papers his willingness to take on all comers. In turn, Carlos’s younger
brother, Hélio, challenged Joe Louis, while decades later Hélio’s son Royce
challenged Mike Tyson. Of course nothing came of these challenges, as
there simply was not enough money in such contests to interest the boxers.
Maeda’s methods have been described as more rough-and-tumble
than is normal in jûdô. However, some of this apparent roughness is owed
to the venue—professional wrestling takes place in music halls, circus tents,
and armories rather than high school gyms, and is performed for the
amusement of a paying crowd rather than judged on points.
There are differences in the accounts of how Maeda met the Gracies.
In the accounts generally given by the Gracie family, Carlos Gracie, one of
five sons of Gastão Gracie, began his training with Maeda in 1914 (or
1915). Other sources maintain that in 1915 Maeda was a member of a
Japanese wrestling troupe known as “the Four Kings” and that he did not
start working for the Queirollo Brothers’ American Circus until 1917. If
so, then the circus was probably where he met the Gracie family, as in 1916
Gastão Gracie was reportedly managing an Italian boxer associated with
the Queirollo circus. At any rate, during the mid to late 1910s Maeda be-
gan teaching the rudiments of jûdô to Carlos Gracie.
Around 1922 Maeda left the circus to begin promoting Japanese im-
migration into Brazil. Three years later Gracie opened a wrestling gym in
Rio de Janeiro, and this latter event marks the official birth of the system
known today as Gracie Jiu-jitsu.
After Gracie quit training with Maeda, the core art underwent a
process of modification. Many articles state that Gracie Jiu-jitsu’s empha-
sis on groundwork is due to Maeda and Carlos Gracie not having tatami
(mats) on which to practice falls. However, inasmuch as Japanese aikidô
and Scandinavian Glimapractitioners sometimes practice falls on wooden
floors, it is likely that Gracie Jiu-jitsu’s emphasis on groundwork owes
more to the innovations of Hélio Gracie than to any desire to avoid injury
on the part of Carlos Gracie or Maeda.
As a boy Hélio Gracie was the youngest and least robust of five broth-
ers. Because of this, he soon learned to rely on technique rather than
strength, and legs rather than arms. As an adult, he became a fairground
wrestler, and when faced with larger opponents, he found it useful to go to
the ground, where his greater skill at ground submission fighting served
him well. So when the Japanese professional wrestler Masahiko Kimura
wrestled Hélio Gracie in October 1951, “What he [Kimura] saw reminded
him of the earlier jûdô methods that were rough and tumble. Prewar [prior
to World War II] jûdô had body locks, leg locks, unusual choking tech-
niques that were discarded because they were not legal in contest jûdô,
which had evolved slowly over the years” (Wang).54 Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu