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Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

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54 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu<br />

papers his willingness to take on all comers. In turn, Carlos’s younger<br />

brother, Hélio, challenged Joe Louis, while decades later Hélio’s son Royce<br />

challenged Mike Tyson. <strong>Of</strong> course nothing came of these challenges, as<br />

there simply was not enough money in such contests to interest the boxers.<br />

Maeda’s methods have been described as more rough-and-tumble<br />

than is normal in jûdô. However, some of this apparent roughness is owed<br />

to the venue—professional wrestling takes place in music halls, circus tents,<br />

and armories rather than high school gyms, and is performed for the<br />

amusement of a paying crowd rather than judged on points.<br />

<strong>The</strong>re are differences in the accounts of how Maeda met the Gracies.<br />

In the accounts generally given by the Gracie family, Carlos Gracie, one of<br />

five sons of Gastão Gracie, began his training with Maeda in 1914 (or<br />

1915). Other sources maintain that in 1915 Maeda was a member of a<br />

Japanese wrestling troupe known as “the Four Kings” and that he did not<br />

start working for the Queirollo Brothers’ American Circus until 1917. If<br />

so, then the circus was probably where he met the Gracie family, as in 1916<br />

Gastão Gracie was reportedly managing an Italian boxer associated with<br />

the Queirollo circus. At any rate, during the mid to late 1910s Maeda began<br />

teaching the rudiments of jûdô to Carlos Gracie.<br />

Around 1922 Maeda left the circus to begin promoting Japanese immigration<br />

into Brazil. Three years later Gracie opened a wrestling gym in<br />

Rio de Janeiro, and this latter event marks the official birth of the system<br />

known today as Gracie Jiu-jitsu.<br />

After Gracie quit training with Maeda, the core art underwent a<br />

process of modification. Many articles state that Gracie Jiu-jitsu’s emphasis<br />

on groundwork is due to Maeda and Carlos Gracie not having tatami<br />

(mats) on which to practice falls. However, inasmuch as Japanese aikidô<br />

and Scandinavian Glima practitioners sometimes practice falls on wooden<br />

floors, it is likely that Gracie Jiu-jitsu’s emphasis on groundwork owes<br />

more to the innovations of Hélio Gracie than to any desire to avoid injury<br />

on the part of Carlos Gracie or Maeda.<br />

As a boy Hélio Gracie was the youngest and least robust of five brothers.<br />

Because of this, he soon learned to rely on technique rather than<br />

strength, and legs rather than arms. As an adult, he became a fairground<br />

wrestler, and when faced with larger opponents, he found it useful to go to<br />

the ground, where his greater skill at ground submission fighting served<br />

him well. So when the Japanese professional wrestler Masahiko Kimura<br />

wrestled Hélio Gracie in October 1951, “What he [Kimura] saw reminded<br />

him of the earlier jûdô methods that were rough and tumble. Prewar [prior<br />

to <strong>World</strong> War II] jûdô had body locks, leg locks, unusual choking techniques<br />

that were discarded because they were not legal in contest jûdô,<br />

which had evolved slowly over the years” (Wang).

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