Choque - The official thread

[nooper]

It does make you wonder exactly when/how the seemingly world beating BJJ was definitively created. was there any mention of Hector Revez who was said to have brought JJ to Argentina in the early 1800's?



always ask for permission to quote from Global Training.http://www.global-training-report.com/rouge_sites.htm

 

[BJJ_Rage]

that's exactly what I like about the book. it takes the shine off of the Gracie version of events (which is very much defined by the Rorion marketing machine) and sets the record straight. what we now call BJJ was not a unique creation of Helio, or any other Gracie. It was an organic evolution of japanese jujitsu (what is now often called judo) as it came to Brazil. It was influenced by what was already happening there, and it took a somewhat different shape there, much as judo as it's played in eastern europe now is heavily influenced by the wrestling culture there,

not only do the other Brazilians that were important to this evolution get credit (Donato Pires for example) but it reconnects it to the lineage from Japan. The Gracie version makes it seem like Maeda gave them some basic ideas and disappeared, and they just invented BJJ out of that. the real story of all the exhibition fights indicates that the judo guys that came over were great submission fighters already.

after a while, you really got to be an oxymoron to believe the official gracie story of helio being extremely weak and developing ninja moves to overcome the stronger guy. You just have to look at pictures of helio back in those days if you didnt go..hmmm wait a minute, theres something wrong with you.

 

[Ivaylo Ivanov]

Look up "chin na". And if you can, get Chinese books on it. Jiu Jitsu techniques look eerily similar to what the Chinese have been doing for thousands of years. So for a lot of foreigners, it wasn't new.

As many would say - "the old became the new again" when UFC 1 came out.

So basically, you say that jiujitsu evolved from China?
Could you please provide a link, where we could read about the country of China and when exactly did the ancient kingdoms on the territory of China today, became one country?
Also, are you implying that there was only one or two ethnic nationalities, who came up with the idea of wrestling people to the ground, then holding them there?
If so, ancient history of Europe and Middle East might be interesting read for you.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

I just started reading it yesterday and can't put it down. It's fascinating how this version of history differs from what we hear at BJJ schools today.

But it begs the question even more, if Carlos and Helio never trained with Maeda and only trained a little with Donato Pires dos Reis who was basically doing Judo, where did what we call BJJ, come from?

And after reading that Carlos and Helio fought in basically a dozen submission grappling matches ala Metamoris against questionably skilled opponents, it really impresses upon me what second gen fighters like Rickson and Royce did fighting NHB against true behemoths like Zulu, Shamrock and Severn. They are the real legends of the Gracie line.

And if the "old is new again," why aren't there Indian, Chinese and Japanese out there who can out jiu jitsu (jujutsu) the Brazilians? Instead they are studying BJJ like everyone else.

Another thing this all makes me curious about is about early fighters like Marcus Ruas. He was supposed to be a Luta Livre (catch) fighter back in early UFC days. Where did he come from?

I hope he actually does volume two of the book talking about 1950-1999.

 

[tenktriangles]

So basically, you say that jiujitsu evolved from China?
Could you please provide a link, where we could read about the country of China and when exactly did the ancient kingdoms on the territory of China today, became one country?
Also, are you implying that there was only one or two ethnic nationalities, who came up with the idea of wrestling people to the ground, then holding them there?
If so, ancient history of Europe and Middle East might be interesting read for you.

pretty much everywhere has a folk style of wrestling. the Pakistani style looks a lot like judo doe snow. Many Native American nations, Sioux for example, have an upright, upper-body style that is similar to what we call Greco. Mongolian style looks somewhat like Sumo.

wrasslin is wrasslin, we've been doing that for eons. i think the only thing, if anything, that's truly different about the stuff coming from Japan is more emphasis on leverage and less on power. but I don't know enough about these other styles from India or China or anywhere else to say that jiujitsu is truly unique.

but I do know enough now to say that Gracie jiujitsu sure as hell ain't.

 

[nooper]

Have a look at these challenge matches [ju jitsu vs boxing] in 1913 Germany. the ju jitsu players won the majority. note the rifle stance of the ju jitsu man. reminiscent of Rickson and Royce. did these men know about or need Gracie methods?
1913,but took 1993 for people to wise up/remember. why?



http://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_JapanTimes_1199.htm

 

[JustSomeGuy]

Throws and scarf holds, sounds like Judo.

 

[Gdash]

I'm still confused. mixmartialartshistory website says the Catch guys in England didn't use submissions until the Japanese judoka taught them submissions. yet Barnett says everyone was learning subs from the catch guys.

this book is interesting but wow is it boring. pretty much a translation of newspaper articles. the other thing I'm weary about is how many of these fights where real vs staged. if the outcome of joe blow luta livre guy vs yamato kawawhogivesafuck jujitsu guy was predetermined than who gives a shit anyway. the real boom came in the 70s-80s when the vale tudo fights where going down. and as much as the Rorion version of bjj is bullshit, fact of the matter is guys like Rolls and Rickson revolutionized jujitsu.

what's also crazy is Carlos was basically a blue belt at best and began fighting (kindve), teaching, and promoting fights. then we get all butt hurt when a guy gives himself a black belt, apparently the guys on the wall of your academy did the same thing.

 

[brendan raedy]

I'm still confused. mixmartialartshistory website says the Catch guys in England didn't use submissions until the Japanese judoka taught them submissions. yet Barnett says everyone was learning subs from the catch guys.

this book is interesting but wow is it boring. pretty much a translation of newspaper articles. the other thing I'm weary about is how many of these fights where real vs staged. if the outcome of joe blow luta livre guy vs yamato kawawhogivesafuck jujitsu guy was predetermined than who gives a shit anyway. the real boom came in the 70s-80s when the vale tudo fights where going down. and as much as the Rorion version of bjj is bullshit, fact of the matter is guys like Rolls and Rickson revolutionized jujitsu.

what's also crazy is Carlos was basically a blue belt at best and began fighting (kindve), teaching, and promoting fights. then we get all butt hurt when a guy gives himself a black belt, apparently the guys on the wall of your academy did the same thing.

Exactly. This is what I was getting at earlier.

 

[deadlizard]

So query me this, who the fuck invented leverage?

 

[JustSomeGuy]

So query me this, who the fuck invented leverage?

Kano certainly played a part in adapting leverage to his Jujutsu/Judo.

 

[JustSomeGuy]

what's also crazy is Carlos was basically a blue belt at best and began fighting (kindve), teaching, and promoting fights. then we get all butt hurt when a guy gives himself a black belt, apparently the guys on the wall of your academy did the same thing.

Yeah... this is an elephant in the room. It appears that Carlos and gang had no official ranking or teaching license and just opened up a school and called it their own style. To make matters worse, they apparently fabricated who they learned it from in the first place.

People tracing their lineage back to Carlos (and mistakenly Maeda) are sort of wasting time as there was no true lineage there to begin with it appears.

When people open schools and establish styles today without this proven lineage (e.g. Brandon Quick) they are torn apart on the Internet, thrown up onto Bullshido.com and ostracized from the community.

Seems pretty hypocritical if the story of the Gracies that is found in Choque is to be believed.

So then how do we define who is the real deal or not? I'm guessing we are only left with the results of competition against other styles/schools.

 

[RacerX]

I just started reading it yesterday and can't put it down. It's fascinating how this version of history differs from what we hear at BJJ schools today.

But it begs the question even more, if Carlos and Helio never trained with Maeda and only trained a little with Donato Pires dos Reis who was basically doing Judo, where did what we call BJJ, come from?

And after reading that Carlos and Helio fought in basically a dozen submission grappling matches ala Metamoris against questionably skilled opponents, it really impresses upon me what second gen fighters like Rickson and Royce did fighting NHB against true behemoths like Zulu, Shamrock and Severn. They are the real legends of the Gracie line.

And if the "old is new again," why aren't there Indian, Chinese and Japanese out there who can out jiu jitsu (jujutsu) the Brazilians? Instead they are studying BJJ like everyone else.

Another thing this all makes me curious about is about early fighters like Marcus Ruas. He was supposed to be a Luta Livre (catch) fighter back in early UFC days. Where did he come from?

I hope he actually does volume two of the book talking about 1950-1999.

I think a lot of people will need to change the lineages in their signatures :icon_lol:

And yes, old is new again. Just look at old Judo books and you will see the origins of BJJ. The reason people study BJJ is that it was well marketed by the Gracies in the early UFCs, where they carefully selected opponents for Royce. Had some of the catch wrestlers thought of this in the age of VHS, we'd all be doing that. OK, maybe not because the catch attrition rate would be even higher than the BJJ rate.

 

[brendan raedy]

I think a lot of people will need to change the lineages in their signatures :icon_lol:

And yes, old is new again. Just look at old Judo books and you will see the origins of BJJ. The reason people study BJJ is that it was well marketed by the Gracies in the early UFCs, where they carefully selected opponents for Royce. Had some of the catch wrestlers thought of this in the age of VHS, we'd all be doing that. OK, maybe not because the catch attrition rate would be even higher than the BJJ rate.

However it developed, GJJ/BJJ is a uniquely effective grappling art for no or limited rules fighting. Whatever you want to say about Royce's opponents, they were very credentialed in their own arts and the competition was very real. There really is no comparison to undocumented claims from carnival wrestlers who hopped back and forth between real and fake matches 100 years ago.

 

[tap21]

I just started reading it yesterday and can't put it down. It's fascinating how this version of history differs from what we hear at BJJ schools today.

But it begs the question even more, if Carlos and Helio never trained with Maeda and only trained a little with Donato Pires dos Reis who was basically doing Judo, where did what we call BJJ, come from?

And after reading that Carlos and Helio fought in basically a dozen submission grappling matches ala Metamoris against questionably skilled opponents, it really impresses upon me what second gen fighters like Rickson and Royce did fighting NHB against true behemoths like Zulu, Shamrock and Severn. They are the real legends of the Gracie line.

And if the "old is new again," why aren't there Indian, Chinese and Japanese out there who can out jiu jitsu (jujutsu) the Brazilians? Instead they are studying BJJ like everyone else.

Another thing this all makes me curious about is about early fighters like Marcus Ruas. He was supposed to be a Luta Livre (catch) fighter back in early UFC days. Where did he come from?

I hope he actually does volume two of the book talking about 1950-1999.

Basically guys like Maeda and Geo Omori were already doing it before the claimed development of BJJ/GJJ by the Gracies. They had a lot of exposure to catch wrestling. A lot of catch wrestlers in Brazil were also doing it without the jacket (e.g. George Gracie lost by armlock to multiple catch wrestlers).

In the era of the 1930s there were a ton of carnival style grappling matches going on in Brazil just like there were in Europe and North America. (See here for a timeline: http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/thread/1975319/The-Hazy-Origins-of-BJJ/?pc=55)

There were Kano Jiu-Jitsu guys, catch wrestlers (from Brazil, North America, and Europe), Greco Roman guys, and the Gracies all up in this mix. They were all sort of incestuously fighting each other and training with each other both with and without the jacket.

That's where BJJ came from. But honestly, it's possible that the BJJ that the Gracie's emerged with just after this period might not have been much different from what guys like Maeda, Geo Omori, the Ono Brothers, Rufino, Dudu, and all the other catch wrestlers were already doing in Brazil independent from and in some cases before the Gracies.

 

[RacerX]

However it developed, GJJ/BJJ is a uniquely effective grappling art for no or limited rules fighting. Whatever you want to say about Royce's opponents, they were very credentialed in their own arts and the competition was very real. There really is no comparison to undocumented claims from carnival wrestlers who hopped back and forth between real and fake matches 100 years ago.

