biggest "backers" of a fight between Hélio and
Kimura was Yassuite Ono, himself. Ono knew exactly what the outcome of the bout
would be, were it to indeed go down, and must have been rubbing his hands
together in glee at the prospect of seeing his compatriot teach Hélio a lesson.
Furthermore, a definitive win over the "Brazilian national champion"
would be a great way of smoothing over the bad impression left by the worked
pro-wrestling bouts.

Now impatient and taking heat from a Rio de Janeiro newspaper,
Hélio heads for São Paulo with Carlos on August 9 to get his fight made. In the
ensuing negotiations, Kimura proposes Hélio first face Kato, who's about his
size and weight. If he wins he can then face Yamaguchi. Should he beat
Yamaguchi, then he can face Kimura himself. Kimura isn't trying to make Hélio
prove he's worthy per se, but to maximize returns for the group; after all,
they're in the country on business, and if he faces Hélio right off the bat,
there won't be any point to holding the other matches. Within a few days the
Kato fight is signed. This one takes place on September 6, at the spanking new
Rio de Janeiro municipal stadium, eternally known as Maracanã.

The Rio de Janeiro press puts the three judokas on a pedestal,
building up the "credentials" of Hélio's potential opponents and
promoting the Kato fight on a daily basis. A dissonant – and far more realistic
– voice goes almost unnoticed, though. At the time, a Japanese fellow named
Francisco Miyazaki is in Brazil to open a manufacturing plant for a Japanese
diesel-engine company. Miyazaki's a black belt under Sumiyuki Kotani, the same
who on behalf of Kodokan visited Brazil in 1939. When Miyazaki is casually
asked about the three Japanese judokas visiting the South American nation, he's
sincere: "I've never heard of Kato or Yamaguchi. They're unknowns to me
and to all the other Japanese fighters." Asked whether he's heard of
Kimura, though, his response is altogether different: "Kimura, he I have
heard of. He's a champion and fought before Emperor Hiroito several times. But
now he's considered a seventh-class[93] fighter." He concludes saying Kimura is already past his prime
and, "At the moment the greatest fighter in Japan is Mifune... the
greatest after Master Kano, naturally[94]." The day after those statements are made, one of the top
brass at São Paulo Shinbun goes into damage-control mode, claiming the
statements are influenced by internal rivalries in Japan, as Miyazaki's from
Kodokan, which took action against Kimura for supporting the creation of a
professional judo league. Defending Kato's credentials isn't so easy to do,
though. To explain the "world runner-up", Shinbun's spokesman limits
himself to saying (probably correctly) that Kato's still better than any of the
Brazilian judokas. Curiously, the most well-thought-out comment made on the
topic of Kato comes from Hélio Gracie himself[95]:

"What matters in
our case is that he is a great fighter, as he has indeed proved. No title is on
the line, and nobody said Kato's a champion, but if he's a four- or five-class
[dan] black belt, that's proof enough that he belongs to the category from
which world champions come[96]."

Amid the rumblings of controversy, on August 30 Kato is in Rio de
Janeiro for the fight. Along with Kato vs Hélio, the program for the night
features João Alberto, Hemetério, Marinho and Carlson, all of whom are facing
students from Ono's São Paulo academy. Prophetically, Ono offers his prediction
for the big fight: "Kato has all the advantage in the takedown department.
He's going to beat Hélio Gracie up, take him down whenever he wants. But on the
mat he'll have his work cut out for him because that's where the Brazilian
champion's possibilities arise."

On September 6, 1951, before a sizable crowd, Hélio Gracie and Yukio
Kato step up to the mat[97]. Hélio sports a blue belt, in a clear-cut attempt to distance his
system from the Japanese one. The four preliminary matches end in draws but
expectations are that the main event will end differently. The bell sounds out
the start to the first of three planned 10-minute rounds under "submission
or loss of consciousness" rules. Kato stalks Hélio, sinks a grip on his gi
and tosses the Gracie violently with an uchimata. Hélio is hardly back
on his feet again before he's upended for a second time. What transpires over
the first round is a succession of uchimatas and hanigoshis Kato
makes sure only to execute when at the edge of the mat so as to avoid having to
fight on the ground. In round two, twice Hélio sinks chokes, and both times
Kato drags him out of the contest area. Round three sees a worn out Kato's
throw output drop considerably. The match ends in a draw. Once the action is
over, Hélio is applauded, and Kato, booed. Still in the competition area, Kato
comments on the result:

"I wanted to fight
on the feet. If Hélio only did judo I'd have won. But on the ground the
Brazilian champion really is good. He should be a six-degree black belt on the
ground. I am going to São Paulo and won't be returning to Rio. I'm saddened by
the boos I received."

Asked why he avoided the ground fighting, Kato responds:

"Because jiu-jitsu
rules allow me that right. Wasn't Hélio trying to fight only on the ground?
Isn't [avoiding your weakness] a resource, too?"

With the inconclusive result, those first days after the fight
there's talk of a rematch. Comfortably leveraged for his convincing
performance, Hélio Gracie bides his time till further developments unfold. The
push for a new fight actually comes from the Japanese camp, and on September 19
Kato formally challenges for a rematch to be held in São Paulo. Hélio says
he'll think about it. It takes just one day for him to send his reply (which he
obviously had ready the moment he was challenged): he agrees to fight in São
Paulo, but under three conditions: that there be five rounds instead of three,
that the match area be 10 x 10 meters, and lastly that the fighter to flee the
competition boundary thrice be disqualified. Hélio's conditions accepted (the
only change made was to the number of "flees" permitted, which was
raised to five), the match is set for September 29, one week later, at Pacaembu
gymnasium. Another addition has to do with the arena for the match. This time a
boxing ring, with ropes, shall be the stage. Carlos makes it state in the bout
agreement that the action can only be interrupted if one of the opponents
leaves the bounds of the ropes completely. So while on the one hand Kato can
count on having a crowd less hostile and even partly rooting for him, on the
other his chances of escaping the Gracie's ground game diminish considerably.

That September 29, 1951 would leave its mark on combat-sports
history – and not just because of the outcome. Since Maeda and the other
Japanese first landed in the West a half century earlier, this would be the
first fight featuring the "art of fighting with your back on the
ground" ever to be filmed in its entirety and available for anyone to see.
To find out what happened, one needn't trust someone else's interpretation;
they could see for their very own self. The video starts with Hélio entering
the ring, Carlos's watchful eye fixed on him from the corner, to a round of
applause. He and Kato pose side by side for photos. Though weighing slightly
less, Hélio's a good deal taller than his Japanese counterpart. The two then
step to center ring and receive final instructions from the referee. The match
starts. Kato is the more cautious, not as forward-moving as last time. The two
having locked classic judo grips on each other's collar and sleeve, the first
few minutes of the match play out uneventfully on the feet. Hélio's poor
standing base is plain to see, almost clumsy. Several times he teeters on one
foot for no apparent reason. There are moments where he positions himself
between Kato and the ropes just to be sure he lands in the middle of the ring
should Kato hip-toss him. Four minutes in, Kato lands his first takedown, a hanegoshi
that comes within a hair of sending Hélio out of the ring. The Gracie lands on
his back, his guard passed entirely. Hélio spins to replace guard, and Kato
throws him past the ropes. The action is paused, and right at the restart Kato
gets another throw, again landing on top of Hélio and past his guard. Hélio
swiftly gets guard on Kato, who tries stacking his way past but is thwarted by
the tremendous flexibility used by the Brazilian to turn on all fours and
replace guard. Six minutes in, Kato attempts an atrociously executed osotogari.
He lands under Hélio and immediately ducks under and out of the ropes. From his
corner, Kimura barks insistently: "What's wrong, Kato? Go for the ground
fight! Don't stay on your feet!" The action resumes standing, and the
moments tick away without anything happening. At the 7:30-minute mark another hanegoshi
hits its mark for Kato, who again lands in a splendid position, past guard,
near the ropes. But little does he know that this is the beginning of the end
for him. With Kato on his left, Hélio manages to get his right knee on his
opponent's torso, distancing him enough to fit his left leg under. A few
seconds go by where he has the judoka in his half-guard, but he continues
positioning his left leg until he has him in full guard. Hélio fumbles for a
grip on the collar. Kato makes his fatal mistake: instead of defending the
choke, he sets up his hand to choke Hélio right back while at the same time
trying to push him beyond the ropes. But it's too late. Kato loses
consciousness, and Hélio tells the referee, "Mr Ref, the man's
asleep!" As Kato hasn't tapped, the referee orders them on. Kimura shouts,
"Stop!" from the corner and leaps into the ring. Hélio repeats,
"Call the fight or man may die!" and lets go, his opponent keeling
over unconscious. The victory is decisive and indisputable. In the ring Kimura
and Ono can be seen trying to console the distraught Kato right after comes to
his senses.

Victory his, Hélio's fame was at an all-time high. While he paid
visits to sporting authorities and politicians alike, the mood in the Japanese
camp was dismal. Something had to be done to redeem the loss. A simple contest
between a Brazilian and a Japanese fighter had become a state issue. As per the
original accord, Hélio would now have the right to face Yamaguchi (only if he
beat him would he get to fight Kimura), and the Shinbun president even gave the
order, "Mr Yamaguchi, this time kill Hélio!" Not quite sure of
himself, though, Yamaguchi asked for a day so he could think about it. Kimura,
picking up on his teammate's apprehensions and aware that fighting in fear
could spell Yamaguchi's defeat, cut in line: "I'll fight Hélio." They
then issued their statement to the press:

"I'll gladly fight
Hélio. I agree to fight under the conditions put forth by the Brazilian
champion, that is, fighting on the ground. If Hélio so desires, I'll start the
fight on the ground and end it on the ground, without so much as a single
throw."

The Hélio-vs-Kimura match was set for the 23rd of October 1951,
again at Maracanã stadium. From the pre-fight smack talk, an uncharacteristic
reversal of roles could be noted. Hélio, generally the more outspoken, this
time sought to curb expectations about his chances of winning, limiting his
promises to saying he would do his best, do what was realistically possible. Whereas
Kimura showed no restraint whatsoever, writing the Gracie off completely:
"I don't see Hélio having a chance in the world of beating me." Nor
did he make any secret of his strategy for the fight:

"On the first sink
of a grip I'll toss Hélio and then fight him on the ground. I'll be able to
jerk open Hélio's leg-guard and proceed without letting him escape out of the
ring to get free."

Asked if he'd be able to get out of one of Hélio's chokes, he
responded dryly: "It'll be the easiest thing on Earth."

The fact of the matter, Hélio Gracie never had a chance of beating
Masahiko Kimura. Kimura was a fighting machine. Unbeaten since winning his
first major tournament, in 1935, he was fanatical about training. He aimed to
train twice as much as his opponents. Once he'd earned the title of Japanese
national champion for the first time and his opponents started matching his
long hours in the gym, he added another three hours to his already grueling
daily routine. Kimura was also a great deal heavier than Hélio, though having
nowhere near the 40kg of extra flesh the press of the day claimed he did. At
weigh-ins for the first Kato fight Hélio came up 65kg on the dot. Kimura tipped
the scales at around 85kg, which is still quite a hefty size difference. But
the weight and training weren't the only factors preordaining a Kimura victory
(truth be told, he didn't train specifically for it and even upheld his
pro-wrestling commitments in the days leading up to the fight). What made his
winning such a sure thing was that as a ground fighter his skill, quickness and
strength were phenomenal even by elite-judoka standards. There was no way Hélio
could surprise him technically even though the reverse too was true. With
physical prowess in his favor,  Kimura just couldn't lose.

The day before the fight the promoters were at wits end trying to
find opponents for João Alberto and Hemetério in the undercard. Ono didn't want
to send anyone from his stable in São Paulo. The natural alternative was to
invite Augusto Cordeiro's students, but he said he'd only avail them of his
fighters if it were under judo rules, which wasn't going to happen. Ultimately,
facing virtual unknowns, João Alberto won his outing, and Hemetério tied a
match he dominated from start to finish.

The big bout about to begin, the air at Maracanã stadium is thick
with tension. Before the eyes of top-ranked officials from the Brazilian and
Japanese governments, even the nation's vice-president, Café Filho, the
fighters step onto the mat (this time without ropes). All the way up until the
moment the action begins, Kimura's confidence is absolute. Not to break from
character, with the opening bell about to ring, Carlos Gracie protests the
choice of referee. Asked whether he's okay with the referee being substituted,
Kimura responds with aplomb: "Any referee is fine by me; I'll win either
way..." The best description of what comes next is Hélio's own, according
to his son Rorion Gracie, told by his father years later that he couldn't think
at all during the match, the only thing going through his head was that he felt
he was "in a blender". From the moment the two fighters greet each
other and initiate combat, exactly ten seconds go by before Kimura throws Hélio
with an osoto gari. Kimura drives the move with so much force that he sails
over Hélio and nearly rolls past the advantageous position. He quickly shifts
onto his feet in Hélio's guard but doesn't let him gain a footing on his hips,
grabbing the Gracie's knees before in one fluid motion "toreando"
past guard. From initiating the takedown to passing the Brazilian's guard,
exactly three seconds elapse. From there onwards the sheer volume of Kimura's
onslaught precludes Hélio making any move at all; all he can do is hang on for
dear life, which he does quite well and with plenty of stamina during the first
round. Kimura from the get-go relentlessly pursues the ude garami. Hélio
realizes early on that that's what his opponent's after and that his own
survival would only last as long as he can defend his arm. At the end of the
round fatigue is already upon Hélio. In attempting to "yank out" the
Brazilian's arm, Kimura steps over and puts Hélio in a head scissor (the move
can be seen in the abridged video of the match) and without realizing it cuts
off his breathing and renders him unconscious for a few seconds. Unaware of the
effect they're having, Kimura loosens his legs and relieves the pressure. When
the bell sounds a few seconds later, Hélio is, in his own words,
"physically demolished." In the corner Carlos tries to egg him on,
saying Kimura is tired too, but the argument sounds pathetic to Hélio, who
realized that when Kimura was on top of him back in round one, he was really
just resting...

Round two, same beginning: takedown and guard pass. Hélio, on his
last legs, can no longer bear the intensity of Kimura's attacks. Three minutes
in, the judoka's ude garami is definitive. There's nowhere left to run.
Mercifully, Kimura slowly draws the arm out to give Hélio a chance to
surrender. In disbelief, Kimura listens to the ligaments popping as the Gracie
refuses to tap. Knowing that at any moment his brother's humorous will split in
two, Carlos hurries into the match area to plead for a stoppage. Kimura sees
him and releases the hold. The judge says he wants to restart the fight,
however, since Hélio never gave the conventional sign of desistance. At that
poing Hélio himself chimes in, confirming his brother had made the right call.
With great clarity he would say immediately after the match:

"I, personally,
don't believe I could have gotten out [of the ude garami], although I may
sincerely add that Kimura did get a bit off balance. But there wouldn't have
been any point if I'd managed to escape that hold right there, because, give a
few minutes, take a few minutes, my fate in that fight would be decided by the
malice of a great fighter who already in the very first round had already paved
the path to victory."

Rather than causing the Brazilian's fame ebb, the Kimura fight just
made it grow. The ude garami Kimura used on Hélio was perhaps the last
bond shared between Kano's judo and the emerging Brazilian jiu-jitsu. From that
point on Gracie Academy would follow its own path in almost total isolation.
Without the shackles of a "canon" to hold it back, the "fighting
with your back on the ground" that spontaneously sprung to life a half
century before would see unprecedented and unfettered evolution in the decades
to come. In almost no time the two arts would be so irreconcilable that never
again would a Japanese judo champion be able to beat a top-tier Brazilian
jiu-jitsu fighter on the ground. But the Gracie's near monopoly couldn't last
forever, and sooner than later it started to be tested, until once and for all
it ceased to exist many years later. How that happened is the subject of the
next chapter.

On the 2nd of November 1951 Masahiko Kimura departed Brazil. Leaving
from whence he came, his plane flew out of Rio de Janeiro. At 1:30am, Kimura,
Kato and Yamaguchi shuffled unnoticed through the nearly deserted gate at
Galeão airport. There bidding farewell to the friends were only a
representative of São Paulo Shinbun and Professor Augusto Cordeiro. At that
point a reporter from Ultima Hora newspaper approached to share a few words
with the great champion, away from the spotlight and the pressures that
surrounded his fight with Hélio. Asked what he thought of the Gracie, Kimura
said he was a little disappointed with how defensive Hélio was on the ground,
which hampered his applying more techniques. He said he expected to meet with
greater resistance on the ground. Kimura then said, "... I'm surprised at
how jiu-jitsu is done in Brazil, which is altogether different from the
regulations in Japan." He said that in his country, where Kodokan
regulations are followed, it's universally accepted that you don't fight on the
ground without first taking the opponent down, and even on the ground the
referee restarts the fight on the feet if he notes that the submission isn't
immediately forthcoming. The reporter, then, explains to Kimura that Brazil too
follows Kodokan regulations, except at Gracie Academy and by a few rogue
fighters.

"But to what end?" Kimura may have thought to himself.
"These Gracies must be crazy..."

Chapter 12 – The Search for Legitimacy

T

he intensity of the events that followed the Gracies’ “comeback” at
the end of the 1940s might lead one to believe that a certain anticlimax should
follow Hélio-vs-Kimura. However, it dawned on Hélio that the tremendous
popularity he’d attained could help him immediately set about making his big
personal project come to fruition. Now, the very next month after fighting the
Japanese champion, he and Carlos acquired the entire 17th floor of
the recently built Iracema building, on the corner of Rio Branco Avenue and
Assembleia Street in Downtown Rio de Janeiro, just two blocks from where,
decades earlier, Cyriaco knocked out Sada Miyako. Much had changed on the
avenue since then, though. A number of the original buildings constructed since
the boulevard’s inauguration had made way for the skyscrapers that throng the
avenue today. The Iracema was one of them, a building as lofty as Hélio and
Carlos could dream of for their academy. Over a five-month span the two poured
six million cruzeiros, a fortune in those days, into getting it to their liking.

On April 23, 1952, to great fanfare[98],
Gracie Academy was inaugurated. Gone were the days when the Gracies taught at
their old academy (and place of residence) on Marques de Abrantes Street or
when Hélio would hold class in his apartment on the Flamengo beachfront. The
new Gracie academy was gigantic, with room for private and group lessons. The
facilities were designed specifically so that Hélio could put to practice his
teaching method. As a result of the fame the Gracies and jiu-jitsu now enjoyed,
a stream of big names from politics, the arts, the military, high society and
the business world around Rio signed up for classes. These sorts tended to take
private lessons focused almost exclusively on self-defense, and paid a premium
for them. Meanwhile, Hélio also kept his “combat team” ready and training
together as a group. They were the ones willing to accept and make the
inevitable challenges and at any moment prove their art’s superiority, whether
in gi-clad or no-holds-barred combat.

With the academy’s inauguration, the stage was set for the landmark
events of the next decade. And the “battle lines” were already drawn. One of
them, the defeat of which seemed nigh but for which the Gracies stuck to their
guns, involved the rules for governing matches held in the gi. Judo was quickly
gaining ground but, as we’ll be seeing, Hélio and Carlos didn’t see that as a
war beyond their winning. Another front, of equal importance, was the challenge
of bringing vale-tudo back for the crowds. From the ‘30s onward the
public “anything goes” matches had been banned due to the negative impression
the violent early bouts had made. Ever since then, legit vale-tudos took
place within the confines of the academies, behind closed doors and not for the
eyes of an audience. Hélio and Carlos felt the time had come for that panorama
to change.

A third “line of battle” had to do with the violent campaign the
Gracie brothers were waging against worked fights. We’ve already seen how
Carlos became embroiled in controversy because of worked fights on at least two
occasions, the first before his maiden match with Geo Omori in São Paulo and
the second with the Geo Omori-Manoel Fernandes bout in Rio de Janeiro. Hélio,
though, was always immune to such accusations, thanks to the credibility
bestowed on him when his brother George explicitly exculpated him and for not
having done much fighting after 1934, when it was claimed that works were the
norm in Rio de Janeiro. Hélio’s thoughts on prearranged fights were quite
clear. In his words, such behavior “undermined fighters’ moral fiber.” What he
meant was that even skilled fighters would lose their moral fiber, lose “the
eye of the tiger” by accepting agreed-upon outcomes. Thusly the great benefit
jiu-jitsu had to offer, of making its practitioners more confident in
themselves and their abilities, would dissipate. In Rio de Janeiro of the 1950s
worked fights had already taken on a circus-like quality just like in other
parts of the world, and keener observers easily pick up on the fact that they
aren’t watching a no duro, bona fide bout of fisticuffs. Even so, Hélio
viciously attacked such events, time and again challenging troupes of
pro-wrestlers to face off with his students in a style of their choosing,
whether wrestling, jiu-jitsu or, mainly, vale-tudo.

