Choque - judo and BJJ history in Brazil

Originally Posted by beepee  
What I am saying is the following:

1. Kano and his students who founded judo had all previously trained in different styles of "traditional" Jujitsu.

2. The founders of judo took techniques from many style including western styles.

3. The founders of judo begin a program of live training and competition, with belt ranks and training equipment such as the gi.

4. They discount strikes, dangerous techniques and weapons training from their live training and competition.

5. They travel japan exposing themselves to many styles and absorbing techniques useful to judo

6. They take these techniques, apply their ruleset and training methodology to them and over the course of huge amounts of mat time they develop them

7. As part of this the guard begins to develop on newaza to defend against pin holds and submissions as they do not need to worry about strikes or weapons. Advanced grappling based offence and defence starts to emerge because of this training methodology and ruleset.

8. Certainly some excel in different areas, as has always been the case in grappling sports.

9. Judo gains popularity and begins to gain official recognition in japan influencing other arts to the extent that people from these arts begin to train judo bringing their attributes to the collective.

10. Judos training methods and the amount of people and there standard improves.

11. The advancement of technique accelerates.

12. advanced technique emerges through these efforts.

A style which focuses on striking and particular weapon technique has no need for advanced guard technique. Fusen ryu still exists and does not display these.

A grappling style involving pins and submissions requires advanced newaza offence and defence technique.

My position is that judo developed exactly as any other grappling style in history. Through collective effort. Crediting one man as the innovator of advance guard technique is not logical.. You cannot credit kano for advanced judo technique only with establishing the conditions for it to develop.

You cannot credit Helio gracie with the development of advanced bjj technique only with establishing the conditions for it to exist ie. the ruleset.

Judo is a product of training and competition under a rule set newaza cannot be fragmented off from it, it is a part of the whole. Individuals cannot in my opinion be credited with inventing techniques. Has anyone every made a similar argument for the standing throws in judo or in wrestling?? that one man or training group were their genesis??

It is training method in my opinion which is the genesis of Judo. Live training existed before it, for thousands of years no doubt but you cannot take one man from history and make out hes responsible for advanced guard technique without ironclad evidence and you cannot dismiss the questioning of others without this proof.

There is no great creator in my opinion

Quote:
Originally Posted by RTD1
I recently finished reading Choque: The Untold Story of Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil 1856-1949 (Volume 1).

http://www.amazon.com/Choque-Untold-.../dp/1491226366

First of all, WTF is Choque? The word has nothing to do with choke. It's a Portuguese word that was used to refer to sporting competitions.

Second, the book isn't your normal book. It's a library of translated Brazilian newspaper articles from 1856-1949 in chronological order (one chapter per year with a few exceptions) with some terse commentary by the author interspersed. Basically, the author searched the newspaper archives for all the Brazilian newspapers for every single reference ever made to jiu jitsu, vale tudo, the Gracies, etc. and then pieced it all together.

I'm not going to write a full on summary or review of the book here. My memory sucks and I've already forgotten a bunch of shit, I probably should have taken notes as I went. Oh well. I'll stick to just providing some of the key points, particularly the ones I found new and interesting. I'll add to the thread if I remember more stuff later.

- Mitsuyo Maeda (Conde Koma) did not introduce jiu jitsu to Brazil. Maeda arrived around 1915. Mario Aleixo had been teaching jiu jitsu in Brazil since 1913 and Sada Miyako had been teaching since 1909. Those are probably the first two legit instructors. A number of people had been teaching "jiu jitsu" since around 1904 based on what they learned from Irving Hancock's books and Yukio Tani's book, but lacked real qualifications.

- Carlos Gracie never really studied under Maeda. It's possible he took 1 or 2 private lessons from Maeda but that's it. He studied for a couple of months under Jacyntho Ferro, then he studied for 2-3 years under Donato Pires dos Reis, who apparently was the only person Maeda ever authorized to teach. It was Donato Pires whom the Gracies learned from not Maeda. Pires ran the academy that Maeda established and then left. Then apparently when Pires was out of town on business once, Carlos and his brothers essentially hijacked the school. When he returned, they kicked him out and renamed Pires's academy to the Gracie Academy. Crazy shit. Also, it appears that what the Gracies actually learned from Pires over that 2-3 year period was a half dozen judo throws plus the usual traditional self defense techniques, not the BJJ that most people know today, that came later.

- Helio Gracie learned from Carlos. The story about Helio being frail and fainting all the time and learning by watching was nonsense as everyone knows now. While Carlos was learning jiu jitsu from Donato Pires, Helio was a few towns over competing in swimming and rowing events, where he was quite successful.

