I had no idea that Mitsuyo Maeda competed in catch wrestling prior to passing on his skills to the Gracie family who eventually developed the modern fighting system of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Very interesting as I always considered wrestling and BJJ to be colleagues within martial arts. Apparently BJJ is a child of wrestling. Learn something new everyday.
Mitsuyo Maeda was a prize fighter. He would fight anybody for money. He fought boxers, Karateka, wrestlers ect... anybody the pro wrestling circuit would pay him to fight. How in the world does that equal BJJ being a "sub-child" of wrestling?
Mitsuyo Maeda competed in cacc fights, but he always thought his judo was superior. He fought in those fights to promote judo around the world, in fact. He probably learned a lot from competing around the world, but Maeda remained loyal to judo until his death. The only reason BJJ is called BJJ is because back then the distinction between judo and jiu-jitsu was practically meaningless outside of Japan. They were basically synonyms. The term "jujutsu" is simply a more modern way of spelling "jiu-jitsu." BJJ retained the older spelling as a tradition and to honor its history from Maeda's teaching. In Brazil, it is called "jiu-jitsu" in fact. Only outside of Brazil is it called BJJ or GJJ, I believe.
I think you are right. There is a joke in there somewhere, "What do they call Brazilian Jiu jitsu in Brazil?" jiu jitsu... (probably not that funny) Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
can we sticky this info? oh snap, its in the ubersticky. in that case can we force people to read the ubersticky before posting?
BJJ is the sub-child of Maeda's theory of combat according to Renzo Gracie. And, also according to Renzo, Maeda's theory was based on his own unique personal experiences as a world traveler and such.
I've also heard the theory that Maeda very specifically did not call what he was teaching judo (even though that would have been more accurate) due to the fact Kano was firmly against prize fighting. If Maeda could say "its ok, I'm doing jiu-jitsu, not judo", that provided a loophole.
maeda chose to teach it as 'jiu-jitsu' rather than 'judo', so that in the future, people on message boards and internet forums can have something to argue about, even though, bjj and judo are variations of the same art. there are far too many wrestlers who have walked into a bjj gym (luta livre is right there) and must've said "hey check this out". there was that american wrestler who allegedly showed rolls gracie a shoulder lock, thus the americana. sak was filmed at chute boxe showing some other technique - sorry i don't remember. there's two examples right there. my opinion is that bjj is open minded enough to include external techniques where applicable, along the way, as opposed to maeda showing gracie bros a catch wrestling crippling hold he learned in england, even though i suppose that's possible too.
well wrestling is the oldest sport in the world so most martial arts were probably influenced in some way by wrestling.