During the years that followed, while they battled hard on those
three fronts, the Gracies constantly came up against a reality quite unlike
what they were used to. Over the previous two decades, they were accustomed to
issuing challenges and every now and again getting challenged. For his
“success” in the Kato and Kimura fights, Hélio became the man to beat, and the
number of challenges directed at the Gracies multiplied. Hélio had announced
his retirement as a fighter after the Kimura fight, yet he was still the
preferred target of challenges by the opportunists who’d show up at Gracie
academy. These carpetbaggers were generally received by Carlson or some other
fighter who’d step up to do battle behind closed doors. Hélio would enter the
picture to fight if someone eventually beat one of his students. There were
numerous such challenges over the years that followed, and not once did Hélio
have to join the fray.

Another all-present aspect of those years was street fights. There
were plenty of them, some making the news, like the one between Carlson Gracie
and the lifeguards from the Leme neighborhood or João Alberto Barreto throwing
down with the fighter Mesnick right in the middle of Copacabana’s busy Prado
Junior Avenue with the unusual ending of shots being fired, one of them grazing
João Alberto’s leg.

The opportunity for Hélio and Carlos to launch a new offensive
against judo arose at the end of August 1952 when a new Kodokan embassy was
announced for Brazil[99].
This time the group comprised three members. The most senior of them was Shinzo
Takagaki, eighth dan, one of the best-known Kano students. He was accompanied
by none other than Yoshihiko Yoshimatsu, seventh dan. If Kimura’s stock was
high for the credentials he had when he arrived in Brazil, Yoshimatsu wasn’t
far behind at all. In 1947, the 27-year-old Japanese judoka came up against
Kimura at the Western Japan championship. Though holding a considerable weight
advantage over Kimura (he weighed 115 kg at the tournament), he was not up to
par for the Japanese steamroller, who easily overcame him with two wazaris.
From that point on Yoshimatsu underwent continuous evolution. In 1948 he was
eliminated in the semifinals at that year’s Japanese championship in a match so
hard fought the winner was determined by random draw. In 1951 he was runner-up
before finally achieving his crowning glory of becoming champion of Japan,
before which that same year he traveled to Brazil. Rounding out the group was
Yoshimi Osawa, fifth dan, the youngest in the group, at 26 years of age, and
also the lightest, weighing just 67 kg. As in 1939, the arrival of the Japanese
was informally viewed as a state visit, with a reception for them at the
Japanese embassy with pomp and honors.

Just after their arrival was announced, even before the three
judokas had set foot in Brazil, Hélio and Carlos were already on the attack.
And they did so developing quite a curious theory. Hélio assumed that news of
his performances against Kimura and Kato had surely reached Japan. In response,
Kodokan had sent a new delegation to clear the slate of the impression left by
Kato’s defeat and Kimura’s inability to overcome Hélio quickly. And, of course,
Hélio was more than willing to accept a challenge to square off with Yoshimatsu
or Ogawa[100].
He did require the fight be under jiu-jitsu rules, though, defining them only
as “submission or loss of consciousness.” Hélio went on to explain the reason
for such a demand. According to him, those were the rules under which jiu-jitsu
matches were originally held in Japan. However, as Japanese don’t submit, he
claimed, Jigoro Kano created judo, with different rules, so fighters would be
able to lose (on points) without having to get hurt.

The Japanese arrived in Rio de Janeiro on September 26 and promptly
headed to São Paulo to hold their presentations, as programmed[101]. Left without a
response, Hélio raised the tone of the challenge. When he was informed that the
Japanese would not accept challenges because their mission was only to spread
the sport, Hélio protested: “Spread what? Why, Brazilians have been familiar
with jiu-jitsu for a long time now. What the Japanese government wants is to
wash away the loss Kato suffered at Pacaembu Stadium and gain ground for ‘made
in Japan’ jiu-jitsu. That’s the truth.” He offered up Carlson as an opponent
for Osawa if he’d accept.

The Japanese’s silence only broke when they stated that they would
only make appearances under judo rules. Hélio’s reaction was incisive. In an
interview in the October 7 issue of O Globo newspaper he says:

“First off, I can’t say
I’m not taken aback by the newly arrived Japanese’s statement that they’re judo
fighters, relegating jiu-jitsu to the background as a dangerous fight that
doesn’t serve a sporting purpose… The truth is, jiu-jitsu made way for the new
fighting style[102],
which is nothing more than some regulations, because that was the only way the
higher-ups could find to avoid Japanese fanaticism, since the Japanese would
rather choke to death than injure their honor by tapping out. Judo solved that
problem quite well because it boils down to throws for points and the losing
opponent doesn’t get demoralized, since a sightly throw, which doesn’t always
represent absolute superiority, satisfies both loser and winner. That is why the
Japanese who showed up now are saying the only way they’ll fight me is under
judo rules; they know that, after so many years of doing nothing but takedowns,
they’ll take me down and win. What they don’t want is to risk the prestige of
their national sport like Kato…”

Hélio continues, adding vehemence:

“That’s the difference
between judo and jiu-jitsu, and there you can clearly see the bad faith of the
Japanese who, flouting much more advanced countries, where there are organized
jiu-jitsu events, came to Brazil, where there isn’t even an organized
federation, to hold a series of exhibitions. The funniest part is that they say
they’ll accept a challenge, so long as it’s under their rules, which shows just
why the absolute champion came … to safely beat the one who was able to
overcome a black belt and fearlessly take on a true human hulk[103] … They always claim
obedience to Kodokan, but that doesn’t impress me, because the titles the
Japanese entity awards don’t interest me… They should be ashamed to bring over
exceptional men with physical vigor like Kimura and now Yoshimatsu and still
repeat the farce of declaring the smaller fighter[104] accompanying the
champion to be held in low regard in Japan.”

In spite of the belatedness and obvious paranoia of believing the Japanese
state had hatched a plot against the Gracies, Hélio’s view is interesting. For
his whole life he genuinely believed that if he were hypothetically transported
through time to pre-Meiji and Kodokan Japan and saw a jiu-jitsu match, it would
look something like what he practiced. He didn’t have the slightest clue that
jiu-jitsu was a generic term for a set of diverse styles practiced at a variety
of different schools. He suspected even less that his style derived directly
from judo and was tweaked and adapted to deal with the challenges the judokas
encountered decades earlier in the United States of America.

Sometime in November, the Japanese committee returned to Rio de
Janeiro, where they held exhibitions at the Banco do Brasil Athletic
Association. Participating at these presentations were local academies that,
unlike the Gracies, had definitively adopted the practice of judo, among them
Augusto Cordeiro and Carlos Pereira’s schools. At these presentations the
Brazilians couldn’t help but marvel at the red and white stripes on Takagaki
and Yoshimatsu’s belts. Finally, sponsored by a Rio de Janeiro newspaper, on
November 12 Hélio and Carlos were taken to the hotel where the judokas were
staying. Takagaki’s polished and conciliatory tone disarmed all hostile
inclinations, and the conversation transpired cordially. He explained that
Kodokan had forbidden them from accepting any challenge and that they were only
allowed to hold exhibitions. He praised the Gracies and said that, should time
permit, he would pay Gracie Academy a visit.

Despite the amenity of the conversation, over the coming days Hélio
went back to insisting Osawa fight Carlson. Even the Japanese leaving Rio de
Janeiro for a spell in João Pessoa, Paraíba, didn't spare them the provocation,
with Pedro Hemetério challenging them in the northeastern Brazilian state. Back
in Rio de Janeiro, they embarked for Buenos Aires, the next stop on their tour[105].

By incessantly pestering the Japanese, Hélio felt he could draw them
into a fight. What he didn’t realize was that, with the disciplined Takagaki,
Yoshimatsu and Ogawa, neither rank nor the incessant provocation mattered to
them. They would never agree to any challenge that violated the orders they
received explicitly from Kodokan, unlike Kimura and Kato, who had already split
from Japanese judo’s central philosophy. Back in Japan, Yoshimatsu would go on
to win another two Japanese championships (in 1953 and 1955) and would be
runner-up at the 1956 World Championship, becoming one of the sport's biggest
names of all times. Now, Ogawa, the fighter “held in low regard,” is currently one
of the few 10th-dan Kodokan black belts still alive.

Almost immediately after the Japanese left Rio de Janeiro, the very
next month, December 1952, the war of attrition between the Gracies and the
judokas moved ahead, but this time Hélio was the one being challenged. The
challenger was the veteran Yassuite Ono. Once again Hélio responded aggressively.
He said Ono didn’t deserve his respect, no matter how technically endowed he
was, because he’d accepted worked fights during the ‘30s. He offered Ono three
options. If it were to be a sport fight, Ono could face Carlson to qualify for
a fight with him, Hélio. As a second option, Ono could name a student of his to
face Carlson. If, on the other hand, Ono’s desire was to have a personal fight,
Hélio would concede a chance to face him, but it would have to be a vale-tudo[106]. The Hélio-vs-Ono showdown
never ended up happening.

The Gracie-judo feud continued. Early in 1953, a rumor leaked in the
press saying Augusto Cordeiro had issued the Gracies a challenge. Hélio and
Carlos’s response was immediate and  again aggressive. In a nutshell they said
they accepted any challenge, but that they didn’t believe Cordeiro had the
gumption to show up. Cordeiro responded the next day. He said he hadn’t
challenged anybody, if just because “… the Gracies always refuse to fight under
the regulations that govern this beautiful, noble sport in Brazil and the other
countries where it is practiced.” He was referring to judo, which he had
embraced once and for all. The incident would have ended there if Cordeiro
hadn’t continued and brought up a subject that was plenty sensitive to the
Gracies: “I don’t go around picking fights, but I will tell the Gracies that I
don’t need my brothers to cowardly gang up on people, like they did years ago
to another instructor.” He was referring to the assault on Manoel Rufino dos
Santos, for which the Gracies had been condemned to prison in the ‘30s. With
the climate heating up, days later Cordeiro and Carlos and Hélio were invited
to meet at a newspaper newsroom and settle their differences in civilized
fashion. However, without Takagaki’s diplomatic skills, the meeting
deteriorated into heated bickering. Hélio and Carlos tried, unsuccessfully, to
coerce Cordeiro into fighting right then and there. Referring to the Rufino
incident, Carlos was incisive:

“It was out of line for
you to bring up our past like that. You said the Gracie brothers cowardly
assaulted a fighter. That’s a lie. And it’s so much of a lie that the president
of the republic pardoned us. Do you, sir, feel you have the right to contradict
the president?”

“I based what I said on
word on the street…” retorted Cordeiro.

Hélio then took the taunting up himself: “You contradicted yourself:
you said you’re no thug but are game for any fight between men. I thus propose
a fight between us here in the newsroom.”

“I’m not a street
fighter, and I only accept scheduled, sporting matches. Street fighting goes
against the technique I practice,” Cordeiro responded.

Carlos continued: “All it takes to prove you’re a wimp, a coward, a
blackmailer, a defibered teacher and suspect person, Cordeiro, is
this challenge: I punch you in the face and you don’t react.”

Despite all the tough talk, Carlos and Hélio didn’t get the fight
they were after: Augusto Cordeiro kept his cool, and the incident ended without
a newsroom brawl. The Gracies’ relationship with the judokas was irremediably
ruined, but there was still one battle they tried in vain to win but that
wouldn’t play out on the mats or in the streets. First, though, Carlos and
Hélio returned their attention to the resumption of the public vale-tudos,
which were still banned in Rio de Janeiro.

Chapter 13 – Vale Tudo Reborn

I

n the year 1953 Brazil suffered the worst drought in its recorded
history. So severe was the lack of water, to this day the year is used in
meteorological simulations as Brazilian hydrology's worst-case scenario. The
drought was especially cruel and merciless in the northeastern region, the
poorest part of the country. The lack of water and food caused the northeastern
population, mainly in the interior, to suffer terrible privations. A nationwide
drive to collect food, clothing and financial resources formed to try and
alleviate the northeastern people’s suffering.

At the time, Hélio Gracie had been approached by a Rio de Janeiro
newspaper to lead a campaign against the thugs who had made the city’s streets
into venues for numerous altercations[107].
That caused a light bulb to go off in Hélio's head: Why not make the campaign
into a fund-raising event to curb the northeasterners’ suffering? It was a
simple idea: a massive vale-tudo event would be held at Maracanã
stadium. There Gracie Academy members would fight any Rio de Janeiro thug that
would dare face them. Hélio even proposed the following taglines for the event:

“I challenge all the
city’s bullies to a slugfest at the Metropolitan[108].”

“It’s an opportunity to
earn your bravery stripes.”

“I repeat to the tough
guys, capoeira instructors and dumb big guys from the movies: offer your face
as a contribution!”

The idea was a stroke of genius: Who could oppose a benefit event
for needy northeasterners? Could there be a more noble way to justify a brawl?
It would be classic vale-tudo, only ending via submission or loss of
consciousness. The entire press corps immediately embraced Hélio’s proposal,
and there was almost no opposing outcry to mention the violence inherent in
such a spectacle. A few days later, volunteers started to surface. The very
first of them was Félix “Biriba” da Silva, a fighter known around town, who
availed the event of his willingness to face Hélio. Obviously neither Biriba
nor any of the other fighters who came out of the woodwork accepted the descriptor
“bully” for themselves; they were only disposed to accept the challenge under
the pretext of helping the northeasterners. Soon after, more volunteers cropped
up: the capoeira stylist Cirandinha and the fighter Passarito. Biriba’s signup
was turned down because he refused to face anyone but Hélio Gracie and required
25 days' preparation time. On the final day of registration, a last-minute
addition: Rudolf Hermany the capoeirist. Aware that they’d be facing a complex
fighting style and possibly conscious of what had happened during the vale-tudo
events of the early ‘30s, Cirandinha, Passarito and Hermany headed for one of
the only places where they could find the training they’d need to face Gracie
students: the academy of Augusto Cordeiro. Cordeiro agreed to let them train at
his academy, but he made it clear that they weren’t training under his
auspices, possibly to avoid the controversy of being tagged a traitor of the
art as had happened to Geo Omori a couple of decades earlier.

Initially set to go down at the Maracanã, that plan proved
unfeasible, and the event was transferred to Vasco da Gama stadium. It would
take place in two stages, the first on March 17, 1953, and the second a few
days later, on March 21. The card for the first stage featured three matchups:
Robson Gracie would take on Manuel “Tatuzinho” Maciel. Number two on the card
was Guanair Vial facing off with Rudolf Hermany. And the main event was Carlson
Gracie versus Cirandinha. It would be a vale-tudo under grueling
conditions. No time limits or round, it wasn’t held on the soccer pitch but on
a ring-less basketball court next to the field, with no mat, not even a canvas
to soften the concrete. Unavoidably, during the days leading up to the event,
the old tale of Cyriaco and Sada Miyako was resurrected. Would this be when
capoeira finally repeats the success of that occasion? Would the homegrown
style manage to outdo the Japanese art?

The big day arrives, and the disorder ever present at jiu-jitsu and vale-tudo
events prevails. A handful of spectators, unhappy with the poor view they have
of the action, tries to switch seats, which results in the police getting
involved to put down the ensuing melee. Good cheer restored, the fighters make
their entrance for fight number one. Robson Gracie sports the traditional gi,
while Tatuzinho is bare chested and clearly dripping with oil. The fight under
way, Robson throws some low kicks and waits for his chance to close the
distance. His moment comes when the capoeirist tries a rabo de arraia.
Robson darts in, grabs his opponent, and the two tumble to the ground with the
Gracie on bottom playing guard. Capitalizing on the first flurry of ground and
pound, Robson sweeps and lands mounted atop his opponent. From there on it’s a
massacre, a hail of fists and elbows driving a desperate Tatuzinho to turn his
back and quickly succumb to a mata-leão choke. The fight is over in less
than two minutes.

The second fight is the most hard-fought one of the evening. Guanair
and Hermany trade blows for an hour before getting cut short to not interfere
with the headliner. Hermany’s performance is cause for surprise, though, as he
accepts the ground game the whole time and at times takes more initiative than
his opponent. Next Carlson Gracie and Cirandinha take to the court, again the
Gracie draped in a gi and the capoeira stylist shirtless. Right at the start
Carlson lands a potent strike to his opponent’s face and some of the spectators
nearest by see one of Cirandinha’s teeth fly out of his mouth. The capoeira
representative does manage to sidestep getting grabbed, though. On his next
attempt Carlson does manage to get his foe down, only for Cirandinha to squirm
free and back to his feet. Again Carlson takes the fight to the ground, and the
two roll around the concrete court. Without the ropes of a ring to cordon them
in, they roll across the court’s entire extension, at times with only the
divider separating them from the audience, serving the function the cage does
in the UFC today. At times Cirandinha presses Carlson against the divider and
tries smashing his head against the fencing. About ten minutes into the bout,
Carlson strips off his gi top, revealing the glaring size difference between
them. At a certain point Carlson has Cirandinha in his guard, and the capoeira
fighter pummels Carlson with strikes and head butts, now and again slamming the
Gracie’s head into the concrete floor. Amazingly calm, Carlson finally manages
to mount and draw the curtain on Cirandinha’s last act. Carlson doesn’t want to
end it with a submission or choke; he wants to teach his adversary a lesson for
his brazenness. Cirandinha has taken “no holds barred” too literally, having
attempted several times to gauge out the Gracie’s eyes, even, at a certain
point, grabbing his testicles. Carlson gets the demolition session started with
an endless barrage of punches and elbows until Cirandinha shouts to the ref:
“Doctor, for the love of God, get this man off me!” The referee promptly steps
in to hold Carlson back. Carlson Gracie, his face battered from the punishment
he himself suffered, has his hand raised by the referee. Cirandinha, missing a
good portion of his dental arch, exits the stadium braced by his companions.

The “drought-benefit challenge” was a public relations success for
Hélio Gracie. Three days after the show, he, at a highly publicized event, went
in person to deliver a check in the value of the money raised directly to
Brazil’s first lady, Mrs Darcy Vargas. A move was immediately made to set up
the second event, as programmed. Originally set for the 21st, the
tight schedule forced the organizers to delay plans by a few weeks.

On April 6, representatives from a number of Rio de Janeiro
newspapers, the Gracies and other sporting figures gathered at the Brazilian
Press Association to lay the foundation for Desafio Pela Seca II
[Drought-Benefit Challenge II]. Oddly, Carlos Gracie spoke up: “We are
viscerally opposed to vale-tudo. Nevertheless, we cannot allow ourselves
to miss such a fight if it is for an altruistic cause.” Carlos’s pronouncement
seems almost hypocritical, if not comical. But it was clever. The first event
having been such a success, a push from the press for a second one was
inevitable. By positioning himself as he did, there was no way Carlos could be
accused of inciting the violence of vale-tudo. And he would still get
the event he so desired. At that same meeting a definitive date was set: May 2,
1953 at a location theretofore undetermined. They did set up one of the fights
on the card, though: the dogged Carlson Gracie would take on Passarito, who
hadn’t figured at the previous event.

There was some difficulty finding fighters willing to go up against
the Gracie Academy students. The card was only finalized just days before the
event. The first fight had Armando Wriedt of Gracie Academy taking on a fighter
named Edgar Santos. Matchup number two had Hélio Vigio squaring off with João
Silva, and the third bout pit João Alberto Barreto against João Paulo Pinheiro.
It was obvious to all that the three unknown fighters were highly unlikely to
offer much resistance to the three Gracie disciples, such that all hopes were
pinned on Carlson’s fight against Passarito. Also just days before the event,
the venue was set: Maracanã stadium.

