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One young but skilled master of a number of jiu-jitsu styles, Jigoro Kano, founded his own ryu and created the martial art
Judo (aka: Kano-ryu jiu-jitsu) in the 1880's. One of Kano's
primary insights was to include full-power practice against
resisting, competent opponents, rather than solely rely on the
partner practice that was much more common at the time.
 One of Kano's students was Mitsuo
Maeda, who was also known as Count Koma ("Count of Combat").
Maeda emigrated to Brazil in 1914. He was helped a great deal by
the Brazilian politician Gastão Gracie, whose father George
Gracie had emigrated to Brazil himself from Scotland. In
gratitude for the assistance, Maeda taught jiu-jitsu to Gastao's
son Carlos Gracie. Carlos in turn taught his brothers Osvaldo,
Gastão Jr., Jorge, and Helio.
In 1925, Carlos and his brothers
opened their first jiu-jitsu academy, and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu was
born in Brazil.
At this point, the base of
techniques in BJJ was similar to those in Kano's Judo academy in
Japan. As the years progressed, however, the brothers (notably
Carlos and Helio) and their students refined their art via
brutal no-rules fights, both in public challenges and on the
street. Particularly notable was their willingness to fight
outside of weight categories, permitting a skilled small fighter
to attempt to defeat a much larger opponent.
They began to concentrate more
and more on submission ground fighting, especially utilizing the
guard position. This allowed a weaker man to defend against a
stronger one, bide his time, and eventually emerge victorious.
In the 1970's, the undisputed
jiu-jitsu champion in Brazil was Rolls Gracie. He had taken the
techniques of jiu-jitsu to a new level. Although he was not a
large man, his ability to apply leverage using all of his limbs
was unprecedented. At this time the techniques of the open guard
and its variants (spider guard, butterfly guard) became a part
of BJJ. Rolls also developed the first point system for
jiu-jitsu only competition. The competitions required wearing a
gi, awarded points (but not total victories) for throws and
takedowns, and awarded other points for achieving different
ground positions (such as passing an opponent's guard). After
Rolls' death in a hang-gliding accident, Rickson Gracie became
the undisputed (and undefeated!) champion, a legend throughout
Brazil and much of the world. He has been the exemplar of
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu technique for the last two decades, since
the early 1980's, in both jiu-jitsu competition and no-rules MMA
competition.
Jiu-jitsu techniques have
continued to evolve as the art is constantly tested in both
arenas. For example, in the 1990's Roberto "Gordo" Correa, a BJJ
black belt, injured one of his knees, and to protect his leg he
spent a lot of practice time in the half-guard position. When he
returned to high-level jiu-jitsu competition, he had the best
half-guard technique in the world. A position that had been
thought of as a temporary stopping point, or perhaps a
defensive-only position, suddenly acquired a new complexity that
rapidly spread throughout the art.
In the early 1990's, Rorion
Gracie moved from Brazil to Los Angeles. He wished to show the
world how well the Gracie art of jiu-jitsu worked. In Brazil,
no-rules Mixed Martial Art (MMA) contests (known as "vale tudo")
had been popular since Carlos Gracie first opened his academy in
1925, but in the world at large most martial arts competition
was internal to a single style, using the specialized rules of
that style's practice.
 Rorion and Art Davie conceived of
the Ultimate Fighting Championship. This was a series of
pay-per-view television events in the United States that began
in 1993. They pitted experts of different martial arts styles
against each other in an environment with very few rules, in an
attempt to see what techniques "really worked" when put under
pressure. Rorion also entered his brother Royce Gracie, an
expert in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as one of the contestants.
Royce dominated the first years
of the UFC against all comers, amassing eleven victories with no
fighting losses. At one event he defeated four different
fighters in one night. This, from a fighter that was smaller
than most of the others (at 170 lbs, in an event with no weight
classes), looked thin and scrawny, and used techniques that most
observers, even experienced martial artists, didn't understand.
In hindsight, much of Royce's
success was due to the fact that he understood very well (and
had trained to defend against) the techniques that his opponents
would use, whereas they often had no idea what he was doing to
them. In addition, the ground fighting strategy and techniques
of BJJ are among the most sophisticated in the world. Besides
the immediate impact of an explosion of interest in BJJ across
the world (particularly in the US and Japan), the lasting impact
of Royce's early UFC dominance is that almost every successful
MMA fighter now includes BJJ as a significant portion of their
training. |
