From: alex@deepspace.ucsb.edu (Alex Wuensche)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: The Gracie Jiu-Jitsu
Date: 21 Jul 92 08:11:47 GMT
Organization: Astophysics-UCSB

This post is coming from a correspondence with Izar Tarandach, about the
Gracie jiu-jitsu (or whatever way you write it). He asked someone in our
Brazilian network about it. I practiced it for three years, after some years
of judo and 1 1/2 of TKD. My instructor, Francisco Mansor,  was a former
student of Helio Gracie, the brazilian who picked and shaped the teachings of
a japanese fighter (??) who moved to Belem, capital of the state of Para, in
the 20's. His nickname was Count Koma, and I'm not sure of what he was doing
in Brazil at that time. There was a large contingent of japanese imigration
to Brasil at the beginning of the 20th century, maybe this guy just moved
to there...

Anyways, he became famous by confronting the most feared "capoeira" fighters
from the docks near the harbor (the docks - a very "dangerous" region anywhere
in the world, always fight-prone, I guess) and defeated them in a few seconds -
never more than 30-40 seconds, according to some books and the testimony of
my instructor (I'm reporting HIS testimony - no reason to doubt after seeing
some of the Gracie in action). Helio Gracie, who was not at all a strong
individual (he is still alive, close to 80 y. old - from the pictures,
something like 5' and 160 pounds) and look like the "elderly man" you look
at at the park, except for the way he looks at someone or the way he moves -
still like a cat). Helio and his friend, Carlos moved to Rio and they started
teaching it by the late 30's, early 40's and modified/shaped/whatever the Koma
Jiu-Jitsu stile, but kept what existed of violent and efficient of the early
Jiu-Jitsu before the Meiji era. No one never told me which ryu this particular
style came from - if someone knows, please post it. I think for this reason
Helio and Mansor used to say that the jiu-jitsu encompassed the other japanese
fighting styles: namely judo (not exactly a fighting style...), karate and
aikido, or in their words "it is the mother of all the modern japanese bare
hands martial arts" (it doesn't mean, at all, that it is more effective or
that it is better. Again, I'm just reporting their words and what seems to me
historically reasonable, based upon martials arts books and History books). I
don't think it included any of sumo techniques. As far as I know (correct me,
please, if you know more) the jiu-jitsu origin is lost in time, but may have
its roots in old chinese styles. I also heard about Vashramurti, an indian
martial art which has lots of jiu-jitsu-like techniques. But I never did any
serious research about this historical part, so don't take the latest part so
seriously.

From what I know about martial arts (I rushed trough a few different styles,
but never really went deep in any one besides jiu-jitsu and judo), the Gracie
jiu-jitsu looks a lot like Tai-Jitsu, the unnarmed ninja fighting system,
which was kind of a fever a few years ago here in the USA. The grappling
techniques, low kicks and self-defense stuff are very similar to those shown
in Robert Bussey's and Stephen Hayes' videos and books.

Presently there are two sons of Helio Gracie who are really amazing fighters
(and they are fighting in some open tournments abroad): Rickson and Reylson
(or something spelled very close to it). He had like 5 or 6 sons and the
Gracie family is a very big one. One of his sons (or nephews) was living, by
the end of 1990) in Sta. Monica, CA. His name is Carson (or Carlson) Gracie.
A reasonable example of the Gracie jiu-jitsu was the coreography of the movie
Lethal Weapon I, with Mel Gibson. The last fight between Gibson and the blond
bad guy reflects pretty well what the Gracie style is: clean, very practical
(you don't need a long time to be quite profficient in it and be able to
sucessfully use it in a streetfight) and extremely violent (it aims to get
one's opponent out of action as fast as possible - well, no big deal. Other
martial arts try to do the same...).

I wrote all this stuff from memory - I stopped practicing the style in 1986,
 because I moved from Rio de Janeiro to another town, and the style is not
so widespread in Brazil. Any imprecision or misinformation is my own fault,
etc., etc.

BTW, do any of you know anything about a ninpo dojo near Santa Barbara
region? I would appreciate any information - by obvious reasons, I would like
to try it.

Before finishing: it's not a claim of supremacy of the style, etc., etc. Both
Izar Tarandach and I myself thought it would start a nice discussion about a
quite different style.

Personal mails to ALEX@CFI.UCSB.EDU.

Alex Wuensche.

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*  Carlos Alexandre Wuensche de Souza                                       *
*  Experimental Cosmology Group  -  Department of Physics                   *
*  University of California, Santa Barbara - UCSB                           *
*  Santa Barbara, California                                                *
*  93106-9530  -  USA                                                       *
*                                                                           *
*  Tel:  (805) 893-8418 (Office)    |  E-mail: SPACED@VOODOO.BITNET         *
*        (805) 562-8236 (Home)      |          ALEX@CFI.UCSB.EDU (Internet) *
*        (805) 893-8597 (Fax)       |          45183::SPACED                *
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Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts