The Gracie brothers turned judo lessons into BJJ around 1925
Brazilian jiu-jitsu is grappling, ground fighting and submissions built so a smaller person can leverage a larger foe. Carlos Gracie learned judo in 1917 from Mitsuyo Maeda’s circle; with brothers including Hélio he shaped BJJ around 1925. Manaus saw public jiu-jitsu demo as early as 1906.
The core technique is to bring an opponent down, secure a dominant position, and finish with a joint lock, choke or compression lock. Training leans heavily on live sparring, known as rolling, and can be done in a gi or no-gi in a rash guard. The art is now regarded as essential to modern mixed martial arts.
Japanese fighters reached Brazil before Maeda. In November 1906 the ship Jerome brought master Akishima Sadashi and his assistant to Manaus, where on the 18th, in a makeshift arena at a circus, they beat more than a dozen local challengers, each in under five minutes. In 1908 a Brazilian Navy ship rescued the castaway instructor Sada Miyako from a Pacific island; he went on to train naval officers in Rio and fought a famous 1909 match against the capoeirista Francisco da Silva Ciríaco.
Mitsuyo Maeda, a Kodokan black belt trained by the first student of judo's founder Jigoro Kano, left Japan in 1904 to take on wrestlers and boxers around the world and was in Brazil by November 1914. Newspapers billed him as a jiu-jitsu man, because judo was still widely called Kano jiu-jitsu; Japan made judo the official school name only in 1925. At a circus in Belém partly owned by Gastão Gracie, an Italian-Argentine troupe introduced Maeda in 1916, and Gastão's son Carlos saw him perform the next year. Historian Robert Drysdale argues Carlos learned mostly from Jacyntho Ferro. The slightly built Hélio, unable to rely on judo's power throws, pushed the style toward groundwork and leverage.
A parallel line ran through Luiz França and Oswaldo Fadda, whose students excelled at footlocks and beat the Gracies in gym challenges. Rorion Gracie's trademark on Gracie jiu-jitsu was voided after a dispute with his cousin Carley. Unlike judo, the sport scores the rear mount highly, centres play on the guard, and permits heel hooks and leg takedowns.
Source: Brazilian jiu-jitsu