As expected, the three opening bouts end quickly. In 30 seconds
Santos succumbs to an arm-lock from Wriedt. Vígio takes a tad longer in
applying the same technique on João Silva: 2:30 minutes. João Alberto Barreto
matches the 2:30-minute duration against Pinheiro, but does so with a choke
instead. At last, time has come for the marquee bout. Following initial
instructions from the referee[109], the fight gets under way. Passarito takes the
initiative by attempting to punch Carlson, who dodges, and the two remain
standing, studying each other. Next Carlson goes for a less-than-technical
chokehold, commonly known as the “gravata de porteiro” [doorman’s choke], but
Passarito skillfully foot reaps Carlson, violently plunking him down on the
ground. The Gracie quickly repositions to get Passarito into his guard. The ten
minutes that follow are fairly motionless, with Carlson deftly blocking
Passarito’s ground and pound but without mounting much offense against his much
heavier opponent. At last Carlson snags an arm-lock, but Passarito gets to his
feet and yanks his arm to safety. Back on the feet, at a given moment Passarito
backs up to adjust his knee brace but Carlson doesn’t let up, thrashing him
with a kick. Next, like his last match, Carlson moves to the edge of the fight
area to remove his gi top, and Passarito takes the chance to reciprocate the
Gracie’s “fair play” by pouncing at full speed on his opponent. Carlson had
hardly gotten his arm out of the sleeve and Passarito was already on top of
him, the two tumbling out of the fight area and onto the soccer field,
dangerously close to the pit separating the pitch from the seating[110]. To avoid them
falling into the moat, the referee breaks them up and sends them back to center
ring. Again they tangle up and Passarito lands in Carlson’s guard, but this
time he grabs the waistband of the Gracie’s pants and remains motionless. The
weaker and lighter of the two, Carlson can do nothing against his opponent’s
defensive stance. He pounds his heel into Passarito’s kidney, but to little
effect. With four minutes left in regulation time, the referee asks whether the
fighters agree to fight longer. Carlson says he’s willing to continue, but
Passarito says he’s not. Having run its course, the bout is declared a draw.

In the days following Carlson’s fight, his father and uncle
relentlessly griped about Passarito’s defensive posture, but soon a different
subject occupied the Gracies’ attention. Judo had again become the “problem.”

The year 1953 saw São Paulo host its first state judo championship.
That led to talk of holding the first Rio de Janeiro State Championship and,
more importantly, the first Brazilian National Championship. At this time the
boxing federations were still governing the martial arts, not just boxing.
Hence it was the Brazilian Pugilism Confederation and Metropolitan Pugilism
Federation that were promoting the Brazilian National and Rio de Janeiro State
tournaments. Obviously, they would have to start by addressing the rules, still
quite a formless concept in the ‘50s. With judo’s global expansion and its practice
already having permeated throughout São Paulo, it was only natural that the
Japanese rules prevailed and “submission or loss of consciousness” rules for
winning not even enter the picture. But Hélio and Carlos weren’t going to give
up that battle so easily. To them a fight ending because of a takedown or pin
went against nature. They also disagreed with the ban competition judo imposed
on certain joint locks and chokes.

The debate officially began on May 17, 1953 when Tupi radio station
promoted a roundtable discussion to address “… the jiu-jitsu regulations to be
officially adopted throughout the nation.” The debate would be mediated by the
president of the FMP[111],
and the Gracies and several representatives of the sports press would be there.
The meeting would be of the utmost importance to Hélio and Carlos, as they
would be presenting their counterproposal on the rules to be adopted.

The attempt bore no fruit, though, and days later the FMP
definitively went ahead with judo rules for all competitions under its
jurisdiction. With the two biggest federations in the country in alignment, it
was inevitable that the CBP[112]
would follow suit. The Gracies had lost the rules war. From that point on they
would have to live at the margins of the sports regulatory bodies. Not
accepting defeat, Hélio and Carlos published a manifesto on the subject on May
30, 1953. If Brazilian jiu-jitsu had a date of birth, that can be considered
it. From that day forth any interaction with judo would be sporadic at best.
The following is Carlos and Hélio’s statement in its entirety:

“The Gracie brothers,
taking into account how their name has been exploited in the realm of Brazilian
sports, most notably in the metropolis[113],
and wishing to continue in the campaign that rightfully made the name a source
of pride for Brazil, and divergent about the lack of comprehension of those
seeking only immediate profits, sacrificing the noble name of jiu-jitsu, making
it a vehicle for unspeakable ends, have decided to make public their gesture of
revolt and their protest, after which they will accept any challenge from
whoever it may be, but at a private location and only in the presence of the
press. However, to promote the regulations that are true, and that govern their
fights, the members of Gracie Academy are willing to take on anyone interested,
at any time, era or place. And this is for the following reasons:

1. Because the Gracies
were the ones who introduced jiu-jitsu in Brazil, with Carlos Gracie the true
creator and initiator of the martial art in our realm, having acquired his
knowledge in 1928[114]
from the famed Count Koma.

2. Because in
twenty-five years without interruption or ‘marmeladas’ [worked fights] they
always defended the name of true jiu-jitsu, making it a piece of national heritage.

3. Because never in
Brazilian jiu-jitsu history has anyone outside the Gracie family taken the
initiative, or even offered, to defend Brazil’s prestige or supremacy in this
sport.

4. Because true
jiu-jitsu as a requirement involves:

a) Takedowns – balance
(judo);

b) Positioning –
preparatory positions;

c) Decisive moves –
rendition;

5. This way it makes it
impossible to separate jiu-jitsu from any of the three aforementioned elements,
unless by ignorance or by intentionally practicing it in an incomplete manner.

6. Because judo is
nothing more nothing less than an incomplete way of practicing jiu-jitsu, and
it was created seventy years ago by the Japanese with the obvious aim of
watering down the true jiu-jitsu. To do so they rely on the collaboration of
ignorant and ill-meaning foreigners as impediments to jiu-jitsu’s progress in
Brazil.

7. Because the press is
one of those most responsible for the Gracie brothers’ prestige in our land,
for the incentive and support that it never denied us, spontaneously backing us
and propagating our work. Therefore, we cannot be incoherent or ungrateful, and
we respect the press above all because they are the true voice of the people.

8. Because it is our
desire and duty to repress the opportunists who, due to the major strides
jiu-jitsu has made in Brazil because of our twenty-five years of work,
immediately cropped up. These imposters, who in their majority are nothing more
than true charlatans lacking any patriotic interest, are moved only by selfish,
mercenary interests, and it wouldn’t be fair for these individuals to enjoy our
collaboration, which they desire in the form of competitions of a public
nature, unless it is under the regulations that have always existed for true
jiu-jitsu ever since its beginnings.

9. Because it is no
favor to say that Brazil today enjoys a privileged position in the Western
world, and that is thanks to the Gracie family, which spreads the true secrets
of the art of dominating those who are stronger. The obvious proof is the
successive victories over the famous Japanese fighter touring the West.
Japanese newspapers attribute the Gracies’ invincibility to their flawless
original technique, considering Hélio Gracie the true world champion in his
category, with this opinion confirmed by the champions Kato and Kimura, the
latter a world champion, as has been clearly proved.

10. Therefore, as has
been exposed, we repeat in this declaration that from this date forth we shall
no longer compete with anybody, or at any place denominated a school of
jiu-jitsu or judo, in public unless it is under the original rules. However, in
our academy or any other reserved location, only attended by the press, we will
agree to train with any style of martial art or any rules, as we have but one
objective, or in other words, we will not provide publicity for fortune-hunters
or for unknown methods of fighting.”

Clearly the manifesto is wrong on several counts (this author is
unaware of any Japanese newspaper attributing to Hélio the title of “world
champion”), but in a way the split condemned the art they practiced further into
isolation. Looking at it from the FMP and CBP’s point of view it was
inevitable, as any other way and Brazil wouldn’t be able to join the world judo
circuit (the first world championship was soon to come). Furthermore, the clear
philosophical-educational advantage judo offered made it more palatable for
Brazilian educators than the combative jiu-jitsu philosophy the Gracies knew.
Either way, the manifesto was the formalization of the creational mythology
prevalent in Brazilian jiu-jitsu lore for decades before revisionists attempted
to overhaul it toward the end of the 1980s.

The public manifesto served to further isolate Gracie Academy from
the other “judo and jiu-jitsu academies,” as they were known. Of the few
academies in the city of Rio de Janeiro at that time, overall the ones located
in clubs and associations had definitively embraced judo. Such was the case
with the Associação Atlética Banco do Brasil[115]
(AABB), the Young Men’s Christian Association and the Portuguese Gymnastics
Club. Now, Augusto Cordeiro Academy had already become a reference for judo in
the city. On the flipside of the coin, the only thing keeping the Gracies from
outright isolation was the existence of the small academies that embraced their
“back on the ground” style of fighting and, to a greater or lesser extent,
their combative philosophy. Among them was George Gracie Academy. George had
recently returned to Rio de Janeiro after an absence of over ten years, during
which time he lived and taught in a number of states around the country, most
notably Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, and Porto
Alegre[116]
in the south. George was back in Rio de Janeiro, and at precisely that time he
opened his academy at number 1 Almirante Barroso Avenue, just a few blocks from
Gracie Academy. Another academy that also adopted the same style was a little
gym in the faroff suburb of Bento Ribeiro[117],
known as Fadda Academy.

With the rules impasse out of the way and the Gracies' defeat,
groundwork for the judo state championships and Brazilian nationals got under
way. After a great deal of discussion, the first Rio de Janeiro state judo
championship was held in September 1954 at the old Clube de Regatas do Flamengo
headquarters at Morro da Viúva. Just four academies took part, and the
championship was disputed between teams competing in four individual divisions.
Augusto Cordeiro scored an across-the-board victory, winning the team contest
as well as all four individual categories. Among the winners was Rudolf
Hermany, who had definitively embraced judo after participating at
Drought-Benefit Challenge[118].

The Brazilian national championship took place soon thereafter, on
October 12, at the recently inaugurated Tijuca Tennis Club[119] in Rio de Janeiro,
and was promoted by the CBP. Only the federations of four states sent fighters:
Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The tournament
was disputed in only four divisions sorted by belt color, not by weight: brown
belt, first-dan black belt, second-dan black belt and third-dan black belt, the
latter only featuring one match, due to lack of athletes at that rank.

Their defeat still not sitting well with them, the Gracies didn’t
just watch the championships go by from the sidelines. While the state and
Brazilian national judo championships were held, Hélio and Carlos held a
massive in-house tournament at their academy, with only their students
participating. The rules were an evolution of those used at the ill-fated Rio
de Janeiro state jiu-jitsu championship three years earlier. The fights would
only end by “submission or loss of consciousness” or by running out of time,
but never on points. Furthermore, the referee did not have the authority to
stand the fighters up. The scoring, which would determine the outcome should
time run out, was as follows:

* Immobilization for more than 30 seconds – 1 point

* Imperfect throw – ½ point

* Classic throw – 1 point

* Attacking initiative – 1 point

* Fleeing the ring – 1 negative point

* The referee could disqualify a fighter for fleeing the match area,
as he saw fit.

It’s curious that, beside the match not ending by points, not
interrupting the ground fight and not prohibiting “pulling guard,” the rules
still resemble judo rules more closely than modern jiu-jitsu, which doesn’t reward
immobilizations but awards points for several different situations on the
ground.

In a certain way the in-house tournament was a success, with press
coverage comparable to the attention given to the judo championships going on
at the same time. But, obviously, holding a championship solely for their own
students did little to legitimize the art the Gracies practiced as being more
than just a style of its own, and that bothered Carlos and Hélio, who felt they
were the custodians of the real Japanese jiu-jitsu[120], not something they’d
invented and that was peculiar to them. And the help they received in resolving
this problem came in a totally unexpected form.

On January 14, 1955 a letter arrived at the A Noite newsroom and was
promptly published:

“As managing director of
Fadda Jiu-Jitsu Academy, located at 1191 João Vicente Street in Bento Ribeiro,
I submit this letter for print in the topmost column in the brilliant evening
newspaper A Noite to issue the following challenge:

I request that my
students face those of Gracie Academy. I wish to make this challenge public
through the press, even though I am aware I am dealing with the famous,
traditional and powerful academy of the Gracies. We respect them as
incomparable adversaries but do not fear them. I have been preparing my
students rationally, methodically and conveniently in the same style of
fighting, and for that very reason though I do not look past them as already
beaten, since the world most famous fighters never beat them, I harbor hopes of
winning.

I head a modern academy
where the students have no hang-ups, but should we not achieve success in the
matches, that would be one of the contingencies of the sport. I avail around 20
students for the encounters. It is by competing against opponents of this
standing that we shall evolve and improve our body of knowledge.

I await a response from
Gracie Academy determining a day and time for the matches to be held. As for
the location, that too is up to the Gracies.

Nothing further,
cordially,

Oswaldo Fadda”

Under normal conditions, Hélio Gracie would punish such boldness
with a stream of diatribes and possibly an “anything goes” challenge. After
all, although ever since the Kimura fight the Gracies had routinely received
challenges and numerous fights were held behind closed doors, they were
generally held under vale-tudo “rules.” The “jiu-jitsu rules” challenges
were almost extinct and oftentimes became entangled in endless discussions involving
judo rules. Almost no one believed they could beat the Gracies at their own
game. Even so, Fadda was proposing a challenge anytime, anyplace, but most
significantly, under “jiu-jitsu rules”! The response Hélio gave five days
later, in an interview held alongside Carlson and João Alberto Barreto, was no
less surprising:

“Frankly, I was
impressed by the gentlemanly and sporting manner in which we were challenged.
It was a challenge that in terms of elegance and sportiness was very surprising
to me because I’m always getting challenged and, most of the time, the terms
employed reveal spite, are unsportsmanlike and have the sole aim of morally
hurting me.”

Hélio proposed a date and location for the showdown: Gracie Academy
at 8pm on the 21st of January, two days from then. The rules would
be the same as those applied at the in-house championship held a few months
earlier, and the referee for the matches would be Oswaldo Fadda himself.

Hélio’s attitude was extremely rational. In dire need of
demonstrating that jiu-jitsu wasn’t the Gracies’ “invention,” the challenge
from another academy was an extremely welcome one. After all, what could go
wrong? Fadda Academy’s lineage traced back to Maeda via Takeo Yano and Luis
França, but didn’t go through Carlos. The academy had been inaugurated on the
27th of January 1950 and partook in the Rio de Janeiro jiu-jitsu
championship. At that tournament, the academy was only represented by two
fighters: Alexandre Neves and Oswaldo Fadda himself. Oswaldo lost to Gracie
Academy’s Marinho in the opening seconds of his first match, having injured his
arm. What risk could Fadda Academy’s challenge possibly pose to the Gracies
that would trump the benefit it would lend to jiu-jitsu’s image?

In ironing out the final details, on the day of the event it is
established that there will be 14 matchups. At 8pm on the dot, before a packed
Gracie Academy, the first of Hélio and Fadda’s students step onto the mat. It
is a categorical victory for Hélio’s student. Everything goes according to
plan. The second match, however, there's a hiccup, with the Fadda student the
victor. Hélio begins to show concern when his student loses match number three
and Fadda Academy takes the lead 2-1 in the overall tally. Desperation sets in
as a young man from Bento Ribeiro wins the fourth match too—3-1. From that
point on, though, Gracie Academy’s advantage in the experience department
starts to prevail, and the final score has the Gracies winning by 7 victories
to Fadda’s 3, with 4 draws. The Gracies have gained the publicity they so
craved. And Fadda achieves something practically impossible at the time: he
gained the admiration and respect of Hélio Gracie. The Gracie and Fadda
academies go on to meet again on other occasions in the upcoming years.

After the two drought-benefit events and the whole judo brouhaha,
Gracie Academy was constantly being challenged, and some of these challenges
had major repercussions. One such event happened in October 1953 when Biriba,
who had pulled out from Drought-Benefit Challenge, dared the Gracies to fight
him in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Ramos. Carlson stepped up. He said he’d
take on Biriba but wouldn’t accept the challenger’s boldness in specifying the
location. The fight should occur, said Carlson, on November 5 at Fluminense
stadium, and admission would be free. On the programmed day, Carlson was there
in waiting, but Biriba never showed. The next challenge, though, the Gracies
would take a lot more seriously.

Carlson still had unfinished business with Passarito. After the
first match and the two fighting to a draw at Drought-Benefit Challenge,
Passarito went on to head a pro-wrestling troupe that put on fake fights around
Rio de Janeiro. By the end of 1953 speculations swirled around another meeting
between Carlson and Passarito. Given how Passarito had embraced fake fighting,
the next encounter between the two would have to be in the vale-tudo
modality, to preclude any questions as to the match’s legitimacy. In setting
the terms for the first encounter, held in early 1954, the Gracies demanded
there be no time limit, since, they alleged, that way Passarito wouldn’t be
able to run from the fight in hopes of time running out like in their last
fight. Passarito, with Augusto Cordeiro by his side, was unwavering in saying
he would not agree to a fight without a cap on time. That was the first of
countless arguments leading up to the fight, and it took months to resolve,
with the bout finally scheduled for March 24, again at Vasco da Gama stadium.
It would be a classic vale-tudo, though more “civilized” than the ones
at Draught-Benefit Challenge: this time there would be no eye gauging, hair
pulling, tugging on ears or low blows. The card would feature three fights. In
the first of them, Biriba would finally enter the ring, fighting a young,
modest black student of the Gracies' named Waldemar Santana. The match was set
for three 10-minute rounds. The second fight on the card pitted Hélio Vigio, a
Gracie understudy, against Rene Bastos in another three-round affair. Lastly,
as the main event, Carlson Gracie and Passarito would lock horns in a bout set
for 30-minute rounds with no ceiling on the number of rounds. They simply
turned a blind eye to the theoretical ban on vale-tudo events.

It’s fight day, and at the stipulated hour on the dot (a rarity for
such events) Waldemar and Biriba make their way up to the ring. The bout is
best described as just plain brutal. In the nine minutes it lasts, Waldemar is
a whirlwind of aggression, mercilessly pounding away on his opponent’s face. At
the end, after Waldemar flings him out of the ring, Biriba plainly doesn’t have
the strength to carry on anymore and gives up. Win number one for Gracie
Academy. Bout number two, Vígio vs Bastos, is heavier on technique and lighter
on violence. Vígio, the weaker but more skillful of the two, fights well, but
Bastos puts in a good showing in his own right by not evading the combat. Once
the match runs its course it's declared a draw.

Finally it’s time for the main event. Carlson and Passarito step up
to the ring for their sequel. This time, though, Passarito’s posture is
different, showing valor by not running away from Carlson, instead using his
thicker frame and greater strength. The second round plays out almost entirely
on the ground, with something of an advantage going to the more technical
Carlson Gracie. The third-round action unfolds entirely on the feet, though,
until at one point the two fighters tangle up and tumble to the ground. Near
the edge of the ring, Carlson is on bottom but manages to pull off a splendid
sweep and reverse the position. Passarito, this time aware of what it means to
be under Carlson, drags himself out of the ring in retreat. The fight is
restarted and the round ends inconclusively. The natural drop in pace from the
fatiguing fighters starts to wear on the crowd. The fourth round goes by
without much excitement. Accustomed to the circus act of fake fights and
unaccustomed to the monotony of real combat, the crowd starts to exit the
stadium. One hour and twenty minutes of fighting has transpired so far. In the
break between the fourth and fifth rounds it is determined that if no winner
should arise during he next 30-minute interval, the fight shall be declared a
draw. The FMP-assigned referee proposes that after five minutes of inactivity on
the ground the two fighters be stood up. Surprisingly, given his style of
fighting, Hélio agrees, but Augusto Cordeiro’s the one who vehemently
disagrees, as the stipulation had not figured in the original bout agreement.
The round restarts with renewed violence, as though the fighters are employing
the last strength they can muster, but halfway through the round again they
tangle up and go to the ground. Both are exhausted, and the fifth end round
ends without a winner. At this point chaos ensues. Hélio Gracie wants the fight
to continue at any cost, as per the original accord. In Passarito’s corner,
though, Augusto Cordeiro is in opposition, as they’d already agreed after the
fourth round that the fifth would be the last one. While the bickering is going
on, the FMP doctor[121],
on examining Passarito’s deformed face, concludes the fighter isn’t fit to
continue. Amid the melee that follows, Carlson is declared the winner. The
controversy enshrouding the Carlson-Passarito fight doesn't end there, though.
After months of heated discussion, in July the FMP decides to revise the
official outcome and declare it a draw, again to the Gracies’ chagrin.

Following the Carlson-Passarito bout a sort of calm overcame the
field of vale-tudo challenges. A stillness disguising the storm brewing
on the horizon, soon to wreak havoc on the Gracies. A storm that had actually started
to gather years ago, at the start of the 1950s.

