Choque: The Untold Story of Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil 1856-1949 (Volume 1) (11 page)

Carlos probably read about Rickard’s trial in 1922 for allegedly having illicit sexual relations with under-age girls. That was also news in Brazil.
23
Carlos was neither as lucky nor as innocent in 1941 as Rickard was in 1922.

The Art of Dempsey

Brazilians thought of themselves as Europeans, and looked to France, Germany, and England, and from about 1889, the United States for approval and leadership.
24
Boxing was the Anglo-American sport but anyone who wanted to partake was welcome to lace up the gloves. The fortunes that Rickard and Dempsey had proved could be earned made boxing seem attractive. In fact boxing was called the “
arte de Dempsey
” during his reign (1919-1926) and even after.

Boxing had been a form of stage entertainment as early as 1909. Brazilians were interested in boxing but mostly as something that foreigners did. Not surprisingly they associated it with the lower layers of society, as everyone else did until Rickard and Dempsey refined it.
25
The majority of boxers in Brazil were sojourners or immigrants.

Historians of boxing in Brazil, as early as 1926, considered that authentic boxing, by which they meant fought according to international rules, and not staged, arrived in Brazil in 1921.
26
One early program, but not the first, was the January 19, 1924, fight between the Rio de Janeiro lightweight champion Romeu Garcia and Brazilian lightweight champion Rodrigues Alves.
27
Other boxers on the program were Horacio Guimarães versus Newton Rager; Valentin Produno versus Annibal Arizaga, and Henri Fort versus the future jiu-jitsu professor Donato Pires dos Reis. Donato won the fight by “walk over” when Henri Ford [sic] failed to show up for the fight.
28

Immigrants either brought boxing with them, or took it up as a route to status and upward mobility. The first boxing gyms (or clubs) were probably the Internacional Boxing Club founded in 1921 by Adriano Malagrini (aka Fred Delauney) and the São Paulo Boxing Gym on avenida das Palmeiras.
29

By 1926 there were at least five amateur and professional boxing gyms (academias) in
São Paulo and a number of clubs that offered boxing opportunities. They included: Brasil America Boxing, on rua do Seminario, Academia Dubois on caminho Choro Menino; Academia Paulista de Pugilismo, on avenida Rangel Pestana, Frontão do de Braz; Academia Central do Box, Jose on rua Progresso 20-A; Academia Delauney on rua Asdrubal Nascimento, 83, Escola de Pugilismo on avenida da Passos, n. 34, Associação Christa de Moços (YMCA), and Club de Regatas Tieté, among others.
30

Rio
lagged behind São Paulo in boxing ardor, but not by much. In 1927, the Associação Metropolitana de Box was formed and granted official approval to control amateur boxing in Rio. That same year it made plans to hold two boxing tournaments, the Campeonato Carioca de Box in 1927 and 1928. At least two future jiu-jitsu legends signed up to fight in 1927. One showed up for the
pesagem
[weigh-in]. He was Donato Pires dos Reis. One did not. He was George Gracie.
31

The most established boxing club in
Rio was the Club Nacional de Box, whose instructor was the Carioca champion Jayme Santos, also known as “Miquelina”. Clubs that were expected to enter fighters included Flamengo, Vasca da Gama, Fluminense, Internacional, Boqueiro do Passeio, Nacional de Box, Rio Box, Andarahy, Villa Isabel, and many more.
32

Some Boxing gyms offered luta livre and jiu-jitsu instruction at times, and some boxers became managers or promoters of “mixed” fighting. Kid Pratt (who taught at the Brasil America Boxing Club) became the manager of Roberto Ruhmann, whose popular appeal provided numerous jiu-jitsu fighters with paydays. Adriano Malag
rini, under his ring name of Fred Delauney, operated a gym where George Gracie taught and trained in the late 1930’s. Jose Antonio Lage (who taught at Academia central do Box), became a boxing promoter who also included luta livre and jiu-jitsu in some of his shows. Yassuiti Ono taught at Club de Regatas Tieté. He, Takeo Yano, and Geo Omori all taught at Associação Christa de Moços. Some boxers took part in luta livre matches (Ervin Klausner, Ismail Haki, Traveres Crespo, among others) and many more played the publicity game of exchanging threats, insults, accusations, and challenges with representatives of rival styles. That was a net gain for jiu-jitsu. Boxers had no lack of international opponents. Jiu-jitsu representatives more often than not found themselves without anyone to fight and were eventually left with the choice of manufacturing opponents, or catch wrestling, or nothing. Even when they were not fighting and there was no possibility of a fight, jiu-jitsu professionals invariably found it worthwhile to challenge boxers.

Some boxers taught jiu-jitsu men. One of Conde Koma’s students, said to be the only Brazilian with a diploma from the master himself, was Donato Pires dos Reis, who later taught Carlos and George Gracie. Donato had been a student, in 1924, of João Scherer, manager of
Rio de Janeiro champion, Romeu Garcia, and owner of the Escola da Pugilismo.
33

Pain

Boxing may have been scientific in its own way (sweet or otherwise), but no one pretended that it wasn’t likely to be painful. Boxing teacher João Scherer generously contributed an article to one newspaper in 1926. He explained how to avoid being punched in the face, which, he stressed, was important to know.
34

Jiu-jitsu however was quite the contrary. It was painless. It was easy. It was associated not with the lower layers of society, but with a sophisticated, exotic, and potent foreign culture. It also appealed to the masses. Average people knew that, by definition, they didn’t have the exceptional physical qualities needed to excel at boxing.
35
But jiu-jitsu was explicitly for average people. Abnormal strength, flexibility, and agility were not required. A few lessons, perhaps 36 or so, would be enough to master the scientific principles of jiu-jitsu.

A three page illustrated article in
Eu Sei Tudo
in 1922 featured Mario Aleixo teaching defenses against
golpe de box
[punch],
cintura pela frente
[bear hug from front], and two positions for controlling the opponent on the ground [
dominado o adversario no chão
];
cacetada
[club attack],
bofetada
[slaps],
facada
[knife], and
cintura por traz
[bear hug from behind], and
golpe de mão esquerda ao pieto
[pushing victim’s chest with the left hand]. One technique, called “
golpe pavilhão
” was a combination of elbow lock with an
ura nage
back throw. Another technique, created by himself, called “
guayamu
” involved pushing the attacker’s face while lifting him from the crotch. The assailant will “fly”, Aleixo said.
36

At the end of the year “
A Arte de se Defender
,” by Paul Janet, explained and illustrated a variety of Mario Aleixo’s self-defense techniques. One was called
golpe de pai Francisco
.
37
Most, or all, looked as though they could have been taken from Irving Hancock, Sadakazu Uyenish [Raku], John O’Brien, or other instructional books published in the first decade of the century.

Jiu-jitsu stayed in the public mind. Everyone knew that it was the scientific Japanese art by which the weak could overcome the strong. They also knew that all Japanese people trained jiu-jitsu, even geishas and movie stars.

Sessue Hayakawa was born in Japan and immigrated to America to make movies. He was a charming, handsome, and sexy leading man. He was also a jiu-jitsu champion [
campeão de jiu-jitsu
.] According to
Correio da Manhã
and
O Imparcial
, as a patriotic and legitimate Japanese, needless to say, he enthusiastically trained jiu-jitsu. He was so good that he could throw men much bigger and stronger than himself.
38
His skills were useful in his screen work, he found. In fact, he used them in his latest movie “
Onde as Luxos são Baixas
” [“Where Lights are Low”], playing in Rio at the Parisiense Theater in October of 1923.

Hayakawa was a major
Hollywood star in the days before Japan’s image changed from quaint, cute, mysterious, deferential, and ultra-courteous, to the epitome of self-destructive ideological commitment and barbarous brutality exceeded only by Nazi Germany. It is likely that more than a few Brazilians rushed to see his latest movie. Even those who missed it probably read about it, thereby reinforcing their stereotypes about the powerful way of fighting [
poderosa maneira de lutar
] known as “jiu-jitsu”.

If relatively few people were training it as a sport or learning it for self-defense, that was at least partly due the lack of qualified instructors. Unlike other combat sports and self-defense systems,
Japan essentially had a monopoly on credible knowledge. Mario Aleixo may have been the only non-Japanese jiu-jitsu instructor in Brazil until 1930, whatever his qualifications might have been. Naïve beginners were no more capable of assessing an instructor’s qualifications in the 1920’s and 1930’s than they were at any other time and auto-didacts probably over-estimated their knowledge and skills. Many people undoubtedly learned from books. As immigration from Japan increased however, that changed. Japanese immigrants originally were recruited to work on coffee plantations. Most were not originally agricultural workers in Japan. Some had Kodokan judo experience. When their contracts were finished (or before) they left the jungles and plantations and moved to cities. São Paulo was the nearest, and most went there.
39

Former
world jiu-jitsu champion Conde Koma (Maeda Mitsuyo) played more than a small part in getting the immigrants settled into jobs in the north of Brazil. He gave up fighting in 1920, or at least in his new home of Belém.
40
(He fought at least once more, in Cuba, in 1922).

But he did not give up jiu-jitsu, or more precisely, Kodokan judo, as that was the variety of jiu-jitsu that he knew best, the variety that he had learned in
Japan, and probably the only variety that he ever needed in his work. (As far as we know, none of his fights in Brazil included striking).

Koma had numerous students in Belém. The foremost among them was Jacyntho Ferro, already well-known as a bicyclist, pedestrian (competitive walker), weight-lifter, boxer, and luta romana wrestler. Ferro met Koma in 1915 and added jiu-jitsu to his list of activities. He never lost [
nunca soffrera derrota
].
41
Ferro
did not live long enough to generate his own “lineage”. But he was not the only ambitious sportsman in Belém at that time learning the mysteries of the Japanese game.

Satake and Conde Koma had learned jiu-jitsu together in
Tokyo from Sakujiro Yokoyama. They had traveled the world and presented many shows in Brazil. Now they went in their own directions. Conde Koma remained in Belém. Satake went 1,300 kilometers around the coast and up the river to Manaus.

In
Manaus, Satake kept his hand in the game. He refereed fights and fought himself. On Sunday August 1917 he referred a match between Rodolpho Corbiniano from Barbados, and Geraldo de Souza Silva, from São Paulo. After two inconclusive 3-minute rounds, Silva won by disqualification when Rodolpho punched him in the stomach.

According to the local press account, Silva’s victory proved that Brazilians were superior to other races because they played by the rules. Satake refereed the match.
43

On Tuesday August 7, Geraldo was back in the ring, this time against Nagib
in a “match de box”. Silva was 45 years old and weighed 60 kilos, of medium height. Nagib was Syrian, 40 years old, tall, and weighed 80 kilos. Geraldo did his best but had to withdraw after the first round due to pain in his shoulder incurred in an accident eight days earlier. The press report complained that because of the difference in weight and height the match lacked the characteristics of decent sport. It was more like a “lucta livre” and as such was without merit, and above all, dangerous. The paper urged the directors of Circo Alhambra not to permit such potentially fatal contests to be held in the future.

A boxing match [
match de box
] between Nagib and Satake was not deemed to be too dangerous however. It was announced for the following Saturday, August 11.
44

On
Sunday May 12, 1918, Satake participated in a festival to inaugurate the new União Sportiva Portugueza (sports center), with headquarters at praça Tenrerio Ara-nha n. 3. The festival started at 8:30 p.m. Satake’s demonstration of jiu-jitsu followed
esgrima
and gymnastics demonstrations and preceded a vocal duet by F. Carvalho and Coelho and a dance routine by two children, Amelio Silva and Arthur Grans.
45

Tr
iangle

Halfway around the world, now incorporated into “Kodokan” judo, jiu-jitsu continued to evolve. Innovation came from within the ranks and was not dictated from above. In 1922, Kanem
itsu Yaichibei
[
金光弥一兵
衛
], building on the inspirations of two high school judokas named Ichinomiya Katsusaburo
[
一宮勝三
郎
] and Hayakawa Masaru
[
早川
勝
], introduced what later became known as the “front triangle choke”
[
前三角締
め
].
46