Ultimate Fighting: The Brains and Brawn of Mixed Martial Arts

Ultimate Fighting: The Brains and Brawn of Mixed Martial Arts — page 7 — THE GRACIE CHALLENGE Meanwhile another version of mixed martial arts was emerging in Brazil Its roots went back to the early 1900s Mitsuyo Maeda was a Japanese judo expert and pro wrestler at that time He challenged anyone in the crowd to fight him and he beat them all His nickname was King of Combat Maeda settled in Brazil and performed judo exhibits to promote his dojo These shows showed how a smaller man Maeda weighed only 140 pounds 64 kilograms could defeat a larger man using skill and leverage Fourteen year old Carlos Gracie saw one of the shows in 1917 He soon joined Maeda s dojo in the northern state of Para Brazil Four years later Gracie moved to Rio de Janeiro Brazil There he opened his own dojo with his younger brother Helio The brothers were very different Carlos was large and strong Helio was small He couldn t match his brother s strength So he created a fighting system for those who weren't powerful enough to execute the throws crucial to success in judo He called it Gracie jiu jitsu but it would later be dubbed Brazilian jiu jitsu This martial art still used judo throws But they existed mainly for the purpose of getting an opponent to the ground where a combatant would attempt to win with choke holds and joint holds Confident with his new system Helio issued challenges to all kinds of fighters to an anything goes fight called vale tudo In 1995 Helio Gracie held up an old newspaper article about his jiu jitsu fighting style 10 ULTIMATE FIGHTING

Ultimate Fighting: The Brains and Brawn of Mixed Martial Arts — page 8 — In 1951 four time Japan judo champion Masahiko Kimura accepted the challenge In front of 20 000 people he battled Gracie in perhaps the first large public MMA battle Kimura got Gracie in a judo hold called ude garami later called the Kimura The hold broke Gracie's arm but the tough Brazilian refused to give up His brother Carlos threw a towel into the ring to signal Gracie s surrender Stunned by the loss Helio retired He focused on spreading the word of BJJ and raising his family One son Rorion brought BJJ to the United States in 1978 Like Bruce Lee Rorion ended up in the movies His dojo became popular among Hollywood stars His fame spread when he revived the Gracie challenge by inviting fighters from all martial arts to battle him Many challenged Rorion but all lost BJ seemed to be the ultimate fighting style In Brazil Helio came out of retirement to battle former student Waldemar Santana Helio hated that Santana had become a pro wrestler A war of words in the press led to a fight not in public but at a local gym The two men fought for four hours Gracie finally succumbed when Santana kicked him in the head KICK-STARTING MMA Another kick to the head was even more important in MMA history It came from the foot of Akira Maeda A trained karate fighter Maeda was a protégé of the New Japan pro wrestling promotion's biggest star Antonio Inoki Maeda became an excellent pro wrestler But he didn't like the emphasis on entertainment He left New Japan to start his own promotion the Universal Wrestling Federation UWF Three other wrestlers Satoru Sayama Nobuhiko Takada and Yoshiaki Fujiwara joined him The four promoted shoot style wrestling It featured hard kicks submission holds and judo throws but no leaps from the top rope The fights were still worked but they looked real The UWF did well at first but infighting led to its demise Three of the four returned to New Japan In 1985 Sayama started a new promotion called Shooto It featured no pulled punches and few holds barred It was the first true MMA group Battlegrounds From Ancient Greece to the Octagon II

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