In June 1951, on Presidente Vargas Avenue, near Central do Brasil
train station, a pavilion was set up to house the Argentine Sarrasani circus.
For being built of aluminum instead of canvas, from the very beginning the
location was known as the Aluminum Palace. A few months after it was
inaugurated, the FMP started using it as a venue for boxing matches. Since the
start of the 1940s, with the demolition of Stadium Brasil, the city was left
without a set location for holding combat sport events. Aluminum Palace, thus,
filled that void. Still in 1951, in November, an international pro-wrestling
troupe arrived in Rio de Janeiro and themselves put on shows at Aluminum
Palace. At that point, fake fights, already with their circus-like nature well
established, were already meant to provide entertainment. Regardless, Hélio and
Carlos insistently challenged the “marmeleiros,” as they called the
actor-fighters, to face off against their students. The troupe ignored the
provocations, but once they'd set up shop there, the name Aluminum Palace was
indelibly associated with fake fights. For that reason Hélio and Carlos were
adamant that no student of theirs should ever participate in an event at the
venue. They argued, not without reason, that even if the fight were real, it
would always induce suspicion because of the venue’s bad reputation.

The day after Fadda issued his challenge to the Gracies, a fight
that would have been exciting was announced. Waldemar Santana of Gracie Academy
would take on Rene Bastos. He intended to prove that Hélio Vigio had been
wronged in fighting to a draw with Bastos, and Waldemar was going to right that
wrong by beating Bastos. Hélio was beside himself. He’d already forbidden
Waldemar from accepting the fight if it were at the ill-reputed location, but
Bastos’s manager had talked Waldemar into signing the bout agreement.
Immediately Hélio, in one of his temper tantrums, booted Waldemar from his
academy. It would have been left at that if months later, in May, Waldemar
hadn’t given an interview where he criticized the Gracies and challenged Hélio
to a bout of jiu-jitsu or vale-tudo. From there on the sequence of
events took on a life of its own. In the days that followed, the exchange of
accusations and insults escalated until the situation between the two was
absolutely unsustainable. Hélio, as was his habit, proposed a
behind-closed-doors vale-tudo fight attended only by the press and with
no purse. At first Waldemar declined, but after being accused of being an
opportunist for trying to profit from the fight, he backtracked and agreed to
Hélio’s terms. The date was set for May 23, 1955, at the YMCA. On the day, the
police commissioner refused to authorize the fight for being vale-tudo,
even though it was a private event. But they came up with a workaround based
purely on semantics: they instead labeled the fight a “boxing, jiu-jitsu and
catch” match, allowing it to go through and be rescheduled for the next day,
May 24, at the same location.

The vale-tudo between Hélio Gracie and Waldemar Santana is
perhaps the greatest rivalry about which there is any news. After getting
kicked out of Gracie Academy months earlier, Waldemar’s agent coaxes him into
taunting Hélio to get a fight where tickets will be sold. Hélio reacts in his
usual manner, however, keeping things on a personal level and forcing them to
do their business in private. In reality, the fight is far from being
audience-free. That late afternoon at the YMCA there are loads of friends of
the Gracies and Waldemar, not to mention plenty of press, which just makes the
rivalry all the more heated. Furthermore, a crowd barges in through the door, packing
the house. Waldemar is first to enter the ring. As Hélio makes his way in,
though, Carlos Gracie, who accompanies him, takes the mic. He sprays Waldemar
with a barrage of insults, saying that what is about to take place in a few
minutes isn’t just a fight, “… but another lesson from Hélio to all the
Waldemars who cross his path.” Carlos’s[122]
words inflame the room. Hélio sportingly greets his opponent.

When the fighters, both wearing gis, are face to face it can be said
that one of Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s most sacred precepts is being broken. Two
members of one academy (although in truth Waldemar has been expelled) will be
facing off. The two know each other very well and in theory possess the same
technique. There won’t be a single position or move either is unfamiliar with.

At 4:25 on the dot the fight start off at a slow pace, with a sparse
few punches and kicks being exchanged without much effect. About two minutes
in, Waldemar manages to take Hélio to the ground, but the Gracie repositions
with his opponent in his guard. He knows time isn’t on his side. Hélio's
already over 40 years old, and it’s inevitable that he'll tire before Waldemar,
the younger and more robust, does. The former Gracie student doesn’t try to
pass guard, opting to ground-and-pound Hélio, but to little effect, due to the
effectiveness of the Gracie’s defenses. At 18 minutes of fighting, the two are
at the edge of the ring, half Hélio’s body outside it. Waldemar capitalizes on
the situation and tries to throw him out of the ropes. At this point the
referee interrupts the fight, ordering the two back to center ring after
deeming Waldemar’s actions invalid. Waldemar protests, as it was clearly permissable.
A minor argument ensues, with Waldemar threatening to withdraw from the fight.
After some discussion, action resumes. At the 23-minute mark the fight goes to
the ground again. Upon being taken down, Hélio places his opponent back in his
guard. He hunts for a submission, a choke or armbar, and at times strikes his
opponent, who in retribution rains down headbutts and punches from within
Hélio’s guard. Forty-nine minutes into the fight, the referee again interrupts
the action, as one of Hélio’s arms has slipped out of his gi. After the
restart, Hélio is taken down again, just like he was several times before.
After the first hour of fighting, it dawns on Waldemar that Hélio’s punches
have gone soft from fatigue and no longer cause damage. At this point he feels
victory is within reach. The fight drags along in slow motion, and with two
hours and 20 minutes on the clock, Hélio falls out of the ring and lands on his
back but quickly returns. Three hours and nine minutes into the fight, the end
starts to materialize. Waldemar gets up and lifts the Gracie up with him. He
tries tossing him out of the ring but is unable to, and the two trade blows and
knees against the ropes. Santana grabs his adversary by the pants, hoists him
up almost over his head and again tries throwing him out. Hélio manages to keep
from falling out by wrapping a leg in the ropes. So Waldemar about-faces, still
with his opponent in the air, walks to center ring and slams him violently to
the ground. Hélio is clearly groggy from the fall, and this is the chance
Waldemar has been waiting for: he lands a potent kick to the Gracie’s head and
knocks him right out. Waldemar hints at following his opponent to the ground to
keep hitting him but realizes there’s no need, as Hélio's out cold, and he
sportingly cuts short his impulse and avoids dishing out any unnecessary
punishment. Hélio’s companions immediately pour into the ring to help him, and
amid the chaos and shoving that ensue, the former Gracie student’s arm is
raised in victory. Still in the ring, in the middle of all the tumult, Carlson
Gracie challenges Waldemar to a fight, and a half-conscious Hélio is carried
off by his companions.

The aftershocks from the Waldemar Santana-Hélio Gracie fight were
felt weeks after it happened, and that wasn’t just because of the outcome. As
we’ve seen, due to its altruistic appeal, Drought-Benefit Challenge didn’t
yield any criticism for vale-tudo. In the case of Carlson vs Passarito,
some news outlets printed timid critiques of the modality, but without much
consequence. The reaction to Hélio’s fight, however, was tremendous. The fight
had unfolded for the most part in slow motion; after all, it would be
impossible for two men to fight at a fast pace for three hours nonstop. Still, topping
off the brutal and dramatic ending, two adversaries punished each other for so
long it left serious wounds on both of them. Hélio left the ring with a
suspected rupture to his kidney and a crushed jawbone. Waldemar, by the same
token, a few months later had to go under the knife to extract three teeth that
were buried in his jaw. Now, the next day after the fight, Diário da Noite
newspaper printed the headline “Savage Spectacle of Deathly Vale-Tudo.” In the
article, the testimony of the respected lawyer Nelson Hungria was incisive:
“These fights don’t entail the slightest social utility; all they entail are
brute force and primitivism.” Hungria follows up by analyzing the judicial
angle of vale-tudo according to Brazilian laws of the day. He argues
that fighters cannot be reprimanded by law for injuring their opponents since
they are acting with the tacit assent of the State, which “… strips the
injuries of illicit character in the eyes of the law.” However, as far as vale-tudo
is concerned, “… it already, evidently, foreshadows the outcome of death…” and
concludes, “… as is known, the State does not have the right to consent to
anybody’s death nor can a man avail his life to consensual homicide.” For that
reason, concludes Hungria, vale-tudo should be prohibited.

Even more grave was the statement from the chief of police, colonel
Geraldo de Menezes Cortes. Menezes Cortes was outraged because, as far as he
could tell, he’d had the wool pulled over his eyes. The only reason he’d
authorized the event was because it was supposedly closed to the public, but
that’s not how it ended up being. With the invasion of the gym, a large crowd
watched the “stupid and inhumane” event that was even broadcast over the radio.
Menezes Cortes concluded by saying that due to what had happened, vale-tudo
was definitively banned, whether in public or in private.

The backlash didn’t end there. Even Town Hall debated the topic, and
the chief of police himself was severely criticized for having allowed “such a
depressing spectacle” to take place. The FMP, always at odds with the Gracies,
got in its statement as well, alleging that it had not participated in
organizing the event and itself criticizing the chief of police.

Parallel to the criticism of vale-tudo was a huge commotion
regarding the title of “Brazilian national jiu-jitsu champion.” For years Hélio
was the self-declared champ, a title the CBP had never recognized. Having
beaten Hélio, Waldemar started calling himself the Brazilian national champion,
while Augusto Cordeiro and the other judokas, who didn’t recognize jiu-jitsu’s
existence outside of judo, affirmed that the champion of Brazil was São Paulo’s
Massaioshi Kawakami, who’d won the Brazilian national judo championship the
previous year. That his title was being questioned really got Hélio’s goat, and
discussion of a match pitting Carlson against Waldemar became all the more
relevant.

There were a few impediments to the Carlson-Waldemar fight being
made. Waldemar, suddenly catapulted to stardom by his victory over Hélio, was
receiving requests to fight all across Brazil and had even opened an academy of
his own in the Bonsucesso neighborhood. He fought for free the first time, but
now he was looking to be a professional and make fighting his bread and butter.
On the other hand the authorities were on their toes, and there was no way for
the match to be vale-tudo, neither publicly nor privately. It was of no
help to negotiations that Hélio Gracie issued a statement saying that in a
jiu-jitsu match he could beat Waldemar even with one hand tied behind his back.
That was the opportunity Waldemar needed to start insisting he get another
crack at Hélio before facing Carlson. The back-and-forth banter continued over
the next two months until the jiu-jitsu match between Carlson Gracie and
Waldemar Santana was initially set for October 1 at Maracanã stadium and later
postponed to the 8th of the same month at Maracanazinho gymnasium.

The fight was set at four 10-minute rounds. Should it go the
distance, a fifth round would be added. Three days before it was set to go
down, at a meeting at the FMP to iron out the final details, Carlson Gracie
contested the legality of Waldemar’s gi, saying it was too tight. After brief
deliberations, Waldemar agreed to use a different one. The card would feature
five fights, the first three of which would again pit Fadda and Gracie
academies against each other. Match number four would be a student of George
Gracie’s taking on a Gracie Academy student, and last of all would come the
headlining Carlson-vs-Waldemar bout.

Waldemar knew he’d have his hands full. He and Carlson were about
the same weight[123],
but the Gracie was visibly the physically weaker of the two. However, Waldemar
knew that in a gi and under jiu-jitsu rules he was no match for Carlson’s
technique, and his chances of winning were quite slim.

The day of the event comes around, and Maracanazinho gymnasium is
packed, mostly with people cheering for Waldemar. In the first preliminary
match Ivo Mechelson Junior of Gracie Academy fights to a draw with Fadda’s
Augusto Baptista. Next, Algenio Barros of Gracie chokes Artur Vieira of Fadda
for the win. Match number three is another tie, this one between Antonio d’Ella
of Gracie and Nilo Gutierrez of Fadda. In the last match before the big one,
Luiz Nahum, a George Gracie student, puts in a stellar performance but fights
to a draw with Guanair Vial of Gracie Academy.

The moment everyone is waiting for is upon us, and Carlson and
Waldemar are standing face to face before a Maracanazinho packed to the
rafters. Early on Waldemar is aggressive and manages to take Carlson down on
more than one occasion. However, soon Carlson’s greater technique becomes
apparent as he starts to dominate the action. Several times he mounts Waldemar,
who tries desperately to escape out from under the ropes. Carlson at times
drags his adversary back to center ring. Waldemar completely abandons any
attack and concerns himself only with defending his neck and arms from the
Gracie’s assault. After 50 submission-less minutes the match is declared a
draw. A frustrated Carlson is cheered by the crowd, which appreciates his efforts
to constantly attack. The next day Waldemar claims that his overly defensive
posture was due to his not being in his best shape for recovering from surgery
on his jaw, concluding: “Let the people judge my performance for themselves.”

A little after the fight, George Gracie, who as we’ve seen had
recently returned to Rio de Janeiro and opened an academy of his own, was again
at serious loggerheads with his brothers Hélio and Carlos. It happened that a
student of his from his days teaching in Recife, Walzenir Castro, on a visit to
Rio de Janeiro caught up with him and expressed his desire to train with
Carlson. George figured that Walzenir, with just one year of jiu-jitsu under
his belt, was in no condition to face Carlson on even terms, but Castro was
aware of that and said all he wanted was to train with him, to see if he could
withstand a minute of two against the Gracie. So George contacted Hélio to try
and arrange for such a training session, but Hélio said it couldn’t be done,
given the distance between them in the hierarchy. He said that if George
wanted, though, he could take Walzenir to Gracie Academy to train with another
of his students. Somewhat frustrated about not getting to train with Carlson,
Walzenir still figured just being able to train with another Gracie student
would be worthwhile. He’d still have a good story to tell when he got back
home. When the day they’d agreed to came around and George arrived at Gracie
Academy with his student, he was flabbergasted by what he saw. It was a warlike
atmosphere, with a small bandstand covered with people there to watch the
“fight.” The “opponent” Hélio had selected was Algenio de Barros, the same one
who had won the preliminary fight on the Carlson-Waldemar card. Algenio and
Walzenir trained for five minutes, after which George’s student asked Hélio to
end the training session because he was too tired to continue, but that he was
already happy about just having trained at Gracie academy. So Hélio went and
raised his student’s hand in victory and told the crowd:

“Here’s what you just
saw: this student of George’s had the audacity to challenge Carlson, this beast
[referring to his nephew], this animal whom you all know, and when it’s all
over, here’s what you saw: a guy without morale, without technique, running from
the fight, relying on unsporting means! And the worst part is that the awful
qualities of this student, void of all morale and technique, are a reflection
on the teacher. Yes, the teacher is the one who shapes the student. And what
has me most appaled is that the young man who trained with my brother George’s
student isn’t even a student at my academy. He’s just my driver[124].”

Disgusted by his brother’s attitude, George said that if Algenir was
just his driver, then put Hélio Vigio to face Walzenir two days from then to
see what would happen. According to George, the fight was held two days later
and had the same outcome as the previous “sparring session.” The climate
between the brothers deteriorated further when, shortly thereafter, Guanair
ditched Gracie Academy to train with George Gracie, alleging to have been
impressed by the technique Naum displayed in their preliminary match on the
Carlson-Waldemar card.

Again at odds with his brother, George carries on with his career
apart from Hélio and Carlos. Realizing that the pure-jiu-jitsu matches were
restricted to the undercards of big events or Gracie Academy’s lone challenges,
George decided to promote jiu-jitsu events at Tijuca Tennis Club gymnasium
starting in March of the following year, 1956. It was an event like no other
since the failed Rio de Janeiro state championship of years before. The rules
were a hybrid of judo and jiu-jitsu. Matches could only end by “submission or
loss of consciousness” before the allotted time had run out or by counting points
scored during the match once the final bell had sounded. Takedowns would count
for one point each, as would immobilizing the opponent for more than 30
seconds, after which the contestants would be returned to their feet. The
marquee match for the first event, set for May 10, pit Biriba against Japan’s
Sakai. Possibly the most skillful of the Ono brothers’ students in São Paulo,
Sakai was the star of George’s event. At the Hélio-vs-Kato event he was one of
the Ono students who faced off with a Gracie student, on the occasion fighting
(and tying with) Carlson in the final preliminary bout before the main event.
Hélio Gracie, never one to squander an opportunity to offend his brother, a few
days before the start of the event stated that since they were dealing with “no
duro”, real, fights, George shouldn’t even step in the ring…

The maiden event was a success. In the first match, a luta-livre-style[125] encounter, Pedro
Vitor defeated Reinaldo Almeida by disqualification. In the second match, this
one jiu-jitsu, Mauro Campelo choked Artur Rito for the win. The third match was
again luta-livre style. José Ramirez outdid José Antônio de Oliveira
with a choke that the victim failed to tap to. The fourth match was a riveting
affair. Rene Bastos and former Gracie student Guanair Vial fought to a draw in
a lively luta-livre show. Now, in the final, in jiu-jitsu, Sakai easily
overcame Biriba via choke in five minutes. Obviously no student from Gracie
academy participated.

The next event was held two weeks later, on May 24. In the next
round Biriba fought to a draw with Otávio de Almeida while Sakai outpointed
Baianinho, a wrestler who put in a surprisingly good performance in the gi. The
success of the first two events George promoted proved fleeting, though, and
the fight spectacles at the Tijuca club ground to a halt.

After fighting to a draw with Carlson and despite having been
completely dominated, Waldemar continued to be a pebble in the Gracie shoe. His
decisive victory over Hélio catapulted him to stardom, and the fact that
Carlson didn’t manage to beat him kept his fame intact. Before the end of 1955,
Waldemar publicly challenged Hélio to a jiu-jitsu match. He was looking to
collect on the commitment Hélio had made of facing him again if Carlson
couldn’t beat him. Carlson ended up being the one to deliver the Gracies’
response. His message was that Hélio had indeed made the promise, but that the
defensive stance Waldemar took during the fight disqualified him from getting a
second crack at his uncle. Going even further, he said that he and Waldemar
would have to square off under vale-tudo rules, since that was the style
in which Waldemar had beat his uncle Hélio. Building on the new demand, Carlson
claimed that in vale-tudo Waldemar wouldn’t be able to run away like he
had in jiu-jitsu. That was enough to spark a rivalry that hadn’t previously
existed. From that statement on, the rematch between Carlson and Waldemar in vale-tudo
gained continuous momentum. There was one major obstacle to surmount for the
fight to go through, though: as soon as they caught wind of the arrangements
being made, the FMP was adamant: they would by no means allow a vale-tudo
event to be held in Rio de Janeiro.

Convincing the regulators to change their tune would be no small
task. At first they toyed with the idea of going with wrestling (luta-livre)
rules and scrapping the back-pin rule. After months of wrangling, the FMP was
cajoled into allowing punches with a closed fist so long as the opponents were
clinched together (but not at a distance), to reduce the impact of the strikes.
Another barrier was the classic “submission or loss of consciousness” rule: the
FMP required that points count in determining the outcome, as well. The debate
went on until arriving at a typically Brazilian solution: it would be an
“American luta-livre” style fight. The way the organizers explained it
to the police and the FMP, American luta-livre is a modality that is
“perfectly regulated in the United States,” where basically all the moves,
traumatic or not, are valid except for closed-fist punches when the contestants
aren’t clinched. Such fights were only held in the United States as exhibition
matches, though, never as real combat. However, for being a regulated modality,
such fights could be held for real in Brazil. With this “explanation” and
“personal guarantee” from the fighters that it wouldn’t be “savagery,” the vale-tudo
between Carlson Gracie and Waldemar Santana was given the green light and set
for July 21, 1955 at Maracanazinho gymnasium[126].
The fight was set at six 10-minute rounds, and this time the fighters would not
be wearing gis. The undercard featured four jiu-jitsu matches of three
five-minute rounds. Two of those bouts pit Gracie Academy students against
those from Fadda Academy, which had again challenged the Gracies to a jiu-jitsu
showdown. On the day of the fight Carlson weighed 75.5kg while Waldemar weighed
77.8.

