11 ms·

The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

143 points by fezz 11y ago

peteretep 11y ago
> Rickson ... Tokyo Dome on May 26, 2000 ... Funaki If you've ever wondered what 12 minutes of sweaty men hugging each other, standing up, and not moving much except to occasionally knee each other in the crotch, followed by 3 minutes of violence looks like, this is the fight for you.
jamestomasino 11y ago
What a fantastically designed and executed site! I love the attention to detail all the way across the responsive sizes. Great work.
- Implicated 11y ago
  The grantland site is one of my favorites, both in the content (I generally stick to their sports stuff) and in the delivery.
- RobertoG 11y ago
  I was thinking about the reasons this article is HN's first page. When the article is not about technology or startups, is it because the site is well executed or because the subject is interesting? Probably both. I would like to point another reason: the Gracie jiu-jitsu empire is an example of well executed and successful start up. Their marketing techniques are remarkable. When one of the Gracie brothers opened his school in my city, he offered a considerable quantity of money to any local fighter that won him. Then, he beat the first guy that accepted pretty bad, not serious injured but it was not nice. Result: no more challenges, brand exposure, successful marketing.
- so0k 11y ago
  except if you are half way and resize the window, then maximize - it fails (chrome on windows 10)
  - repsilat 11y ago
    I couldn't read the article at all -- there was a big blue "title page" that I couldn't get to go away by scrolling down or clicking anywhere. It got better when I resized the page, though only somewhat -- some page widths did "nice" things (like having a simple header at the top), but others gave the awful expanding blue header thing. With that header I'd scroll down to get to the content, then I'd have to scroll back up again to get to the content that I'd scrolled past :-/
- mrmondo 11y ago
  Couldn't agree more, I see that it's actually just built on top of Wordpress too which is pretty impressive. Great design - very captivating.
- carapace 11y ago
  No. I typically browse with JS turned off and the scrolling doesn't work. It is therefore broken and poorly executed. This is a presentation delivered through the web but it is not a web site.
Cacti 11y ago
That is a really nicely designed article! I don't think I've ever seen that scroll down action before.
peatmoss 11y ago
Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo. And now we have MMA that is a sport that tolerates fairly severe injury of combatants. I can't say I like the direction MMA has gone here. Every time I see it, I kind of get a sick feeling like I'm watching some kind of Roman spectacle. I trained for a while in a style that taught techniques designed to kill. And, as a pacifist, I was okay with that because they were taught as forms, and the art is not practiced in competition. Clearly MMA had to decide on a tolerable level of violence between "no competition" and "fight to the death." I just wonder how that point of acceptable violence came to be what it is--from the article, broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight. I think I know the answer: maximum injury that won't result in death / legal problems. And I find that a bit troubling.
- charlieglass 11y ago
  Cagefighting came into existence as a way to test the efficacy of traditional martial arts. So much of what is taught is complete rubbish ("lethal techniques" that only ever practised against compliant opponents, etc.). All the beautiful movements and choreographed dancing of traditional martial arts fly out of the window when you face a skilled fighter that is trying to hurt you. The fighters know exactly what they sign up for, and probably would not want it any other way. They are consenting adults having fun. :) Regarding the brutalization of judo: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there. Thinking that a martial art should not be brutal reveals a special kind of first-world thinking.
  - Pxtl 11y ago
    > Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas The article paints a very different picture, an upper-class family dynasty developing the martial art.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kristopolous 11y ago
reinventing long-form journalism in a tolerable format. three cheers.
roel_v 11y ago
For some reason, these stories always leave out that UFC 1 was organized by a Gracie with pretty much the goal of showcasing Gracie JJ. UFC 2 (I think? or was it 1 already?) even had a half-time 'ceremony' where Rickson gave Helio a 'lifetime award' of some sort - while booed by the audience; and rightfully - that was clear self-promotion and put a shadow over the objectiveness of the whole event. In that light, the line-up for the first couple of UFC's is rather suspect. Kevin Rosier? Who came back from retirement especially for it? All of them except Ken Shamrock being strikers? Objectively speaking, inviting some Pancrase people (again, besides Ken Shamrock) would have made more sense. Of course it was framed as 'style vs style', but still... Of course Gracie JJ is very effective, but the truth is that early-days UFC was a marketing scheme for the Gracies to export their JJ. It took very little time for what was promoted as 'the perfected style, honed over 60 years' to become just one aspect of a well-rounded fighter's skills. Look at the training DVD's Carlos and Rickson made in the mid-1990's - they were laughable just 5 years later. Not sure I'm working towards one overarching point here; maybe it's that the Gracie's real legacy is just as much in marketing as it is fighting.
- sfjailbird 11y ago