It's not uniquely effective as shown by a lot of wrestlers in vale tudo. It's Judo applied to a certain rule set (which had been done before). We just called it BJJ because those types of matches continued in popularity in Brazil whenthey had lost steam in the US and Europe.

The UFC was set up for Royce to win. There were plenty of guys from Brazil and other places who would have been recruited if it were really about finding the best fighters.

 

[brendan raedy]

It' not uniquely effective as shown by a lot of wrestlers in vale tudo. It's Judo applied to a certain rule set (which had been done before). We just called it BJJ because those types of matches continued in popularity in Brazil whenthey had lost steam in the US and Europe.

The UFC was set up for Royce to win. There were plenty of guys from Brazil and other places who would have been recruited if it were really about finding the best fighters.

It's uniquely effective in its ability to win fights with techniques that are a part of the art. Wrestling has no strikes or submissions, or at least submissions are illegal in wrestling.

I do agree that American folkstyle wrestling is a uniquely effective bridge art, but ultimately you have to complement it with even untrained strikes in order to finish fights. BJJ/GJJ has strategies to counter strikes and finish the fight with submissions. Particularly given the techniques to counter strikes, I would say BJJ/GJJ is more than just a rule set in its differences from Judo.

Not sure the exact timeline of Combat Sambo, but that is a grappling art that addresses strikes as well to a certain extent.

Agreed that the UFC was there to win, but there were better BJJ/GJJ representatives possible in addition to better wrestlers, judoka, sambo players, etc.

 

[mysteriousnwza]

It does make you wonder exactly when/how the seemingly world beating BJJ was definitively created. was there any mention of Hector Revez who was said to have brought JJ to Argentina in the early 1800's?



always ask for permission to quote from Global Training.http://www.global-training-report.com/rouge_sites.htm

where do you get this info?

 

[RacerX]

It's uniquely effective in its ability to win fights with techniques that are a part of the art. Wrestling has no strikes or submissions, or at least submissions are illegal in wrestling.

I do agree that American folkstyle wrestling is a uniquely effective bridge art, but ultimately you have to complement it with even untrained strikes in order to finish fights. BJJ/GJJ has strategies to counter strikes and finish the fight with submissions. Particularly given the techniques to counter strikes, I would say BJJ/GJJ is more than just a rule set in its differences from Judo.

Agreed that the UFC was there to win, but there were better BJJ/GJJ representatives possible in addition to better wrestlers, judoka, sambo players, etc.

Yeah, it's different in that they had to adapt to the rules (which Judo players did before they even went to Brazil). But even with no striking training a pure grappler will beat a pure striker.

 

[tap21]

However it developed, GJJ/BJJ is a uniquely effective grappling art for no or limited rules fighting. Whatever you want to say about Royce's opponents, they were very credentialed in their own arts and the competition was very real. There really is no comparison to undocumented claims from carnival wrestlers who hopped back and forth between real and fake matches 100 years ago.

Whatever the ultimate source (or sources) of their grappling discipline, what Royce, Rickson, Renzo, and Royler did in MMA and grappling in the 1990s and 2000s was indeed amazing.

Apparently (and as others have mentioned above), after the 1930s, a lot of the Kano Jiu-Jitsu/Judo guys in Brazil who were previously involved in the carnival fights (e.g. Geo Omori, Takeo Yano, the Ono Brothers), a lot of the catch wrestlers/luta livre guys, and even George Gracie all sort of slowly descended into the worked pro-wrestling fights that the public wanted to see. It looks like Carlos and Helio did not. (See http://www.global-training-report.com/reyla_rev_chp17.htm).

I think this is a large part of the answer to the question as to why the Carlos/Helio lines of the Gracie family (aside from George not having a brood of sons like his brothers) and just a few luta livre guys were the only ones left standing to write (and more accurately in the case of the former--revise) the history when everything blew up 60 years later.