The Maracanazinho was at maximum capacity that July 21. In the
preliminary matches, all of them jiu-jitsu, José Guimarães of Fadda Academy
outpointed Oluadir Silva, a Gracie student, in the evening’s opener. Next came
Gracie Academy’s Moacyr Ferraz, who choked Geraldo Gomes, a student of
Waldemar’s, for the win. There was controversy surrounding the third match,
when Nilo Gutierrez of Fadda Academy tapped out to a mata-leão by
Gracie’s Mauro Gonzaga. As he got to his feet, Gonzaga intentionally stepped on
his opponent, who was still prone on the ground. Recognizing the foul, though,
Carlos Gracie immediately entered the ring and raised the arm of the fighter
from Bento Ribeiro, thus proclaiming his student’s disclassification. In the
fourth and final preliminary match, João Alberto Barreto had an extremely easy
time putting away Cláudio de Souza of Bahia state with a choke.

It’s time for the grand finale. With a partisan crowd rooting for
the Gracies’ former student, Carlson and Waldemar make their way into the ring
to finally settle their differences, this time with no gi and “no holds
barred.” The first round is a rerun of the Hélio fight: Waldemar’s on top and
in Carlson’s guard the whole time, not offering much by way of danger but
taking some serious punishment from Carlson, who uses his heels to pound away
at his opponent’s kidneys. Round two sees an upswing in the violence department,
with both fighters on their feet rattling off punches and knees, only going to
the ground at the end of the round, when Waldemar lands in Carlson’s guard. In
the following round Waldemar pushes the action, trying to catch Carlson with
knees while standing, but it’s right then that the Gracie capitalizes on the
hole in his opponent’s defenses by taking him down and landing straight in the
mount. He starts pounding away on his opponent, who, being close to the edge of
the ring, manages to drag himself outside the ropes, taking Carlson with him.
Both land on the cold gymnasium floor. Once the fight has been restarted, the
Gracie goes against his instincts and decidedly keeps the fight standing, where
he’s doing a better job at landing strikes than his opponent is. Waldemar tries
to close the distance and get the fight to the ground, but only at the end of
the round do they tangle up and hit the canvas. Carlson has Waldemar in his
guard. It dawns on him that fatigue is getting the better of his opponent, who
is having a hard time avoiding the blows he’s firing off from below. When the
fourth round gets started, Waldemar uses all his remaining strength to try and
end the fight quickly. He knows it’s his last shot at victory. Carlson snuffs
out his adversary’s attacks and promptly starts pushing the pace. From that
point on it becomes a monologue. Carlson does as he pleases and starts
decisively castigating his opponent. Four minutes into the round the two tumble
out of the ring again. The Gracie springs back, and Waldemar drags his feet,
trying to catch his breath. Hardly has the exhausted fighter made it back to
center ring and Carlson pounces for a decisive attack. All the fighter from
Bahia can do is try to postpone the inevitable. Up against the ropes, Carlson delivers
stinging knees to his beleaguered opponent, who desperately tries to clinch.
Carlson hoists Waldemar into the air, flings him over the ropes and again lands
with him outside the ring. Carlson returns, but Waldemar can hardly make it to
his feet. At this point his second ducks into the ring and throws the towel,
signaling an end to the fight; his fighter bleeding profusely from the mouth
and left eyebrow. Carlson’s victory is decisive.

With the win, Carlson, who was already quite well known around Rio
de Janeiro, becomes an instant celebrity, just as his uncle did after facing
Kato. It’s against this backdrop of euphoria that his next fight is scheduled
for early 1957 at the same Maracanazinho gymnasium. His opponent is a
Portuguese pro-wrestler who goes by the name Leão de Portugal[127], one of the few
pro-wrestlers who dared venture outside the realm of fake fighting. The January
26 bout is a let down. Not coming close to giving Carlson a run for his money,
the Portuguese fighter, 24 kg the heavier, starts out on the receiving end of
two open-handed slaps dished out by the Gracie (remember, closed-fisted punches
from a distance aren’t allowed), who then then takes him down and straight away
mounts “the lion.” For five whole minutes Carlson brutally mauls his opponent
from mounted position until easing up just enough to give the Portuguese
fighter the Hobson’s choice of turning his back. His “trap” having worked, the
Gracie in a flash sinks a mata-leão choke to seal the deal. To a storm
of boos from a crowd frustrated by Leão’s pathetic performance, Carlson’s arm
is raised in victory.

The next fighting spectacle too takes place at Maracanazinho, which
has become the Madison Square Garden for fighting events in Rio de Janeiro. As has
become par for the course, the main event is preceded by a series of jiu-jitsu
matches featuring students from Gracie Academy, Fadda Academy and a growing
number of competitors cropping up from academies like Atlas and Teresópolis.
Carlson gets to take a break this time, though, as the Gracie representing the
family in the main event is his brother Robson. The opponent is a capoeira
stylist well known around Rio de Janeiro named Arthur Emídio. The event is held
on the 13th of April 1957, and again the crowd is disheartened by a
Gracie’s vast superiority and the quick end to the evening’s marquee fight. In
just four minutes Robson takes down and mounts his opponent and sinks a quick mata-leão
when Emídio turns his back to escape the brutal punishment inflicted upon
him.

At that time, the differences separating George and his brothers
reached a peak, and George and Carlos nearly went to blows at the offices of a
Rio de Janeiro newspaper. The reason for the fracas was a match made between
two students of both of theirs, Pedro Hemetério and Guanair Vial. Hemetério,
who got his start with Carlos in the Northeast in the 1940s, trained for a
spell at Gracie Academy in Rio and on the occasion trained with Gastão Gracie
in São Paulo[128].
Guanair, though, as we have seen, was a former Gracie Academy student but went
on to train with George after fighting to a draw with one of his students.
Hemetério and Guanair faced off in São Paulo[129],
with the former winning handily via submission after just 33 seconds of combat.
The quick loss not sitting well with him, Guanair pulled out all the stops to
get a rematch, which Carlos agreed to give him if he could pass a test of
worthiness. The test, broadcast live on TV-Rio[130], Guanair lost to
Gracie Academy’s Moacyr Ferraz. Persistant as he was, though, Guanair wanted by
any means to face Hemetério again. So George and Carlos met up to try and
negotiate the fight. That was when Carlos proposed that Hemetêrio face Guanair
with one arm bound. Were he to lose, then they would make two more matches
between them, one a jiu-jitsu match and the other vale-tudo. That was
the build-up to yet another serious falling out between the brothers. The fight
with the arm tied down was never made…

On the 1st of June 1957 the next event was held at
Maracanazinho gymnasium. With no big “star” headlining the card, the small
crowd that showed up that Saturday bore witness to a dull bout of “American luta-livre”
(a euphemism still used in the place of “vale-tudo”) between Portuguese
fighter José Flores and Gracie Academy representative Oswaldo Bottino. Bottino
pushed the pace the entire first round only to be defeated in the second. The
big excitement proved to be the preliminary card, though, entirely composed of
jiu-jitsu matches pitting Gracie and Fadda students against each other, with two
wins for Gracie, one for Fadda, and one draw.

Even before the June 1 event all the talk around town was about
another Waldemar-Carlson match. Waldemar fought in other Brazilian states
including São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul and his birth state, Bahia, and was
hugely successful in doing so. With the lackluster last event at Maracanazinho
the previous month not having made much of a splash, over the course of July
arrangements were made for a Carlson-Waldemar rematch, with July 27 ultimately
picked as the definitive date for the showdown at the same gymnasium as last
time.

Despite fighting before a packed Maracanazinho, the fighters don’t
quite live up to expectations. The two fighters perform like a broken record:
Waldemar sits in Carlson’s guard, his attacks hardly effective and not making the
slightest effort to pass guard. On his part, Carlson has seen better days,
displaying nothing resembling his usual aggressiveness. All he does is land a
few sluggish elbows to the back of Waldemar’s neck and timidly try some
americana-locks. Once the 50 minutes of fighting have ticked away, the crowd
jeers them mercilessly.

The next event is even more of a bummer. Carlson faces a weighlifter
named Waldemar Viana at a sparsely populated Maracanazinho. The Gracie easily scores
a tomoenague, landing straight in mount, where he violently pummels away at his
adversary. The beat-down lasts for four minutes until Viana leaves an arm
exposed in a failed attempt to defend. Carlson’s eyes still dart to his corner
in search of his father and uncle, possibly checking whether he should wrap the
action up or drag it out a little longer. Unsure of what to do, he cranks an
end to the bout with an armbar.

Besides a dearth of adversaries and the played-out model for shows
at Maracanazinho gymnasium, the “American luta-livre” format itself was
showing signs of overuse, and the vale-tudo-fault-finding train again
began picking up steam. Hard pressed to find fighters capable of providing an
interesting spectacle for a waning public, Carlson resorted to reviving an old
rivalry. The first event of early 1958 would bring, for the third time, a bout
between Carlson Gracie and Passarito. The two contentious outcomes from the
previous fights guaranteed a trifecta of public interest for the next one.
Passarito at that point trained with Waldemar, and expectations were that he’d
seen an improvement in technique since his prior outings. As for Carlson, he
remained unbeaten. What’s curious, though, is that the Gracie seldom had the
crowd behind him, most often having most of them clearly cheering for his
opponents. That wasn’t so much due to his conduct outside the ring, which was
to a degree quite mild, but mainly because of the always bellicose attitude his
father and uncle displayed towards his opponents, mostly through the press.
Nevertheless, with nerves like steel, he seemed not to care much about the
jeers now and again directed toward him.

On January 18, 1958 Carlson and Passarito lock horns for the third
time, at Maracanazinho gymnasium. In Carlson’s corner are Hélio and Carlos,
while Passarito is accompanied by Waldemar. Passarito shows some initiative
during the first five minutes of fighting, but it ends at that. The panorama
for the next two rounds is altogether different: the Gracie stalks him ruthlessly,
causing the outmatched fighter to flee the ring on no less than nine occasions.
The impatient crowd showers him with boos, and hallway through the third round
they start filtering out of the gymnasium. At the sound of the fourth-round
bell, Passarito gets to his feet in his corner but then plops back down.
Waldermar approaches the ref to announce that his student concedes. Carlson
hence has his arm raised and is announced as the undisputed winner. This is one
of the rare occasions where he is met with applause. The fight doesn’t do a
thing to help rekindle public interest in “American luta-livre” bouts,
though.

The months that followed went by without a single big fight event
but with the press featuring a number of altercations between fighters until,
nearing midyear, Carlos and Hélio caught glimpse of a new opportunity. Possibly
reminded of the success the Drought-Benefit Challenges were at the start of the
decade, they set up an event at Maracanazinho with proceeds from ticket sales
(at accessible rates) going to the Legião da Boa Vontade (Goodwill Legion,
loosely translated), a goodwill organization. As a main event, Carlson would
face Guanair Vial. On paper Guanair was not a worthy opponent for Carlson,
having lost to Hemetério within seconds and even been subjected to the
humiliation of being an offered a second chance but with one of his opponent’s
arms tied. Nevertheless, due to the lack of opponents for Carlson as well as a
recent fight to a draw with Waldemar, Guanair was deemed eligible to square off
with the Gracie. But what the crowd at Maracanazinho bore witness to that July
26 was a straight-up massacre. Guanair was valiant, though, not disengaging
from battle even once, but at 6:14 minutes of fighting Carlson did nothing short
of demolishing him. Quite rare for the times, this was one of the few instances
where a fight would end by referee stoppage, without the fighter explicitly
opting out.

As unbelievable as it may seem, Carlson and Guanair faced each other
yet again two months later, on September 15. This time, more prudently, Guanair
shied away from straight-up combat, but to no avail. He was massacred once
again, this time tapping out in desistance.

A significant side effect of the vale-tudo events of the
1950s was a stagnation in gi-clad jiu-jitsu. As a result of the ill-fated Rio
de Janeiro state championship and definitive divorce from judo, jiu-jitsu was
practiced as a subsidiary form of vale-tudo, mostly within the confines
of academies with only a handful of matches held on the undercards of big events.
Events featuring gi jiu-jitsu matches were virtually nonexistent. In a way, it
can be said that vale-tudo was killing jiu-jitsu. One fight that didn’t
involve a Gracie, however, would make a minor contribution to a revival of combat
in the gi.

Chapter 14 – Reenter Kimura

A

t the end of the ‘50s, after a lengthy absence, Takeo Yano was back
in Rio de Janeiro. Having been away for many years, upon his return he opened a
“judo and jiu-jitsu” academy in the Cinelândia area of downtown Rio de Janeiro.
To promote his new enterprise, he invited back to the city a figure who had
made a major impression his first time in town: in March 1959 news broke that
Masahiko Kimura would soon return to Brazil. As an immediate consequence of the
announcement (made before his arrival), speculation started swirling around who
it would be to inevitably face the Japanese former judo champion. Obviously
first in line were the Gracies, specifically Carlson, who was certainly the
most qualified for the task at the time. But surprisingly, Carlos, his father
and manager, was apathetic about the possible fight. According to him, Carlson
was prepared to fight Kimura but was waiting to be challenged.

On June 6 Kimura disembarked at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão airport for
the second time. There he was met by Yano, and in a brief interview he declared
that he’d come to show that he was still the same fighter from eight years
earlier, even working in a taunt when asked about how good Hélio, whom he’d
fought and beaten, was: “He’s an alright fighter.” Just two days after his
arrival a match was made for him: he’d be facing Waldemar Santana. Carlos
Gracie’s lack of enthusiasm was explainable: Carlson was recovering from a
fractured hand. He still had a few weeks on ice to go, and there’d be no time
to train. Furthermore (and, perhaps, because of it), Carlos had made the absurd
demand of keeping 60% of the purse, to which Yano, who was managing Kimura,
could not agree. Waldemar agreed to fight wearing a gi, at Maracanazinho
gymnasium, and for 20% of the purse. He had but one condition: regardless of
the result, he wanted to be assured a second fight with the judoka, but in
Salvador, the capital of Bahia state, his homeland, and in the “American luta-livre”
style of fighting, which was still an euphemism for the yet forbidden vale-tudo.

Age had started to catch up to Kimura. Then 41 years old (his
opponent was 29), he was well past the prime of his career. Waldemar knew that
in spite of it all he was still no match for Kimura in the gi. Facing him in
judo garb was merely a formality to be granted the right to fight him in vale-tudo.
That’s the style in which Waldemar felt he could beat the Japanese behemoth.
Younger, stronger and above all more experienced in “real fighting,” he felt he
was a formidable adversary for his famous opponent.

The “submission or loss of consciousness” rules fight between
Waldemar Santana and Masahiko Kimura[131]
takes place on July 1, 1959. It isn’t Kimura’s first fight that season; before
facing Waldemar, the judoka paid a brief visit to Belo Horizonte, where on June
20 he took on Anton Schober at the Minas Tennis Club gymnasium. Back in Rio de
Janeiro, ten days later Waldemar is a mere supporting character in his fight
with Kimura. Throughout three rounds the judo-stylist toys with Waldemar,
blatantly prolonging the fight on purpose. During the fight he throws the Bahia
native 19 times without once repeating the same technique. At the very start of
the fourth and final round, however, it’s time to wrap things up. With an arm
lock resembling the one he used on Hélio (but with Waldemar’s arm pointed in
the opposite direction) he brings the fight with his Brazilian foe to close.

Next comes the rematch: the bout is set for July 11 at Antônio
Balbino gymnasium. Kimura is making his debut[132] in a style completely
unfamiliar to him. To make matters worse, he injured his knee just days before
in training and is far from ideal fighting shape. Out of consideration for the
audience (and fearing a backlash if the fight is canceled at the last minute),
Kimura goes ahead and locks horns with Waldemar Santana in a bout of vale-tudo.
The best account of the fight is Kimura’s own, from his autobiography. Early on
the fight plays out standing. Both fighters exchange kicks, Kimura limiting
himself to low kicks while Waldemar, well versed in capoeira, alternates low
and high kicks. The judoka concentrates on defending against the kicks and, not
watching his opponent’s fists, gets hit with a violent slap. Right off the bat
it’s clear to the Japanese fighter that the only way not to be defeated is to
close the distance and take the fight to the ground. With some difficulty,
Kimura achieves his aim, but after the two roll out of the ropes the ref stands
them up again in center ring. Upon blocking another of Waldemar’s slaps, Kimura
manages to grab hold of him and apply an ippon-seoi. He immediately realizes
his mistake: dripping with sweat, Waldemar’s arm slips out and Kimura heads straight
to the ground in a vulnerable position, his back exposed to the Brazilian. He
spins, but Waldemar, already flush up against him, is on the brink of achieving
a pivotal mount, one possibly determinant of the winner. With difficulty,
Kimura manages to get his opponent in his guard and tries to squeeze out a
kidney-lock, which causes Waldemar a good bit of discomfort. Already accustomed
to attacking from this position, the Brazilian wails on the judoka with a
barrage of effective ground-and-pound and headbutts. Unfamiliar with the
techniques the Gracies have developed to deal with such a situation in vale-tudo,
all Kimura can do to defend is attack, striking Waldemar upward from the bottom
to some effect. The forty minutes of fighting play out thusly before the fight
is declared a draw.

The experience was a first for Kimura in his career, being exposed
to “real fighting.” In the days that followed he suffered a great deal
physically from the wounds accrued in the battle, but even so it didn’t mark
the end of his stay in Brazil: in São Paulo he’d still do some pro-wrestling performances
including one against the “terrible” Índio Paraguaio.

Chapter 15 – Heroes of the Ring

C

arlson’s injury may not have been the only reason Carlos
outrageously demanded a bigger cut of the purse for a Gracie-Kimura matchup. The
reality was that on the occasion he and Hélio were campaigning for a daring and
unprecedented project: to take vale-tudo inside Brazilian households.

We’ve already seen how in early 1951 TV Tupi made its maiden
broadcast in the city of Rio de Janeiro (with the participation of Hélio
Gracie), kickstarting the era of television that would forever change the
routine of families in the city. Tupi was followed by the 1955 addition of TV
Rio, the city’s second television network. Four years later, in 1959, came TV
Continental, the third network to broadcast to Cariocas, as natives of
the city are known. Prior to its launch, some fights had already been
broadcast, and TV Rio already included TV Rio Ring[133], featuring boxing
bouts, in its programming. But Carlos wanted to go even further and
systematically take vale-tudo to Rio de Janeiro homes.

TV Continental launched with a huge ceremony on June 30, 1959, a
Tuesday, the day before the first Waldemar-Kimura fight. As part of the new
broadcasting network’s inauguration festivities, the following week Continental
promoted a massive event at Maracanazinho gymnasium in “tribute to the radio
and television stations of Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Radio Association”
called “Esta Noite de Vitória” (“This Victorious Evening”). The programming was
plenty diverse, starting with the navy band playing a set, followed by
acrobatic performances and comic routines. The closing act featured a
demonstration boxing bout by Brazilian national champion Fernando Barreto
against two adversaries, followed by two grand finale vale-tudo bouts,
the second of which included João Alberto Barreto. At first he was set to face
Rene Bastos, whom was switched out on him for Wilson de Vita and then at the
last minute the inexperienced José Geraldo. The entire event would obviously be
broadcast live on TV Continental. At the 4:50-minute mark João Alberto sinks a
Kimura on José Geraldo, who fails to tap out. His opponent not having signaled
submission, the Gracie student continues to crank out the hold until the arm
snaps right in front of the cameras. In the days that followed, there was a bit
of a public backlash against TV Continental for having broadcast the event—and
the fracture—live, but nothing concrete came of it. In fact, right afterward
Continental was already advertising another event, “Vale-Tudo na TV” (Vale-Tudo
on TV), for the same time slot, to be broadcast direct from Maracanazinho
gymnasium. This time the programming would feature only vale-tudo. There
would be four fights in all, the last of them again headlined by João Alberto.
Riding the wake of the success of the first two broadcasts, the very next week,
on July 18 (same day of the week and time), came the third broadcast—the second
“Vale-Tudo na TV” show—, again from Maracanazinho. This time there would be a
showdown between Gracie and Brasil academies. In the final fight of the card,
João Alberto mounts and dishes out a severe beating on José Soares Vinagre,
whose corner throws in the towel in desistance. Displeased by the interruption,
Vinagre gets aggressive with his own teammate and tries in vein to have the
fight restarted. Encouraged by the solid audience they’d achieved, Continental
definitively incorporates the Monday events into their weekly programming. From
that point on Cariocas were treated to “Vale-Tudo na TV” at home on the
same day and at the same time every week. From the fourth event onward, though,
the fights went down at Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, no longer at
Maracanazinho, possibly because the event no longer required so sizable a
venue, given how having a large live audience wasn’t necessary anymore. The
Gracies had a hand in the organization, with Hélio doing color commentary on
the television broadcast. Near the end of the year, the program was given the
title by which it would be known for posterity: “Heróis do Ringue” (Heroes of
the Ring). The microphone in his control every Monday, Hélio went above and
beyond the call of duty in commentating, berating anyone and everyone he so
pleased. His preferred targets were the FMP-assigned referees, rivals like
Waldemar Santana and, as though by habit, the judokas.