- George Gracie was the real fighter of the Gracie family. He had more fights than all of his brothers put together and was far more successful than they were. Unfortunately, Carlos and Helio later wrote him out of the story they created. Carlos wasn't much of a fighter at all. He had 1 professional fight, against Manoel Rufino do Santos, and he lost it. He was getting his ass kicked so bad that he literally ran out of the ring, refused to continue, and ran away. He had one amateur fight prior to that, against a person George described as completely unskilled and not knowing anything about fighting, that ended in a draw. So Carlos retired from fighting with a record of 0-1-1. After that, he would challenge people to fights and then after they accepted he'd tell them to fight Helio instead. Helio had a dozen or so fights during the 1930's. It is important to realize that the vast majority of these "fights" and all other "fights" during this period were actually more akin to submission grappling matches - no striking allowed in most of them, unless the fight was against a boxer in which case the boxer was allowed to punch while standing but no strikes on the ground or against a capoeira person in which case only kicks were permitted and only while standing. Remember, these were circus acts, right alongside the bearded ladies and wolf boys, not what we normally think of as sports. Most of Helio's early matches ended as draws, which is misleading because in some of them he was literally thrown dozens of times and then manhandled on the mat, but the time limits would expire before anyone gave up.

- Oswaldo Gracie had a handful of fights, but was more interested in teaching. Gastao Jr didn't fight, taught somewhat, but wasn't really that interested in jiu jitsu.

- Wrestling preceded jiu jitsu in Brazil by a good bit. Starting back in 1856, they'd have luta romana matches at these circuses. Essentially greco roman type rules (no leg attacks) with matches won by throws with no groundwork allowed. Luta livre or catch wrestling started becoming popular around 1909. Unlike luta romana, leg attacks were allowed, and matches were won by pin or submission. Mixed jiu jitsu and luta livre matches started becoming popular around this time as well. Rules were negotiated for each bout. Sometimes a pin would count as a victory, sometimes not. Sometimes the matches were in gis, sometimes not. It was common to have a gi match (which the jiu jitsu guy would usually win) followed by an almost immediate rematch without a gi, which the catch/luta livre guy would usually win, and then both could claim to be "undefeated in ______" where ______ was jiu jitsu or luta livre.

- Helio and George both trained with luta livre/catch wrestlers around this time.

- Boxing never really took off in Brazil at this time. There were a few matches but little public interest.

- By the mid 1930's most luta livre/catch matches were fakes. The public lost interest in boring "real" fights and ticket sales declined. However, worked matches were very popular with the public and people went with the flow, plus contestants found it a safer and easier way to make money. George started participating in these worked matches. That's what caused the rift between him and Helio/Carlos. Helio retired in 1937 as a result, refusing to participate in works.

- WWII happened and the circus matches were put on hold for awhile.

- Most of the jiu jitsu guys in Brazil after WWII started switching over to judo or at least started calling what they were doing judo and participating in judo events. Helio came out of retirement a little while later.

Getting tired of typing, will continue the brain dump tomorrow

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Current thread on BJJ history (see page 1 of below cited; some very interesting material) over at Sherdog contained a nice post on judo, so thought to share

Originally Posted by beepee  
What I am saying is the following:

1. Kano and his students who founded judo had all previously trained in different styles of "traditional" Jujitsu.

2. The founders of judo took techniques from many style including western styles.

3. The founders of judo begin a program of live training and competition, with belt ranks and training equipment such as the gi.

4. They discount strikes, dangerous techniques and weapons training from their live training and competition.

5. They travel japan exposing themselves to many styles and absorbing techniques useful to judo

6. They take these techniques, apply their ruleset and training methodology to them and over the course of huge amounts of mat time they develop them

7. As part of this the guard begins to develop on newaza to defend against pin holds and submissions as they do not need to worry about strikes or weapons. Advanced grappling based offence and defence starts to emerge because of this training methodology and ruleset.

8. Certainly some excel in different areas, as has always been the case in grappling sports.

9. Judo gains popularity and begins to gain official recognition in japan influencing other arts to the extent that people from these arts begin to train judo bringing their attributes to the collective.

10. Judos training methods and the amount of people and there standard improves.

11. The advancement of technique accelerates.

12. advanced technique emerges through these efforts.

A style which focuses on striking and particular weapon technique has no need for advanced guard technique. Fusen ryu still exists and does not display these.

A grappling style involving pins and submissions requires advanced newaza offence and defence technique.

My position is that judo developed exactly as any other grappling style in history. Through collective effort. Crediting one man as the innovator of advance guard technique is not logical.. You cannot credit kano for advanced judo technique only with establishing the conditions for it to develop.

You cannot credit Helio gracie with the development of advanced bjj technique only with establishing the conditions for it to exist ie. the ruleset.

Judo is a product of training and competition under a rule set newaza cannot be fragmented off from it, it is a part of the whole. Individuals cannot in my opinion be credited with inventing techniques. Has anyone every made a similar argument for the standing throws in judo or in wrestling?? that one man or training group were their genesis??

It is training method in my opinion which is the genesis of Judo. Live training existed before it, for thousands of years no doubt but you cannot take one man from history and make out hes responsible for advanced guard technique without ironclad evidence and you cannot dismiss the questioning of others without this proof.

There is no great creator in my opinion

From
http://forums.sherdog.com/forums/98428897-post629.html

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Sorry, I might have screwed the URLs up. Should have been a link to beepee's post (#611)

Good post / comments through-out that thread!

noboru wrote:Article about Ryuzo Ogawa from Black Belt magazine May 1972

http://books.google.cz/books?id=WtgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA23&dq=ryuzo+ogawa&hl=cs&sa=X&ei=NdkaVLDkKMSgyAO4oYLIBg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=ryuzo%20ogawa&f=false