  > For some reason, these stories always leave out that UFC 1 was organized by a Gracie with pretty much the goal of showcasing Gracie JJ Second paragraph: In 1993, Rórion Gracie founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship as a way to spread Gracie jiu-jitsu to North America, inspiring the rise of mixed martial arts.
  - roel_v 11y ago
    Fair enough, I did overlook that :) And indeed overall the OP is more nuanced than many stories like it are.
- sanoli 11y ago
  You're saying this in a time when every good mma athlete has a very respectable BJJ game. Before that, people stuck to their art. It was either BJJ guys winning, or big wrestlers. Then people started to get more well-rounded. But I remember watching fights in Brazil where there was almost ten different styles represented, including judo and wrestling. BJJ would win. When the others started learning BJJ it changed a lot, and the BJJ people had to suck it up and begin to strike/stand-up. Actually, I still think it is the achilles heel of brazilian MMA fighters. There's still this 'BJJ' is king attitude here, which leaves a hole in many athletes' wrestling game. Look at the USA: there are now a ton of great bjj black-belts teaching there. How many top-level wrestlers teach in Brazil? Two? Three? Only top MMA guys in Brazil train wrestling specifically, whereas in the US the wrestling kids can learn very good BJJ and striking.
nabla9 11y ago
How can one write a story about Gracie jiu-jitsu without mentioning Kazushi Sakuraba?
dbs 11y ago
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is less about the show and more about a philosophy of life. Being trained in the arts many years ago, things like "a body is as strong as its weakest link", have served me well in life and business. I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. You learn how to survive under very harsh conditions and how to be resilient. You don't need to be the strongest, the faster... You just need to stay alive and be aware. And you learn how to respect human life, because you come to understand how fragile it is. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been responsible for taking many people out of the streets, giving them something to abide for. This will be the greatest legacy of the Gracies.
- sanoli 11y ago
  > I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. Judo and Wrestling kicked my ass as much, if not more, than BJJ practice. Probably more, as they're both faster paced than BJJ.
  - metamet 11y ago
    Wrestlers have the highest work ethic and ability to keep pushing out there. I wish I had trained wrestling in high school, but it didn't appeal to me at the time. We get a lot of wrestlers who come in and try BJJ. Of those who don't give up in frustration after a couple weeks, they turn into monsters. But I'd say that a lot of wrestlers quit BJJ early on because they're used to their power and wrestling technique getting them through, and not being able to pass someone's guard is frustrating. It's humbling (and also frustrating) to get swept and choked by a guy 40% smaller then you, over and over again. But if a wrestler says "How did you do that?" or "What should I do there?", you know you've got a potential monster on hand.
- toadi 11y ago
  You know in Brazil BJJ was for the rich kids? Thai boks was more for the poor people.
  - pokstad 11y ago
V-2 11y ago
I wonder if there are any HN-ers actually practicing bjj? Purple belt here
- atom-morgan 11y ago
  I did for about 6 months. By far one of the most humbling experiences I'd ever had. I just wasn't a fan of the people at that gym.
  - Nicholas_C 11y ago
    A lot of practitioners really make the sport as a whole look bad. I'm not a fan of some of the MMA culture that bleeds over into BJJ.
    - scott_s 11y ago
      Which is fair, but I give some credit to the MMA training I did for having a "just deal with what's going on, keep moving forward" attitude in my jiu jitsu. In work and life, even. (I never had an MMA fight, but many of the guys I trained with did, and I helped them prepare.)
    - raverbashing 11y ago
      > I'm not a fan of some of the MMA culture that bleeds over into BJJ. Nah, it's the attitude from BJJ that ended up in MMA culture
  - qrendel 11y ago
    Same story. Trained for about two years. Loved the sport but had to deal with a lot of bad attitudes and unpleasant "alpha male" types, which is probably the biggest reason I've stopped. It wasn't just that one school; I've trained at several and it's generally the same story to one degree or another.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Seems to be a fair number of BJJ practitioners here. It comes up in most threads on fitness/exercise. I've only just started (6 months now), mostly as a way to force myself to really exercise regularly. Having a positive social environment and forking out $$ each month encourages me to actually attend, versus the (good) free gym available through work. EDIT: If you really want to know it could be put in as a poll. Ask which martial arts (if any) people here participate in.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lpsz 11y ago
Was able to find a video of the fight discussed in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXgE2SZBaUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXgE2SZBaUE

143 points by fezz 11y ago

> Rickson ... Tokyo Dome on May 26, 2000 ... Funaki If you've ever wondered what 12 minutes of sweaty men hugging each other, standing up, and not moving much except to occasionally knee each other in the crotch, followed by 3 minutes of violence looks like, this is the fight for you.

jamestomasino 11y ago

What a fantastically designed and executed site! I love the attention to detail all the way across the responsive sizes. Great work.

Implicated 11y ago
The grantland site is one of my favorites, both in the content (I generally stick to their sports stuff) and in the delivery.
RobertoG 11y ago
I was thinking about the reasons this article is HN's first page. When the article is not about technology or startups, is it because the site is well executed or because the subject is interesting? Probably both. I would like to point another reason: the Gracie jiu-jitsu empire is an example of well executed and successful start up. Their marketing techniques are remarkable. When one of the Gracie brothers opened his school in my city, he offered a considerable quantity of money to any local fighter that won him. Then, he beat the first guy that accepted pretty bad, not serious injured but it was not nice. Result: no more challenges, brand exposure, successful marketing.
so0k 11y ago
except if you are half way and resize the window, then maximize - it fails (chrome on windows 10)
- repsilat 11y ago
  I couldn't read the article at all -- there was a big blue "title page" that I couldn't get to go away by scrolling down or clicking anywhere. It got better when I resized the page, though only somewhat -- some page widths did "nice" things (like having a simple header at the top), but others gave the awful expanding blue header thing. With that header I'd scroll down to get to the content, then I'd have to scroll back up again to get to the content that I'd scrolled past :-/
mrmondo 11y ago
Couldn't agree more, I see that it's actually just built on top of Wordpress too which is pretty impressive. Great design - very captivating.
carapace 11y ago
No. I typically browse with JS turned off and the scrolling doesn't work. It is therefore broken and poorly executed. This is a presentation delivered through the web but it is not a web site.

Cacti 11y ago

That is a really nicely designed article! I don't think I've ever seen that scroll down action before.

peatmoss 11y ago

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo. And now we have MMA that is a sport that tolerates fairly severe injury of combatants. I can't say I like the direction MMA has gone here. Every time I see it, I kind of get a sick feeling like I'm watching some kind of Roman spectacle. I trained for a while in a style that taught techniques designed to kill. And, as a pacifist, I was okay with that because they were taught as forms, and the art is not practiced in competition. Clearly MMA had to decide on a tolerable level of violence between "no competition" and "fight to the death." I just wonder how that point of acceptable violence came to be what it is--from the article, broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight. I think I know the answer: maximum injury that won't result in death / legal problems. And I find that a bit troubling.

charlieglass 11y ago
Cagefighting came into existence as a way to test the efficacy of traditional martial arts. So much of what is taught is complete rubbish ("lethal techniques" that only ever practised against compliant opponents, etc.). All the beautiful movements and choreographed dancing of traditional martial arts fly out of the window when you face a skilled fighter that is trying to hurt you. The fighters know exactly what they sign up for, and probably would not want it any other way. They are consenting adults having fun. :) Regarding the brutalization of judo: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas, any martial art that was not brutal would be of no use there. Thinking that a martial art should not be brutal reveals a special kind of first-world thinking.
- Pxtl 11y ago
  > Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born in the favelas The article paints a very different picture, an upper-class family dynasty developing the martial art.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kristopolous 11y ago

reinventing long-form journalism in a tolerable format. three cheers.

roel_v 11y ago

For some reason, these stories always leave out that UFC 1 was organized by a Gracie with pretty much the goal of showcasing Gracie JJ. UFC 2 (I think? or was it 1 already?) even had a half-time 'ceremony' where Rickson gave Helio a 'lifetime award' of some sort - while booed by the audience; and rightfully - that was clear self-promotion and put a shadow over the objectiveness of the whole event. In that light, the line-up for the first couple of UFC's is rather suspect. Kevin Rosier? Who came back from retirement especially for it? All of them except Ken Shamrock being strikers? Objectively speaking, inviting some Pancrase people (again, besides Ken Shamrock) would have made more sense. Of course it was framed as 'style vs style', but still... Of course Gracie JJ is very effective, but the truth is that early-days UFC was a marketing scheme for the Gracies to export their JJ. It took very little time for what was promoted as 'the perfected style, honed over 60 years' to become just one aspect of a well-rounded fighter's skills. Look at the training DVD's Carlos and Rickson made in the mid-1990's - they were laughable just 5 years later. Not sure I'm working towards one overarching point here; maybe it's that the Gracie's real legacy is just as much in marketing as it is fighting.