At first the program flew under the mainstream press’s radar, but by
year’s end there was harsh criticism directed at both the event being broadcast
on TV and Hélio’s bellicose demeanor. Catchy headlines like “Brutality ‘Show’”
and “The Battle Hymn of the Brutes” started finding their mark, as did appeals
to sport-governing bodies (the FMP, CBP and the CND, the National Sports
Council), asking for them to put an end to the broadcasts. Once the curtain
opened on the year 1960, the faultfinding gained vehemence when the campaign
for an outright ban on the events was bolstered by such powerful people as
Federal Supreme Court justice Nélson Hungria, who declared, “Only in an
uncivilized country can something like this take place. Such programs
de-educate, by being brutal.”

With such scathing criticism, a response from the sports-governing
bodies became inevitable. However, to the Gracies’ benefit, the FMP, CBP and
CND weren’t on the same wavelength, which made a big mess of the issue. While
the former two only authorized further events if there were a definitive ban on
punches and kicks, the CND still gave the go-ahead for “American luta livre”
rules bouts. With the discrepant rulings, some of the shows ended up being
utter chaos, sometimes even deteriorating into outright brawls[134]. Even so, the show
kept running for another two months before the final episode in April 1960.
Months later, the program was back on the air, but this time dubbed “Luta Livre
Americana” and without the Gracies’ involvement, instead produced by the
promoter Domingos Carrozini. The events ran for some time at the Flamengo
gymnasium, before eventually being transferred to América gymnasium, to end
completely two years later.

In a way, Hérois do Ringue’s demise marked the end of an era and the
start of a somber period for the Gracies and Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a whole.
Still in the early ‘60s, serious accusations of larceny were leveled against
Hélio and mainly Carlos Gracie. More serious still was the fact that the
accusations were brought against them by someone who’d been a close family friend
for many years. As a result, Hélio and Carlos spent the greater part of the
decade concerned with their defense. The vale-tudo events in Rio de
Janeiro waned until virtually ceasing altogether. At around this time Brazil’s
northeast took the reins as the foremost stage for combat events. Years before,
a number of fighters and instructors had stopped through in the region. Such
was the case of Carlos and George Gracie, Takeo Yano, too. Plus a generation of
regional fighters arose, generally in association with one of these masters,
like Pedro Hemetério and of course the Bahia native Waldemar Santana. The events
started to take off in several states around the Northeast, and a new
generation came through the ranks with the likes of Ivan Gomes and Euclides
Pereira. Waldemar Santana and Carlson Gracie faced off yet again on April 30,
1960 in Salvador, once more fighting to a draw.

Even before the sun set on the ‘50s, though, the jiu-jitsu practiced
in the gi was still experiencing a period of stagnation. There were several
reasons for this. The rise of judo and the multiplication of its academies
contrasted starkly with the smattering of jiu-jitsu academies and the dominance
of Gracie Academy. The spread of vale-tudo made it so relevant events
for gi-fighting were no longer promoted. What’s more, the peculiar jiu-jitsu
philosophy didn’t help its dissemination any: not all potential jiu-jitsu
students were prepared to become competitors or stick their necks out in a vale-tudo
fight, and they naturally gravitated away from the academy setting. The
migration of vale-tudo’s nucleus to the Northeast did little to change
this outlook since next to no emphasis was placed on training in the gi at that
time. What was needed was the creation of a real alternative to Gracie Academy
in order for competition jiu-jitsu to quickly gain force again. And it took
nearly two decades before that would ultimately happen.

Chapter 16 – The Great Rivalry: Gracie vs
Gracie

I

n the 1960s, the older Gracie Academy students started opening
academies of their own. In fact, this had already been the case to a lesser
extent even before the decade had begun, and with the exception of Fadda
Academy, the lineage of all the others in one way or another traced back to the
Gracies. In September 1964, João Alberto Barreto, one of the foremost Gracie
students, opened an academy along with Flávio Behring, another of the family’s
students, at 690 Nossa Senhora de Copacabana Avenue, in the Copacabana borough.
Not long thereafter it was Carlson’s turn to do the same. He waged a
tooth-and-nail fight to a draw with Ivan Gomes on December 27, 1963 in Recife.
Afterwards the two became fast friends, and Ivan went to Rio de Janeiro to help
teach class at the academy Carlson opened up on Tonelero Street, also in
Copacabana. This initial experiment didn’t last long, but for many years the
academies Carlson started would still be “branches” of Gracie academy, as of yet
not having disassociated from the rest of the family.

Even with the spread of academies, championships were virtually
nonexistent, amounting to nothing more than private inter-academy competitions.
Hélio Gracie’s insistence that jiu-jitsu had to exist to the detriment of judo,
as if coexistence between them were absolutely incompatible, didn’t contribute
to improving the scenario one bit. In 1965 Brazil would for the first time host
the judo world championship. It would be a single event, and on the occasion
Hélio went back on the offensive: “We’ll sit out this world championship
because the judo they’ve adopted is a farce. It’s a style-based fight, not one
based on effectiveness and capacity.” He still believed he was the defender of
the original Japanese art. During the 1960s judo was so widespread in Brazil
and around the world that Hélio’s statement didn’t resonate at all in any
sporting body and only contributed to miring jiu-jitsu further in isolation.
That would start to change in 1968, when the first consistent efforts to create
a federation were undertaken. Paradoxically, the one who took the helm in this
process wasn’t a Gracie, but João Carlos Austregésilo de Athayde[135]. With a tone
considerably more moderate than Hélio’s, Athayde had the aplomb and political
acumen to sidestep the hurdles. And these hurdles came directly from the judo
and pugilism federations, which opposed the very existence of jiu-jitsu as an
independent sport. Athayde stated that he “… had been requesting legalization
for months, but ran into several misconceptions. It may be that some feel we
want to put an end to judo, for example, which has never crossed our minds. We
feel, for starters, that there’s room for all of us, and it’s up to the
public—the ones with most interest in this subject—to decide which they like
best.”

The final decision was in the hands of the CND, which scheduled a
meeting for May 15, 1968 to decide jiu-jitsu’s fate as a sport. On the day, the
creation of the Federação Carioca de Jiu-Jitsu (Carioca Jiu-Jitsu Federation)
was unanimously approved. At the audience, in jubilant mood, besides Athayde
himself there were Hélcio Leal Neto, Orlando Barradas, Oswaldo Fadda, Tony de
Pádua and Barreto Mangueti. Not one Gracie attended.

It would still take five years after the Federation’s founding
before the inaugural adult Carioca jiu-jitsu championship was put together[136]. It was a tournament
with the same characteristics as modern ones these days: the competitors were sorted
by belt (white, blue, purple, brown and black) and by weight group (light
feather, feather, light, middle, medium heavy, heavy and absolute)[137], with rules
resembling the ones in force today. Belt divisions is a major differentiator
between jiu-jitsu championships and those of other styles, mainly judo, and
it’s a reflection of the incentive to compete that has been preserved in
jiu-jitsu[138]:
from white belt up, all practitioners can take part in high level
championships, not just black belts. Besides that, another characteristic would
endure: the competition unit is the academy. To this day at the World
Championship fighters represent their academies, not a national team.

The first Carioca championship, held in December 1973 at the AABB
club in the Lagoa neighborhood, had 130 competitors from 11 different
academies, three of which were invited to join from outside Guanabara state:
Pedro Hemetério Academy from São Paulo and Oriente and Nascimento academies
from Rio de Janeiro State[139].
The result of the tournament was a sweeping victory for Gracie Academy. In the
finals, of the 27 weight and belt groups, Gracie Academy had representatives in
19, with two Gracie students meeting as finalists in seven of them. Of the
remaining 12, where one of the finalists was from a non-Gracie academy, Gracie
Academy won seven. In all, Gracie Academy won 14 of the 27 divisions. The
dominion at black belt was even tighter: of the seven divisions, Gracie
students won five, of which four were all-Gracie affairs. From the Gracie family
itself there were three fighters: Hélio's son Rorion Gracie and two of Carlos's
kids, Rocian and Rolls. Rolls Gracie was the big standout of the championship,
winning the medium heavyweight division and the absolute as a black belt.
Another big name was Sérgio Iris, a student of Carlson's who also fought under
the Gracie banner. He too won the medium heavyweight and absolute divisions,
but at brown belt. In the overall academy tally, besides the Gracies, the
standouts in the finals were the academies Kioto, Monir and Alvaro Barreto.

The advent of the big jiu-jitsu competitions set in motion the
forces that would cause the gi-adorned sport to evolve in unprecedented ways
and independent of vale-tudo in the decades that followed. However, it
would still take some years before Gracie Academy's hegemony would be
challenged. Only in the next decade did the number of championships held each
year grow, as did the number of competitors. The Carioca championship of 1973
was succeeded by the next year's iteration until in 1975 Rio de Janeiro would
see a resurgence of vale-tudo. Actually, the style never really went
away since the end of the 1950s. In the ‘60s, when the focal point of the
events was up in the country's northeast, a handful of fights were held in the
city. After that the events basically boiled down to being just street fights
or exclusively behind-closed-doors affairs. At the start of the ‘70s, fight
flicks, mainly those starring Bruce Lee, lent a great deal of notoriety to
these styles of fighting. And that was the opportunity Hélio had been waiting
for to again try and prove the superiority of his art in “fighting for real.”
At the end of May 1975, for the first time in years, a vale-tudo challenge
fight was announced: jiu-jitsu versus karate. The event would take place at the
Olímpico Club gymnasium in Copacabana, and it was programmed for six fights,
all pitting jiu-jitsu stylists against karate fighters. Even though it had been
years since the last event of this sort, the authorities hadn't forgotten the
brutality that would normally occur, and on the day of the fight, CND
representatives tried to block the show from happening. For being, on paper, a
private event held at a private club, Hélio managed to circumvent the
impediment. It was an across-the-board victory, but didn't end in bloodshed:
the jiu-jitsu fighters won all their fights swiftly and easily, not a single
karateka made it out of the opening minute. In the second match, Rorion Gracie,
Hélio's son, beat his opponent with an arm-lock. In the last fight, his cousin
Rolls, the same one who'd stood out at the Carioca championship two years
prior, easily subdued Paulo Cesar Lopes with a choke from the back. To Hélio,
the ending could be no different. After the fights had wrapped up, he explained
why such events had become so few and far between: “There's a lack of
opponents. Who wants to fight a jiu-jitsu practitioner? The karate and
taekwondo fighters and those from other martial arts know what jiu-jitsu can do
to them.” Regardless of the notorious lack of modesty, there was a certain
logic to Hélio's assertion: indeed, he exclusively had managed to maintain the
“technology” of real combat alive in his academy and the realm of jiu-jitsu.

Two years earlier, while searching for fighters to compete at the
Carioca championship, the Federation took out an ad in newspapers to announce
the locations for sign-ups. Among them was Gracie Academy, at an address that
sounded odd to anyone familiar with the academy that since 1952 had operated
out of Rio Branco Avenue: 413 Figueiredo de Magalhães Street in Copacabana. At
that location, a small corner building, the brothers Carlson and Rolls Gracie
had for a short while been running an “affiliate” gym. Hence their students
competed at the championship as students of Gracie Academy, denying the
Copacabana academy its autonomy.

The Carioca championship was held in 1974 and 1975 and then in 1976
with the Torneio Fusão da Guanabara (Fusion of Guanabara Tournament), but the
sequence didn't quite mean jiu-jitsu was fully disseminated in Rio de Janeiro,
as tournaments were still sporadic. Eventually Carlson's students started
competing under their teacher's banner, now dubbed Carlson Gracie Academy. It
wasn't the first time that a Gracie opened his own independent school; that had
already happened on a number of occasions. Besides the rogue George Gracie, the
brothers Gastão and Oswaldo too had their own academies and coexisted
harmoniously with Carlos and Hélio's team. At the end of the ‘70s, Reylson
Gracie, another of Carlos's kids, opened his academy at the newly inaugurated
Gávea Shopping Center, in the eponymous neighborhood. However, at a time when
championships were nonexistent Carlos and Hélio's brothers weren't a threat to
Gracie Academy's hegemony. In Reylson's case, seldom did his students venture
into competition. Now, Carlson was a different story altogether. Besides
Carlson being plenty battle-tested as a fighter (many feel he was the greatest
Gracie of all times), his students were constantly running up against the
Gracie students at championships, and eventually beating them. In 1982 Rolls
Gracie died in a hang gliding accident, leaving his students with another
brother, Carlos Gracie Jr, who continued sharing gym space with Carlson. It was
still a time of turbulence for competition jiu-jitsu. The few tournaments were
plagued by shoddy organization. The competition rules were still broad and
hardly objective in their details, which along with the dearth of qualified
referees, made it so match results were often openly questioned. With a series
of inter-academy conflicts arising and the loss of legitimacy, the Rio de
Janeiro Jiu-Jitsu Federation became dysfunctional and inoperative even to do
nothing more than promote a tournament. The fact of the matter is that the
Federation's debilitation and the turmoil that predominated at the rare
championships was a reflection on Hélio's vision as it pertained to the
Federation. Hélio never believed in the development of sport jiu-jitsu; to him
the creation of the Federation was merely a way to break free of the shackles
of the Pugilism Federation. To him, jiu-jitsu was a form of real combat and
thus was unsuited for rules and points. Hence on August 15, 1983, the Liga
Niteroiense de Jiu-Jitsu (Niteroi Jiu-Jitsu League) was created as an
alternative to the Federation and began operations putting on tournaments in
March of the next year. With jiu-jitsu starting to gain popularity among Rio de
Janeiro's youth, a brand of clothing for young people called Company in
December 1984 decided to sponsor a major championship. The inaugural Copa
Company de Jiu-Jitsu (Company Jiu-Jitsu Cup), held at Fluminense gymnasium, was
a success and quickly became one of the sport's most highly regarded events. In
July the next year it was followed by Copa Company II, held at the same
gymnasium. It was an even bigger success, with 190 athletes spread across the
different weight and belt groups. In the black belt medium heavyweight
division, Marcelo Behring of Gracie Academy defeated the game Cassio Cardoso, a
top Carlson student. Of Hélio's brood, Royler Gracie ruled the featherweight
division alone, and Rickson Gracie continued unbeaten and won the absolute. In
the overall team tally, Gracie Academy remained champion, followed by Carlson
Gracie Academy and the third place Carlos Gracie Jr Academy[140]. Copa Company's
success caught the attention of the brand’s competition, and championships
sponsored by other companies started cropping up: after all the years of chaos
and disorder, finally jiu-jitsu had reached critical mass. With time and
dedication, Carlson Gracie's competition team started to become a force to be reckoned
with, and that irked Hélio. Carlson made championships the number one priority
and put together a team of stalwart fighters, their style a blend of power and
technique. Now, Hélio had in his two sons Rickson and Royler, not to mention
Marcelo Behring, his greatest exponents. Rickson and Royler had very different
styles, though. Rickson wasn't slight of frame as Gracies tended to be. Quite
the contrary, robust and athletic, Rickson's was an attacking style with
apparently no concern for scoring points, instead relentlessly pursuing the
submission, and he stayed undefeated that way in jiu-jitsu competition. Whereas
Royler was different. He had the frail build of his father and the same subtle,
highly precision-based technique, too. Every one of his matches was a jiu-jitsu
clinic. At Copa Company II, again held at Fluminense gymnasium, in October
1986, Rickson and Royler found no opponent up to snuff and yet again took the
title home to Gracie Academy.

Among Carlson Gracie's many students, one stood out for having a
style quite unlike what was predominant at the academy. Ricardo de la Riva
decidedly didn't bear a physique that would strike fear into the hearts of his
adversaries. Nevertheless, picking up where diminutive Japanese martial artists
like Ito, Maeda, Higashi and others in the United States left off, in
developing the “art of fighting with their back on the ground and using their
feet like hands,” de la Riva developed the art to perfection. Wielding extreme
flexibility and almost supernatural skill with his legs, he was second to none
in the “back on the ground” game, and he honed it to the maximum as his only mechanism
for survival in an academy notorious for its stalwart and very strong guard
passers. Just after earning his black belt, at his first competition at the
rank, Carlson tossed him into the absolute division, despite the limitations
his being a featherweight entailed. There de la Riva was crowned champion,
easily beating two of Hélio's sons, Rolker and Royce Gracie. Far lighter than
Rickson, matching the two against each other wasn’t realistic; but a showdown
with Royler was inevitable. And their paths ended up crossing on October 18,
1987 at the Club Municipal gymnasium, the venue for a championship sponsored by
the popular brand Cantão[141],
called “I Copa Cantão de Jiu-Jitsu” (Cantão Jiu-Jitsu Cup I). Royler had won a
semifinal against Clóvis de Souza, another outstanding student of Carlson's.
The gymnasium seemed about to explode, so much tension was in the air, and at
the corner of the mat Rickson and Carlson Gracie watched attentively as their
brother and student, respectively, locked horns in combat. Carlson knew well
what a loss from Royler would mean to Hélio. Though several Gracies—like
Rorion, Rillion, Rolker and Royce—had lost to Carlson's students in the past,
nothing could compare to a loss from Rickson or Royler.

The match starts out tense. Handier standing than de la Riva, at any
moment Royler is likely to land a throw on Carlson's student. Nevertheless,
possibly to avoid being drawn into de la Riva's insurmountable guard, it's
Royler who takes the initiative by pulling guard. In the bat of an eye de la
Riva reaches a splendid pass position, obliging Royler to go to great lengths
to contain him. From this point on what onlookers are treated to is what many
of them call the greatest match of all times. Frenetically paced, five minutes
in Carlson is barking at the side referees about points he felt de la Riva
should have been credited for a sweep. In the waning moments of the match, with
victory all but locked up for the Carlson student should it go to the judges,
Royler just misses scoring a crucial back take, nearly pulling off the win.

It's extremely difficult to reduce historic processes to precise
moments, but in a way it can be said that this loss of Royler's was the crack
that definitively shattered the hegemony of Gracie Academy, which would never
recover its former championship dominance. To Hélio the loss incurred by the
son who mirrored his style was a major blow. Controversy-shy and never one to
speak ill of his opponents, de la Riva's mild manners did little good after the
fight, as Carlson was a whirlwind of excitement. A few days later, on a popular
television sports show, Carlson appeared with his team, and when asked whether
the jiu-jitsu he taught was different from what the other Gracies did, he
didn't mince his words:

“The Gracies' technique
is the same, but the group over there [at Carlson’s academy] have more grit,
they listen to the teacher more. I think that's what prevails.”

As for Hélio, there was no tolerating Royler's defeat and Carlson's
showboating. Carlson, with his sporting perspective, saw no problem in training
a student to beat a Gracie. The way he saw it, the unit in the scope of sports
wasn't family, but the academy (his students wouldn't face off with each other
if they reached the final with one another, either). To Hélio, though, the
sporting dimension was irrelevant; family came first and foremost. The month
after Copa Cantão I, Fluminense gymnasium would host yet another event, Copa
Company IV, and getting another crack at de la Riva became an obsession for
Hélio and Royler. Just before the tournament, Royler remarked: “My current goal
is to beat Ricardo [de la Riva]. There's nothing else that I think about, and I
know that now's my big chance at rehabilitation. That loss still doesn't sit
well with me. I went unbeaten for eight years, and that was the first time I
lost as a black belt. That's why I'm so anxious. It's going to be a tough fight
and I'm aware that there's a chance, however slight it may be, that I'll lose
again.”

Copa Company IV was another Rickson-and-Royler Gracie show. Rickson
won at weight and absolute again, and Royler did the same at featherweight. But
a de la Riva no-show took the joy out of Royler’s achievement: “... he's going
to dwell on that win the rest of his life...” he said.

The events surrounding Copa Cantão I and Copa Company IV caused
Hélio and Carlson's relationship to deteriorate definitively. Before losing to
de la Riva, Royler had beaten a number of Carlson's students, among them one of
the best, Cássio Cardoso, who was heavier than him and was tipped to face
Rickson. Carlson disagreed with the result of that match and insisted that de
la Riva would only face Royler again once a rematch had been granted to Cássio,
which is why he'd barred his student from signing up for Copa Company. Royler
was beside himself:

“I'll face anyone to
prove once and for all who's better. But I challenge Cássio, Ricardo or anyone
else from Carlson's academy to a showdown without time limits so it ends in a
submission.”

