History of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Gastao Gracie, Carlos Gracie, Helio Gracie,

History of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu:

In the early 1900’s, a Japanese jiu-jitsu instructor by the name of Esai Maeda went to the state of Para in Northern Brazil. There he befriended Gastao Gracie, an influential businessman, who helped the Japanese get established. To show his gratitude, Maeda, also known as “Count Koma,” offered to teach the traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu to Gastao’s oldest son Carlos which in turn he also taught his brothers, most notably Helio Gracie.

One day when Helio was 16 years old, a student showed up for class and Carlos was not around. Helio, who had memorized all the moves and words of his older brother offered to start the class. When the class was over, Carlos showed up very apologetic for his delay. The student answered, “No problem, I enjoyed the class with Helio very much and if you don’t mind, I would like to continue with him.” Carlos agreed and Helio became an instructor.

He soon realized that some of the techniques he had memorized from watching Carlos teaching were not very easy for him to execute. He then started to adapt those moves to his frail body’s abilities and improve the leverage in the execution of some of those techniques. He dared to break away from the traditional jiu-jitsu his brothers had learned and were teaching and through trial and error, the "Gracie" or "Brazilian" Jiu Jitsu was born.

Helio eventually fought 17 fights including matches against the world wrestling champion, Wladek Zbyszko, and a qualifying fight against the #2 jiu-jitsu fighter in the world, Kato. Helio choked Kato unconscious in 6 minutes. This victory enabled him to enter the ring with the world champion, Masahiko Kimura, who outweighed Helio by over 80 pounds.

Helio Gracie holds the record for the longest match in history for a battle against his former student, Waldemar Santana, which lasted an amazing 3 hours and 40 minutes! Helio, the first sports hero in Brazilian history also challenged boxing icons Primo Carnera, Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles. They all declined.

Throughout the years the Gracie family and its students met all challengers in the most adverse conditions to ensure that the system they created was in fact the most effective Martial Art style in the world.

Interesting letter written by United States president, Theodore Roosevelt:
Darling Kermit:

” ... I still box with Grant, who has now become the champion middleweight wrestler of the United States. Yesterday afternoon we had Professor Yamashita (Yamashita was Roosevelt’s Jiu-jitsu instructor before Meada and Tomita had arrived there in the U.S.) up here to wrestle with Grant. It was very interesting, but of course jiu jitsu and our wrestling are so far apart that it is difficult to make any comparison between them. Wrestling is simply a sport with rules almost as conventional as those of tennis, while jiu jitsu is really meant for practice in killing or disabling our adversary. In consequence, Grant did not know what to do except to put Yamashita on his back, and Yamashita was perfectly content to be on his back. Inside of a minute Yamashita had choked Grant, and inside of two minutes more he got an elbow hold on him that would have enabled him to break his arm; so that there is no question but that he could have put Grant out. So far this made it evident that the jiu jitsu man could handle the ordinary wrestler…”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
(Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. 1919. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 1919 NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 1999