sfjailbird 11y ago
> For some reason, these stories always leave out that UFC 1 was organized by a Gracie with pretty much the goal of showcasing Gracie JJ Second paragraph: In 1993, Rórion Gracie founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship as a way to spread Gracie jiu-jitsu to North America, inspiring the rise of mixed martial arts.
- roel_v 11y ago
  Fair enough, I did overlook that :) And indeed overall the OP is more nuanced than many stories like it are.
sanoli 11y ago
You're saying this in a time when every good mma athlete has a very respectable BJJ game. Before that, people stuck to their art. It was either BJJ guys winning, or big wrestlers. Then people started to get more well-rounded. But I remember watching fights in Brazil where there was almost ten different styles represented, including judo and wrestling. BJJ would win. When the others started learning BJJ it changed a lot, and the BJJ people had to suck it up and begin to strike/stand-up. Actually, I still think it is the achilles heel of brazilian MMA fighters. There's still this 'BJJ' is king attitude here, which leaves a hole in many athletes' wrestling game. Look at the USA: there are now a ton of great bjj black-belts teaching there. How many top-level wrestlers teach in Brazil? Two? Three? Only top MMA guys in Brazil train wrestling specifically, whereas in the US the wrestling kids can learn very good BJJ and striking.

nabla9 11y ago

How can one write a story about Gracie jiu-jitsu without mentioning Kazushi Sakuraba?

dbs 11y ago

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is less about the show and more about a philosophy of life. Being trained in the arts many years ago, things like "a body is as strong as its weakest link", have served me well in life and business. I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. You learn how to survive under very harsh conditions and how to be resilient. You don't need to be the strongest, the faster... You just need to stay alive and be aware. And you learn how to respect human life, because you come to understand how fragile it is. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been responsible for taking many people out of the streets, giving them something to abide for. This will be the greatest legacy of the Gracies.

sanoli 11y ago
> I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. Judo and Wrestling kicked my ass as much, if not more, than BJJ practice. Probably more, as they're both faster paced than BJJ.
- metamet 11y ago
  Wrestlers have the highest work ethic and ability to keep pushing out there. I wish I had trained wrestling in high school, but it didn't appeal to me at the time. We get a lot of wrestlers who come in and try BJJ. Of those who don't give up in frustration after a couple weeks, they turn into monsters. But I'd say that a lot of wrestlers quit BJJ early on because they're used to their power and wrestling technique getting them through, and not being able to pass someone's guard is frustrating. It's humbling (and also frustrating) to get swept and choked by a guy 40% smaller then you, over and over again. But if a wrestler says "How did you do that?" or "What should I do there?", you know you've got a potential monster on hand.
toadi 11y ago
You know in Brazil BJJ was for the rich kids? Thai boks was more for the poor people.
- pokstad 11y ago

V-2 11y ago

I wonder if there are any HN-ers actually practicing bjj? Purple belt here

atom-morgan 11y ago
I did for about 6 months. By far one of the most humbling experiences I'd ever had. I just wasn't a fan of the people at that gym.
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  A lot of practitioners really make the sport as a whole look bad. I'm not a fan of some of the MMA culture that bleeds over into BJJ.
  - scott_s 11y ago
    Which is fair, but I give some credit to the MMA training I did for having a "just deal with what's going on, keep moving forward" attitude in my jiu jitsu. In work and life, even. (I never had an MMA fight, but many of the guys I trained with did, and I helped them prepare.)
  - raverbashing 11y ago
    > I'm not a fan of some of the MMA culture that bleeds over into BJJ. Nah, it's the attitude from BJJ that ended up in MMA culture
- qrendel 11y ago
  Same story. Trained for about two years. Loved the sport but had to deal with a lot of bad attitudes and unpleasant "alpha male" types, which is probably the biggest reason I've stopped. It wasn't just that one school; I've trained at several and it's generally the same story to one degree or another.
Jtsummers 11y ago
Seems to be a fair number of BJJ practitioners here. It comes up in most threads on fitness/exercise. I've only just started (6 months now), mostly as a way to force myself to really exercise regularly. Having a positive social environment and forking out $$ each month encourages me to actually attend, versus the (good) free gym available through work. EDIT: If you really want to know it could be put in as a poll. Ask which martial arts (if any) people here participate in.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

lpsz 11y ago

Was able to find a video of the fight discussed in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXgE2SZBaUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXgE2SZBaUE