But it was Hélio who upped the ante against his nephew:

“Besides Royler's fight,
I challenge your five best students to fight the 28-year-old Rickson back to
back. I even propose a wager: I'll pay US$ 2,000 to your US$ 1,000 for each
fight. I think that's the best response to Carlson, who's been estranged from
the family, from our technique, and training fighters to beat us. He's a bad
character. The wager is for him to pay for his jiu-jitsu lessons and learn not
to turn his back on family.”

In response, Carlson toned things down some, trying to keep the feud
within the scope of sporting competition:

“Royler's proposal makes
no sense. That would be like playing a five-hour soccer game. Jiu-jitsu's a
fight with rules, and those rules need to be respected.”

Carlson was also moderate in addressing the accusation that he was
training his students to beat Gracies:

“Confrontation's
inevitable. It's part of sport. I don't train my students specifically to beat
fighters from the family.”

And lastly, regarding Hélio's challenge pitting Rickson against five
of his students:

“He's a great fighter,
maybe the best. Hélio's really worked up and likes fanning the flames. I don't
think Rickson's in agreement with him; he knows he's the best. There are some
championships coming up in January, and we'll see who's best then.”

It was against this backdrop of animosity that the following year de
la Riva and Royler stepped onto the mat for their second outing. The venue was
the same as the first time they squared off, Club Municipal. And the “slight”
chance materialized, when Ricardo de la Riva beat Royler Gracie for the second
time.

Unlike the first time around, lively as it was, the second encounter
isn't as easy for a lay observer to make sense of and requires a reasonable
understanding of jiu-jitsu to be understood. This time, one minute into the
match, de la Riva pulls guard on Royler, going straight to what will henceforth
be known as the “de la Riva guard.” The two remain in this position until the
match ends. It's noteworthy that from the very beginning de la Riva leaves no
room between his body and his opponent's, keeping Royler off balance the whole
time. Always at the brink of getting upended, Royler makes only timid attempts
to pass, and he is repeatedly attacked and put off balance again. Once the
match has run its course, the judges have their work cut out for them. On one
hand de la Riva took more initiative for most of the time, but on the other
hand the guard is a defensive position by excellence. Ultimately the judges
proclaim de la Riva the victor for the second time in a row.

With his son's back-to-back losses to a member of his nephew and
rival's academy, this time the outcome had a serious impact on Hélio's
relationship with his son. They went without talking to each other, and Hélio
demanded that Royler beat de la Riva in order for them to return to speaking
terms. That was the mood that enveloped the two fighters in May 1989 as they
headed into their third meeting, at another championship sponsored by a
clothing brand—Copa Armazém do Esporte. The tournament took place at
Maracanazinho, the venue for so many other fight events in the life of the old
Gracie. Hélio was incognito, almost unnoticeable perched on a bench in a corner
of the gymnasium. Obsessed with his opponent, Royler demanded that his match
with de la Riva be the first in the featherweight black belt division (under
normal circumstances they'd only meet in the final). This time Hélio's son won.
It had been another even match where not a point was scored before the judges
proclaimed a winner. Hélio Gracie, at 76 years of age, would never again watch
a jiu-jitsu championship in person[142].
At the end of that year of 1989, in a process firmly backed by Carlos Gracie
Jr, the Jiu-Jitsu Federation was reactivated, without Hélio's participation.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu would finally set a course to become a nationally
recognized sport.

Where vale-tudo was concerned, the ‘80s were exciting times
marked by one of the greatest rivalries in the history of martial arts[143]. At the turn of the
decade, in April 1980 at an event promoted by Waldemar Santana in Brasília, by
then the nation's capital, Rickson Gracie had a vale-tudo bout with Casimiro
“Rei Zulu” Martins, a hulking native of Maranhão State and a brawler without
much by way of technique but with more than his fair share of brute force. In
the family hierarchy Rolls Gracie would have been the one naturally matched
with him, but Hélio's young and fearless son brought the responsibility on
himself and took the challenge. Before a small crowd, Rickson submitted Zulu
with a rear-naked choke early in the second round. Months later, during the
carnival festivities of 1981 in Teresópolis, a hillside town in Rio de Janeiro
State, a son and a grandson of Carlos Gracie, Rillion and Charles,
respectively, had an altercation with a Thai-boxing fighter named Mário Dumar,
or “Marinho,” as he was known. That scuffle, months later, led to Marinho and
Charles going to blows on the street in Rio de Janeiro City. In the aftermath,
Rolls Gracie, at the time the best fighter in the family, took his cousins and
students with him to invade the academy of Marinho's brother-in-law, Flávio
Molina, one of the pioneers of Thai boxing in Brazil. The idea was to settle
the score by fighting Marinho right then and there, but with tensions high on
the occasion, the result was an all-out gang-style rumble. It was clear that
the invasion and brawl made further confrontations inevitable, whether on the
street or at one of the city's gymnasiums, but two events led to the conflict’s
postponement. The first was Rolls Gracie's death in a hang-gliding accident
shortly after invading Molina's academy. The second event marked vale-tudo's
return as a public event to Rio de Janeiro after a hiatus of many years.

If Rickson's first fight with Zulu didn't get much attention, their
second meeting did. It went down at that same old Maracanãzinho gymnasium,
where so many other such events were held before, on November 12, 1983. It was
a preliminary fight for a boxing match with the Brazilian national light
welterweight title on the line between Chiquinho de Jesus and João Tavares.
Rickson beat Zulu in the second round again, using the same submission that won
him the first one. It was a hard-fought affair, and thanks entirely to his
outstanding skills did Rickson manage to transition from the classic “back on
the ground” position to his opponent's back to secure the mata-leão.
Chiquinho de Jesus won the main event by technical knockout.

While all that was going on, Flavio Molina hadn't forgotten about
what happened at his academy. With Rolls no longer an option, Molina was plenty
vocal about his intent to square off with Rickson. But it was another Gracie
student who would step up to the challenge. Marcelo Behring was the son of
Flávio Behring, a Gracie student since the 1950s. Marcelo wasted no time in
agreeing to fight Molina, but it wouldn't be a street fight or behind closed
doors: it had to be at an event along the lines of the old school vale-tudos,
with a number of fights on the program. After some tinkering with the card, all
the definitive matchups were made. Representing jiu-jitsu were Renan Pitanguy,
Inácio Aragão, Fernando Pinduka and Marcelo Behring, and they would be facing
Eugênio Tadeu, Bruce Lucio[144],
Marco Ruas and Flávio Molina, respectively. Lastly, there would be a “super
fight” between Sérgio Batarelli and Rei Zulu that was meant to serve as a
qualifier for Batarelli to face Rickson Gracie at a later event.

Knowing that the jiu-jitsu fighters' strategy was to take the fight
to the ground, it was essential that Molina and his teammates acquire seome
technical understanding of such fighting. It would be natural for them to try
and find some jiu-jitsu instructor to help them out, but there was no chance of
that. Loyalty to the art is one of the basic tenets of Brazilian jiu-jitsu
philosophy, and the elders still remembered how Geo Omori was tagged a traitor
for agreeing to train Manoel Fernandes and how the same thing happened when
Augusto Cordeiro helped out Passarito. The alternative was to get help from
another grappling art, one also practiced with the “back on the ground,” a form
of wrestling known in Brazil as luta-livre esportiva (sport luta-livre).

We've already seen how wrestling in the United States starting early
that century evolved in two segments. On the one hand, pro-wrestling
“legitimized” prearranged fights by giving them a circus-like quality and
removing the ulterior motive of hoodwinking the crowd to rig betting lines. On
the other, the amateur styles gained momentum when added to the Olympic
calender. We've also seen how submission wrestling, if not disappearing completely,
atrophied due to the lack of incentive for its intensive practice. In Brazil
the process shared some similarities with what happened up north, but acquired
some characteristics all its own.

The introduction of wrestling in Brazil is generally attributed to
Agenor “Sinhozinho” Sampaio in the 1920s. Attentive readers will recall how we
previously mentioned him being a capoeira stylist, which indeed he was. Besides
capoeira, though, Sinhozinho learned and practiced wrestling. In those days
wrestling and capoeira intermingled through such masters as Sinhozinho and
Jayme Ferreira and was practiced by strong men with athletic physiques. As
we've seen, starting in the ‘30s, as famously put by George Gracie in his
interview with O Estado newspaper, worked fights were plenty, and legitimate
fights were rare. George's interview didn't eliminate worked fights, as they
gained force in the '50s at such Rio de Janeiro venues as Palácio de Alumínio and
Colyseo do Calabouço. Late that decade, with the demise of those arenas, this
Brazilian version of pro-wrestling gained a television outlet in shows like
Telecatch and Reis do Ringue (Kings of the Ring), which were met with some
success up until the '70s before fading away into obscurity. Some of the
fighters from the 1930s did stick their necks out in real fights, though, like
Euclydes “Tatu” Hatem, who submitted George Gracie in Porto Alegre, or Orlando
“Dudu” Américo da Silva, who had the brutal vale-tudo bout with Hélio
Gracie. Through them submission wrestling endured in Brazil and, certainly
influenced by jiu-jitsu, began to take on a “back on the ground” slant[145].

In the 1950s a judoka in Rio de Janeiro made a notable transition to
no-gi fighting. Roberto Leitão was a student of judokas who were skilled even
without the gi, among them Takeo Yano. Taking up submission wrestling
definitively and having had contact with the pioneers of the sport, who were
still active in the ‘50s, Leitão represents one branch of the family tree of
the style of wrestling known today as “Brazilian luta-livre,” where there’s a
major emphasis on submissions and fighting “with your back on the ground.” In
the 1970s, it was his efforts that introduced the Olympic styles in the country.
Brazil so far hasn't recovered from the decades it fell behind by not having
these styles, and has yet to earn meaningful results on the world scene.
Another branch of Brazilian luta-livre runs through “Tatu” and “Dudu”
and was carried on by Fausto Brunocilla and ultimately his son, Carlos
Brunocilla. His academy, one of the few in the city of Rio de Janeiro at that
time, was located at Boqueirão do Passeio, next door to Santos Dumont airport.
And it was Brunocilla who Molina and his buddies seek for help, taken there by
Marco Ruas, who'd already done some ground fighting.

Once he was introduced to the group, Brunocilla was none too pleased
with what he saw. Except for Ruas—even he was far from the ace he'd one day
become—, the rest, especially Flavio Molina, wouldn't stand a chance fighting
on the ground. A straight talker, Brunocilla suggested that they postpone the vale-tudo
by at least a year. Hélio reacted sternly to the proposal: the fights would go
down right away regardless, either at a gymnasium in organized fashion or on
some street in Rio de Janeiro. Delay was out of the question. That was the
state of affairs when the event was set to go down at the Maracanazinho on
November 30, 1984.

If there's one thing Molina's fighters have more than their fair
share of, it's courage and determination. Before a partisan crowd favoring the
jiu-jitsu fighters, Eugênio Tadeu steps into the ring to take on Renan
Pitanguy. Sporting a gi, Renan ends up letting Tadeu put to work a technique
whereby he can hit without getting grabbed and taken down: with one hand he
grips his opponent's gi, while with the other he wails on him with punches. For
the second round Renan sheds the gi, but it's too late: already horribly
battered, his corner throws in the towel to put an end to the massacre. Having
learnt his lesson, Inácio Aragão stashes his gi before even stepping into the
ring. Within seconds he has Bruce Lucio on the ground and unconscious from a mata-leão.
Up next is the most evenly matched fight of the event. Marco Ruas and Fernando
Pinduka tirelessly wage war for three rounds, and as there's no point system in
place, it ends up declared a tie. Now, in the main event the inevitable
happens: having been grabbed and dragged to the ground by Behring, there was
nothing Flávio Molina could do to stop the devastating barrage of fists and
elbows his opponent rained down on him upon reaching the mount. And lastly, the
super fight ended with Batarelli passed out cold from a guillotine choke by
Zulu, abruptly ending his chances of facing Rickson Gracie.

Far from putting a stop to the issue, the vale-tudo at
Maracanãzinho only served to turn up the heat on the martial arts rivalry,
especially between jiu-jitsu and luta-livre[146].
In the years that followed there were countless altercations in the streets
(including the famous fight where Rickson Gracie beat up Hugo Duarte on Pepê
beach, Rio de Janeiro's trendiest) and behind closed doors at the academies. In
early 1991 tensions reached boiling point when Wallid Ismail of Carlson Gracie
team gave an interview for a Rio de Janeiro newspaper claiming jiu-jitsu was
unbeatable by any other martial art. Another clash was inevitable. On the 5th
and 6th of April that very year at the army physical education
school in the Urca neighborhood another clothing company sponsored a big
jiu-jitsu championship. It was Copa Nastra, gathering several of the biggest
names active in the sport at the time. During the competition, pandemonium
overtook the gymnasium when it was invaded by a group of luta-livre
practitioners. The matches under way were interrupted, and for an instant it
seemed like a massive brawl was about to ensue right then and there. But it was
neither the time nor place. The wrestlers were only there to accept Wallid's
challenge. It was time to finally settle the score. In the seven years that had
gone by, the symbiosis between Thai boxing and sport luta-livre had produced a
generation of well-rounded fighters.

In the weeks that followed teams are assembled. For jiu-jitsu there
are Wallid Ismail himself, Murilo Bustamante, Amaury Bitetti (all three Carlson
Gracie students), Marcelo Behring and Fábio Gurgel, a black belt under Romero
Jacaré, who was one of the very few Rolls Gracie black belts. Representing
luta-livre against them are, respectively, Eugênio Tadeu, Marco Ruas, Marcelo
Mendes (who would have fought at the vale-tudo of 1984 had he not gotten
injured), Hugo Duarte and Denílson Maia. The encounter is ultimately set for
the 26th of September 1991 at the Grajaú Country Club gymnasium, in
Rio de Janeiro's north side. Of the originally programmed bouts, two don't go
through: Marco Ruas ends up taking a professional bout in Manaus at about the
same time, leaving Amaury without an opponent, and Marcelo Behring gets
injured, nixing Hugo Duarte's fight. The other matchups go ahead in a climate
of extreme rivalry. Most spectators in the stands are for the jiu-jitsu
fighters, and at times it is feared the crowd will spiral into a serious
security issue. Jiu-jitsu ends up running roughshod over the competition,
though. Fight number one, between Wallid and Eugênio, is a brutal affair akin
to a cockfight. At 16:18 minutes of the third round the two fighters, bathed in
blood, tumble out of the ring. As only Wallid returns, he is declared the winner.
The next fight sees technique prevail, however, with Murilo Bustamente so slick
that he makes a plaything of Marcelo Mendes, who expends so much energy just
trying to hang on that he seems to gas out right at the start. At 4:42 minutes
of round one Mendes squirms out of the ring to avoid Murilo's refined ground
game and never returns. Score two for jiu-jitsu. Lastly, in another highly
technical bout, Fábio Gurgel works past Denilson's guard, mounts and gets the
tapout after severely punishing his prey.

“Sports luta livre” as a sport never recovered from the blow. Paradoxically,
the incontestable victory jiu-jitsu earned that day had perverse consequences
for it. New students crowded into the academies but the perception that they
practiced a “superior art” led to an unprecedented outbreak of physical
violence in Rio de Janeiro. Street fights between martial artists were
commonplace in the city ever since Manoel Rufino got jumped back in the 1930s
but overall there was a prevailing “code of combat ethics” in such instances.
With the wave of inexperienced fighters and unqualified instructors, though,
the ethics got lost, and the Rio de Janeiro nightlife would see cruel acts of
extreme cowardice time and time again. Nearly a decade would go by before the
authorities and responsible instructors managed to rein in the situation.[147]

Conclusion

A

little over two years after the jiu-jitsu-vs-luta-livre vale-tudo
event and nearly 90 years since Eisei Maeda and Tsunejiro Tomita went ashore in
the United States, Royce Gracie set foot in the octagon for his first fight at
UFC 1. It had been a long journey since the start of the century, passing
through numerous countries until definitively becoming established in Rio de
Janeiro in the 1930s. The succession of events that unfolded from 1904 to 1993
would probably have been forgotten had UFC 1 not happened. But it did happen.
When Royce Gracie stepped into the octagon he brought with him an enormous
heritage. The techniques were developed and honed over decades, from when the
Japanese first needed them to beat the American wrestlers at the start of the
century to their adaptation to real, no-rules combat in the 1930s. Entering the
‘50s the art only survived thanks to the Gracies' obstinacy in not letting
Brazilian jiu-jitsu get swallowed up by judo and disappear. Royce wasn't one of
the big names of the sport at the time, but he didn't need to be to fulfill his
mission that day: he had the technique that had been passed down to him over
generations. More importantly, he was the only fighter at the event who knew
exactly what was going to happen in the coming hours. He knew exactly what
everyone's reaction to the stress of combat would be, and more important still,
he knew how to deal with that extreme, complex psychological pressure, as none
of it was new to him. That gave him an incomparable advantage over his
adversaries. In his corner the old Gracie, his father, was watching just
another vale-tudo, just one of dozens he'd been to or been in. His uncle
George died years earlier, forgotten in a small town in São Paulo State. His
other uncle, Carlos, the man who'd learnt the art directly from Otávio Mitsuyo
Maeda Conde Koma, was still alive, though he'd withdrawn from jiu-jitsu some
time ago to devote the last years of his life to work on the dietary system
he'd developed. That left Hélio still active and occasionaly teaching. Exactly
61 years and 300 days earlier he stepped up to the ring for the first time to
face the boxer Antônio Portugal, whom he beat after one minute and 45 seconds
of fighting. If there was one person who wasn't surprised as he left the arena
in Denver that day, six decades later, that someone was Hélio Gracie.

Afterword

B

razilian jiu-jitsu no longer dominates the international martial
arts scene. We can attribute this to the creation of the new art of MMA, or
mixed martial arts, based on a set of rules that “civilize” combat between
human beings. Much of this process had to do with the wherewithal of UFC
executives and their sensibility in perceiving what changes needed to be made
to make the art more palatable to the public at large. Brazilian jiu-jitsu
itself, as it is currently practiced in Brazil, has already lost much of its
original combat philosophy. Regardless, no matter how competent they may be,
the UFC isn’t able to change the true nature of human combat. To get a picture
of what I mean, all you have to do is pay attention and note how many times as
a round or bout ends the two fighters are on the ground, more often than not in
guard position. Or, count how many times the referee interrupts grounded
fighters to stand them back up at center octagon. The reality is, real human
combat is still violent, ugly, slow, unbalanced, with fighters on the ground,
generally positioned in guard. And as you can plainly see in tournaments like
the ADCC, Brazilian jiu-jitsu remains the highest expression of this nature.

[1]  See the excellent article by Neil Ohlenkamp on the
subject at http://judoinfo.com/rules2.htm.

[2]  Greco-Roman wrestling is neither Greek nor Roman,
but a modern French style.

[3]  Everything was so jumbled up that works eventually
ended up becoming legitimate fights on the fly. Many decades later, even
Masahiko Kimura during his pro-wrestling days would lose a bout supposed to
have been fixed.

[4]  By seeking legitimacy through Kano's name Higashi
demonstrated the credibility judo already commanded at that time.

[5]  Known in catch-as-catch-can as “flying falls”, we
will see much confusion this rule causes after the fight.

[6]  Mr. Hirano is most likely Juso Hirano, who will be mentioned
further on.

[7]  When asked questions like this one, for example,
Higashi had a curious workaround: he would claim not to be allowed to show the
secret techniques, as merely demonstrating them implied breaking a few of his
opponent's bones...

[8]  From the semifinals onwards, each fight was held in
a best-of-three-rounds format.

[9]  Mexico City is situated at an altitude of 2,420
meters above sea level, high enough to hamper an athlete's performance.

[10]  At a time when newspapers were the only
form of mass media, “open letters” printed in newspapers were the way challenge
fights were promoted, in what was the equivalent of the trash talk on TV of
today.

[11]  A few days later Maeda would report that
he and Taka were from the same school in Tokyo and hadn't seen each other in
seven years.

[12]  Harada quite possibly was Shinzo Harada,
who at the time was teaching ken-jitsu in Mexico.

[13]  Why they only challenged the fighters at
the Colón and not those from the Principal we don't know. It's likely the
Japanese were personae non gratae at that theater. Another possibility is that
the owners of the Colón encouraged the challenges, in order to promote the
event.

[14]  At a time when leisure options were few
and far between, theatrical spectacles were longer. Prior to Maeda's turn on
stage there were dance, singing, tap-dancing shows, etc.

[15]  We’ll return to Mr Galant later on, in Rio de Janeiro, in quite
troubled circumstances.

[16]  It’s intriguing to imagine what the first championship was. It’s
possible that some other troupe visiting Rio de Janeiro years before had that
honor, but we have no evidence of it.

[17]  You may remember that we’d already encountered Gallant at Theatro
Variedades, where he’d perform feats of strength at the same time Maeda’s
troupe performed there.

[18]  As per the research of Rildo Heros de Medeiros. Okura probably
left Brazil for good in 1921.

[19]  It was actually just a small pamphlet.

[20]  Source: IBGE

[21]  Omori may have studied under Ito before
leaving for Seattle. I feel it is highly likely that his description of judo's
genealogy is true because of the way Omori describes Ito, Maeda, Satake, Ono
and Yokoyama, virtual unknowns in 1920s Sao Paulo.

[22]  In fact, the term “judo” had only just
been officially adopted in Japan.

[23]  Some historians attribute the lack of
historical records to the burning of slavery-related records promoted by the
minister Ruy Barbosa not long after declaring Brazil an independent republic,
though that argument is thought not to hold any water, because the
record-burning basically just targeted fiscal records, in hopes of precluding
demands that the government compensate slave owners for the imperial
government's “appropriation” of their “property” two years earlier.

[24]  This affirmation is hard to reconcile
with historical facts, as Raku performed at Coliseu de Recreios in 1908,
precisely when Miyako was on the high seas aboard the Benjamin Constant. One
possibility is that he didn't embark for Brazil in Japan, but at some European
port during the second half of 1908.

[25]  We don't know what his previous opponents
wore to the fights, but Omori seemed less of a stickler about the gi than
Maeda, Ito and the rest.

[26]  A no-holds-barred fight, literally meaning “anything goes”

[27]  Interestingly, strikes too were forbidden.

[28]  Technically, gravata means guillotine choke, though it may
have been a blanket term prohibiting the mata-leao as well.

[29]   The academy
would finally be inaugurated on January 18, 1929.

[30]  “Death blows” are
expressly forbidden, though.

[31]  A mata-leao
or, more likely, a guillotine choke.

[32]  It's worth
bringing up here that in losing to Ritter, Omori was choked unconscious without
tapping.

[33]  Real fights were referred to as being “no
duro”.

[34]  Years later, in an interview, Omori would
again assert that it wasn't a legitimate fight.

[35]  Jayme Ferreira
was highly criticized for having accepted this rule, which clearly favored
jiu-jitsu fighters. It didn't help his case much that, following the fight, he
joined Gracie Academy to become one of Carlos's prize students.

[36]  At the time, the
academy founded by Donato Pires was not generally associated with the Gracie
name anymore.

[37]  Many traditional capoeirists felt
Aleixo was corrupting the martial art with his methodology.

[38]  One interesting example of this is how
wrestling's double-leg takedown, or morotegari in judo, was known in
Brazilian jiu-jitsu as the “baiana” before the American term became common
usage in Brazil during the modern MMA era. When performing the double-leg
during demonstrations, Aleixo would refer to it as the “baiana.”

[39]  It may seem curious that the president of
the republic would intervene in an issue as irrelevant to the nation's
interests as the incarceration of some roughnecks, but we should keep in mind
that Rio de Janeiro at the time, even as the nation's capital, was quite a
provincial city.

[40]  Numerous eyewitness accounts of this
author's very own.

[41]  Such a comparison would surely give
Jigoro Kano chills.

[42]  The original December 17 date had to be
postponed because of bad weather.

[43]  One curious piece of information about
Mineyoshi is that he was studied capoeira under Agenor “Sinhozinho” Sampaio,
possibly making him the first Japanese person to practice the art.
Nevertheless, he must not have been too skilled at it, as the one capoeira bout
he was in, against Caio Furtado, ended in him getting knocked out...

[44]  Omori won his fight by third-round
chokeout.

[45]  The João Caetano is just a stone's throw
from Carlos Gomes Theater, where Maeda and his troupe performed while in Rio de
Janeiro.

[46]  The Special Police Force was founded the
previous year as ordered by the dictator Getúlio Vargas and was a sort of riot
police meant to put down urban disturbances. There was clearly a need for such
a force to receive training in hand-to-hand combat.

[47]  In reality George was the only Gracie in
any shape to fight during the second half of 1933. Carlos had already bid
farewell to the ring. Early in the year his brother Oswaldo broke a leg in
training, and at the end of July Hélio suffered a serious motorcyle accident in
the Botafogo neighborhood of the city, suffering an exposed fracture that left
him hospital-ridden for a very long time.

[48]  Days later George would say he wasn’t
knocked down by the blow and lied down on purpose.

[49]  A term literally meaning “spread the
chicken,” when one fighter is forced prostrate belly down on the ground by an
opponent mounted on his back, the dominant fighter using his legs and belly to
flatten him out, “spreading the chicken.”

[50]  The nephew of Paschoal Segreto, the same
one who promoted Sada Miyako and Maeda's fights when in Rio de Janeiro.

[51]  Stadium Brasil, at Feira de Amostras
fair, was launched on September 30, 1933 with a performance by Don and Kuman's
Kossacks. With the stadium, Rio de Janeiro would gain its first permanent arena
for holding fight events, eventually displacing the events held in theaters and
on soccer pitches.

[52]  George weighed 62.2kg at fight time to
Omori's 67.2kg.

[53]  This seemingly unprecedented phenomenon
of two ground-fighters spending an entire fight going toe to toe is rare in
modern MMA and generally occurs when both are tired or neither of them wants to
play bottom position but is unable to take the other down and land on top.

[54]  The commission was formed in April of the
previous year, 1932.

[55]  For some time it was suggested he had
been poisoned, although it is highly unlikely.

[56]  Miyaki is often confused with the judoka
and pro-wrestler Taro Miyake. It is highly unlikely they are the same person,
though, as the Myaki who was in Brazil was far younger (Taro was 53 years old
at the time and would die the following year) not to mention the photos from
newspapers at the time clearly showed they were two different people.

[57]  One of the troupe's performances the
following month had to be canceled, as Ono and Myaki, while hanging out at a
farm somewhere in São Paulo, were caught off guard by an angry bull that left
them covered in scratches and bruises and prevented them from fighting the next
day...

[58]  Yano taught at the Naval Club, in the
same Rio Branco Ave. building where it remains to this day, just a stone's
throw from where Cyriaco knocked out Sada Miyako.

[59]  What would later become the judo
department, which for many years was Rio de Janeiro's finest but know can be
found in a state of neglect.

[60]  At this point he was again reconciled
with Carlos and Hélio.

[61]  A curious fact about this fight is that
besides the Gracie-Yano rivalry, it was considered the first
Flamengo-Fluminense crosstown darby in fighting, as Yano taught at Flamengo
club and George had just been hired by Fluminense.

[62]  An complete profile of the Ono family can
be found in  the February 2011 Tatame magazine, issue 180.

[63]  By ,now George had again split with his
brothers and left for Belo Horizonte, where by the end of the year he would
have several fights, winning them all and ultimately deciding to make the city
his home. There he would start teaching a number of martial arts including
“jiu-jitsu, luta-livre, self-defense, etc.” A case could be made for calling it
the world's first MMA academy. He also taught the state Civil Guard. The next
year George is back in action. In April 1936, for example, he weighed 70kg and
in 12 minutes beat two Germans, Barthowiak and Eberle, choking both of them.

[64]  The gi issue was so controversial that it
wasn't limited to arguing about whether or not was to be worn with wrestlers.
Even when that was a non-issue, as in the Hélio-vs-Yano match, the question of
sleeve length caused endless bickering, with Yano wanting the classic long
sleeves and the Gracies insisting on the short ones.

[65]  The Rio de Janeiro press referred to him
as being a Japanese giant of over 80kg. For his fight with Hélio, though,
Massagoichi weighed 77.3kg. The Brazilian weighed 67.4.

[66]  The Brazilian Pugilism Federation,
founded on 05/20/1935, arose from the Rio de Janeiro Boxing Federation and took
over from the Rio de Janeiro Pugilism Commission the task of regulating
jiu-jitsu and luta-livre matches.

[67]  This characteristic of Brazilian fighters
is strongly condemned by the UFC head office. The sporting view in MMA is
essential to the promotion, and this “philosophy” simply is not compatible with
their view.

[68]  This blatant reference to “pulling guard”
to this day causes controversy, with some referees awarding points for the
takedown to the fighter pulled into guard who hints at shooting for a takedown
and at other times not awarding points for the takedown when the athlete being
taken down pulls guard in hopes of circumventing his opponent scoring points.

[69]  As history always repeats itself, decades
later gis would again be an issue, in the famed match between Wallid Ismail and
Renzo Gracie.

[70]  In the meantime, though exchanging
provocations with Ono throughout, Hélio Gracie went to Belo Horizonte to take
on the Estonian Erwin Klausner on 09/26/37 at Feira de Amostras, easily winning
by arm-bar in the second round.

[71]  Jukendo is a Japanese martial art similar to kendo but practiced with
bayonets instead of swords, though of course it’s not clear how they practiced
the art in São Paulo back then.

[72]  No relation to Masahiko Kimura, who would
face Hélio Gracie 12 years later.

[73]  Truth be told, Yano was not unknown to the one-year-older Chugo Sato,
having studied together in Japan.

[74]  Well after George and the Japanese
fighters no longer resided in the city

[75]  The fight was on December 23, 1933 and
resulted in a no-contest.

[76]  This declaration of George's still stirs
debate to this day. Nevertheless, considering the fallings out he had with his
brother and also that Hélio stopped fighting regularly quite early, it is
likely to be true. After all, George claims the works only began after 1934.

[77]  They were nothing more than 15-year-old
boys weighing 50kg.

[78]  In a rare humorous public statement,
Hélio responds to the article: “I confess that I do not need this job, as at my
home I already have a brood of 11 nephews and nieces, which surely constitutes
a nursery already.”

[79]  The journalist quoting Hélio clearly had
the statement backwards, suggesting the winner would tap thrice or wave an arm,
when in fact it should have been the loser.

[80]  In fact, days after the fight, Takeo Yano
indirectly accused Caribé of being an imposter for having gone to his academy
before the Hélio fight and was overcome by three of his students

[81]  In 1950 the pugilism federations and
commissions still regulated all the martial arts in Brazil, not just boxing.

[82]  Hélio would have to wait 45 years but
would ultimately see his dream come true. The first jiu-jitsu world
championship was held in 1995.

[83]  Hélio's request would go unanswered.

[84]  Not considering the one organized by Maeda almost 40 years before.

[85]  The three extra rounds, with scoring,
would only take place the next day.

[86]  Who, incidentally, was the most highly
touted of all, judged to be even better than many of the Gracies.

[87]  Kimura wrote an autobiography titles “My
Judo”, required reading for any judo lover.

[88]  Which happens to be the year he suffered
all four losses of his judo career.

[89]  Zennihon jūdō senshu ken taikai
has been held annually ever since 1930. There are no weight divisions.

[90]  In an epic bout with Takahiko Ishikawa
that ended in a draw even after extra time, one of only two times that had ever
happened in the history of the championship.

[91]  His wife had become seriously ill and he
had to pay for her treatment.

[92]  The very man who “would never agree to
doing a work”.

[93]  This is likely a mistranslation, as the
interview was done with a Japanese person speaking broken Spanish. Miyazaki was
referring to the seven-dan black belt Kimura held, not to the Japanese master
being a second-rate fighter.

[94]  Referring to Kyuzo Mifune, 10th
dan. Mifune was 68 years old at the time and a living legend.

[95]  Though always very aggressive, Hélio's
statements at the time tended to be quite thought-out and realistic, which
would change decades later when the “battle” over the ownership of Brazilian
jiu-jitsu would take place.

[96]  Hélio was correct. Kato was fifth dan.
Kodokan awarding up to the fifth dan was basically objective, as a result of
tournament results. It is thus reasonable to assume Kato really was a good
judoka.

[97]  Hélio weighed 65kg to Kato's 72kg.

[98]  Among those present were politicians,
bankers, sports stars and the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, João Carlos Vital.

[99]  The first was in 1939. See the author’s
piece on the subject.

[100]  He didn’t refer to Takagaki, already 60
years old at that time. He probably felt it was unbecoming to challenge someone
to fight at such an advanced age.

[101]  Rio de Janeiro was still Brazil’s port of
entry for international travel.

[102]  Referring to judo.

[103]  Referring to Kimura.

[104]  Referring to Osawa.

[105]  Curiously, it wasn’t just the Gracies who
got involved in controversy with the visitors from Kodokan. So puritan was the
aim of their visit that, when in São Paulo, the three judokas skipped visiting
the Onos’ academy because the brothers had had professional fights in the past.
For reasons unknown to this author, they also forwent dropping in at the academy
of the biggest name in São Paulo’s judo scene at the time, Sensei Ryuzo Ogawa.

[106]  As vale-tudo was banned at the
time, Hélio called the challenge match “freestyle jiu-jitsu,” which was
essentially a no-holds-barred fight.

[107]  It's odd that Hélio should be the one to
lead the campaign, as his own students were often the ones involved in the
street fights.

[108]  Maracanã stadium was at that time
sometimes still referred to as the Metropolitan stadium.

[109]  Odd that instructions should be given in
a fight that is truly anything goes…

[110]  With the refurbishment of the Maracanã
for the 2014 soccer World Cup, the pit was demolished and no longer exists.

[111]  Metropolitan Pugilism Federation

[112]  Brazilian Pugilism Confederation

[113]  Referring to Rio de Janeiro, still the
nation’s capital

[114]  It is intriguing that Carlos referred to
this date, as we’ve seen the Gracies had left Pará many years earlier. In the
first version of the manifesto, released the previous day, on 29/05/53, the
part “in 1928” was left out. The following day, 30/05, it appears. It is not a
typographical error on the part of the newspaper, as the manifesto was released
to several periodicals, and all of them feature the year 1928.

[115]  In the 1950s the AABB was located at the
end of Copacabana beach in a building that until recently housed what was known
as Cassino Atlântico. Later on it moved to the banks of Lagoa Rodrigo de
Freitas lake, where it remains to this day. Ironically, in present day, the
AABB no longer has a judo academy, but it is home to Brazilian Top Team academy
(BTT), one of the biggest Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA teams in the country.

[116]  In Porto Alegre George fought – and lost
via submission – in June of 1942 at América stadium to Euclydes “Tatu” Hatem, a
key figure in the development of what would become the sporting iteration of luta-livre
in Brazil, a peculiar style of submission wrestling strongly influenced by
Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Porto Alegre, at the time, was seeing a boom in fight
events, promoted by local businessman Hedo Michel.

[117]  The neighborhood became known as the
birthplace of one of the all-time greatest soccer players in the world, Ronaldo
“The Phenom”.

[118]  Hermany would become one of Rio de
Janeiro’s greatest judo instructors in the decades that followed.

[119]  The club at the door of which, two
decades earlier, the famous fight that resulted in the the Gracies being
condemned for beating up Manoel Rufino dos Santos took place

[120]  It’s curious how decades later, at around
the time of UFC 1, Hélio and his sons started pushing a different idea about
the fighting style’s origins, saying Brazilian jiu-jitsu (or Gracie jiu-jitsu,
as they liked to call it) was effectively the family’s own creation.

[121]  The FMP sponsored the event, as although
they were in conflict with the Gracies, without their support the police would
not have authorized a vale-tudo show.

[122]  Days later Carlos publicly retracted his
attacks on Waldemar.

[123]  Carlson weighed exactly 74 kg for the
fight, while Waldemar weighed 75.8 kg.

[124]  What’s odd about this statement is that
Algenir had represented Gracie Academy at the recent fight against the Fadda
student.

[125]  At the time “luta-livre” referred to
submission wrestling. It boils down to no-gi jiu-jitsu. We’ll return to the
topic later.

[126]  A tongue-in-cheek headline for an article
in the July 21, 1956 issue of A Noite newspaper read “Fake luta-livre,
real ‘vale-tudo’”. What actually happened in the fight would repeat
itself several times in other vale-tudo events in Brazil: to get the
go-ahead from the powers that be, fighters agree to certain restrictions only
to tacitly establish between themselves that they would not follow them.

[127]  Lion from Portugal

[128]  Gastão kept his allegiance to his
brothers Hélio and Carlos.

[129]  The match took place on July 14, 1956 at
Pacaembú gymnasium.

[130]  TV-Rio was the second network to
broadcast in Rio de Janeiro.

[131]  Even at an advanced age Kimura kept in
shape. For the fight he weighed exactly 84.9 kg (187 lbs) to Waldemar’s 80.6
(177 lbs).

[132]  He’d already had one fight under such
rules with the pro-wrestler Rikidozan for which the end had been prearranged
but ended with Kimura getting knocked out by surprise.

[133]  TV Rio Ring featured play-by-play by Léo
Batista and commentary by Luís Mendes. The personality and the future bantam-
and featherweight world champion Éder Jofre made an appearance on the program.

[134]  A central character in the discourse was
Paschoal Segreto Sobrinho, the president of the CBP and former owner of Stadium
Brasil. For his stance against vale-tudo events being held, Segreto was
repeatedly targeted in Hélio’s diatribes on the Monday night broadcast.

[135]  João Carlos was the nephew of the
president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and a student of the Gracies,
having at that time opened his own academy in Copacabana.

[136]  Counting the failed championship that
Carlson won in 1951, on paper this would be the second championship. However,
by 1973 the championship from two decades earlier had already been forgotten.

[137]  The rooster, super heavy and ultraheavy
weight classes hadn’t been added yet.

[138]  This is an important philosophical
characteristic of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Unlike judo and most other combat
sports, a fighter can, for example, be world champion exclusively among blue
belts.

[139]  The state of Guanabara arose in 1960 upon
the transfer of the nation's capital to Brasília. The city of Rio de Janeiro,
which up until then had been the Federal District, went on to be known as the
capital of Guanabara, which became a state comprising a single city. Rio de
Janeiro State was independent, and its capital was the city of Niterói. The
Carioca Jiu-Jitsu Federation comprised the academies of Guanabara. Hence,
academies from other cities of Rio de Janeiro State, as well as the academy
from São Paulo, were invited to join the championship. In 1975, with the fusion
of the states of Guanabara and Rio de Janeiro, the Federation automatically
became the Rio de Janeiro State Jiu-Jitsu Federation.

[140]  Eventualy Carlos Gracie Jr stopped sharing training space with his
brother Carlson and opened a new academy at Barra da Tijuca neighbor which he
named Barra Gracie academy.

[141]  Of the countless brands that sponsored
championships in the '80s, Cantão is the only one that exists and prospers to
this day, with numerous stores around the city of Rio de Janeiro and in other
states.

[142]  At the tournament Royler went through to
the final, a rematch with Clóvis de Souza. After a hotly disputed bout where
Clóvis at one point had Royler's arm fully extended in a perfect armbar, the
judges handed Royler the win and deemed him champion. Outraged, Carlson ordered
his students who hadn't fought yet to withdraw from the tournament.

[143]  The full story of this rivalry is the
topic of an excellent article in issue 150 of Tatame magazine.

[144]  Bruce Lucio wasn't a Flavio Molina
student, but a kung fu instructor of limited skill.

[145]  It's curious how at the start of the
century wrestling influenced judo to result in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and, in a
nifty example of reverse influence, jiu-jitsu and the Gracie challenges led to
the creation of a style of wrestling that can be called “Brazilian.”

[146]  Curious, considering how the original
rivalry was between Thai boxing and jiu-jitsu.

[147]  Oddly, a number of protagonists of the
jiu-jitsu/luta-livre rivalry would meet tragic fates. Rolls Gracie died in the
hang-gliding accident in 1982. Thirteen years later, in 1995, Marcelo Behring
was killed by members of a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro. Flávio Molina died
before TV cameras while doing a demonstration of high-altitude rescue, his
other specialty besides fighting. And lastly, Carlos Brunocilla was murdered in
February 2014 upon leaving a samba school, also in Rio de Janeiro.