Choque: The Untold Story of Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil 1856-1949 (Volume 1) (46 page)

Coincidentally, Yano was involved in another double defeat, this one even more remarkable. He and his opponent, George Gracie, both choked each other out at the same time in March of 1940.

Family Honor

After seeing his brother lose to Ruhmann, Oswaldo decided to take a break from his referring chores to restore the family honor. He immediately challenged Roberto Ruhmann.

Ruhmann equally immediately accepted and the match was set for the following Saturday, July 15. However Oswaldo insisted that the result should not be decided by shoulder pin. Oswaldo promised that he would avenge the family’s honor. It wasn’t something that could be taken for granted. “Can Oswaldo manage to avenge the defeat of his brother George?” one newspaper wondered. Ruhmann didn’t think so.
20
There was only one way to find out.

Ruhmann was extraordinarily powerful,
Correio Paulistano
acknowledged, but Oswaldo had technique on his side. After all, weighing only 68 kilos, he had previously beaten the the 105 kilo [
sic
] giant João Baldi. This time, there was no significant weight disparity. Oswaldo weighed 76 kilos, about the same as Ruhmann.

Unfortunately, the victory over Baldi happened eight years before. Oswaldo had beaten up two adolescents in a restaurant in Bello Horizonte, on
Tuesday April 20, 1937, but he hadn’t fought quality opponents regularly since then.
21

Oswaldo began the fight aggressively, attacking relentlessly, giving Ruhmann no chance to coast. But Ruhmann remained calm, conserving his power, until he felt that he had Oswaldo under his control. He then went into attack mode. It was the first and only attacking technique that he applied. Ruhmann choked Oswaldo unconscious in the third round using his trademark headlock [
gravata
] with a jumping kidney lock [
chave de rins volante
].
22

Coffee

Marilia, about 440 kilometers from São Paulo, was a center of coffee cultivation and home to many Japanese immigrants. In the third week of July Yassuiti Ono went to Marilia to fight local challengers. He planned to be back by July 26 or 27 to fight Roberto Ruhmann or George Gracie if they didn’t back down from his challenges.

Oninho offered Benedicto Peres a rematch under very generous conditions. Peres didn’t have to beat him; he simply had to survive for 30 minutes.
If he did, he would be the winner and would take home all of the prize money.
23
It was the same offer he had extended in 1938. Given their relatives sizes, it was almost insulting.

Caesar

Peres was ready to fight Oninho again, but he wasn’t in a hurry. First, he wanted George Gracie. Peres was the
São Paulo champion. George was the Brazilian champion. Their association went way back. They knew each other from the Geo Omori versus Carlos Gracie exhibitions of 1930. Peres then assisted George and his brothers in Rio when they staged their “jiu-jitsu versus capoeiragem” tournament in 1931. Peres filled in for the injured Helio Gracie and took on Ozéas. At that time, he (Peres) was described as an old student.

Now George was being challenged by his old comrade in arms. Were there some hard feelings involved?

Probably not. Hostility between the Gracie brothers, spearheaded by Carlos, and their rivals, periodically resulted in street ambushes. But then, everyone was seven years older and wiser. Peres versus George was a professional fight. Away from Carlos’s influence, George had decided that getting paid was the primary purpose of fighting. He usually needed money. Consequently, he fought a lot. Inevitably, he sometimes lost.

George was being managed by his brother Gastão and was still training at Academia Delauney. Peres was training was training at the Academia Paulista de Box, on
rua do Seminario, 51, with Roberto Ruhmann, Alberto Suleiman, Marinho, and others.

Jiu-jitsu fighter Arthur Riquetto
Filho [Junior] was recruited to confront Henrique Vicaro in a luta livre match of six 5-minute rounds. Riquetto weighed 56 kilos, the “Mastodonte” Vicaro weighed 104 kilos.
24
One of the preliminaries was a six-round middleweight boxing match between Zumbano III and Negrito. Both had aggressive styles that won many fans from among the afficionados of “the sport of Joe Louis” in São Paulo.

There was also an amateur boxing match between Tony Cadete and Jose Gonçalves.

The Benedicto Peres versus George Gracie match took place on Saturday July 22, 1939 in the gymnasium of the Associação Athletica São Paulo.

Peres had a 17 kilo weight advantage. One of his sparring partners, Roberto Ruhmann, who had recently defeated George, was betting on Peres to win.
25
Peres was a dangeous man, but George was agile, technical, and aggressive. He was not known as the “Red Cat” [
gato ruivo
] for nothing.

The fight could not be decided by pinning [
não valer encostamento de espaduas
]. Reporters wondered why Peres didn’t insist on having the option of pinning, where his weight could possibly prove to be a factor.

“Give to Caesar what is Ceasar’s [“
Cesar o que é de Cesar
”], he explained. It would be difficult to beat George in a kimono. To do that, one would need to be born in Japan and start learning at a tender age from consummate masters. In fact, it would be difficult to beat
any
Gracie in a kimono. Peres challenged George to a luta livre match for the logical reason that he didn’t think he could beat George in a kimono, but believed he could beat him without a kimono.
26

Peres’ confidence was misplaced. Even without the kimono, he was not a match for George Gracie. Peres gambled that a surprise move would pay off. He went for a “flying lock” [
chave volante
], which was reputed to be fool-proof as long as the opponent wasn’t familiar with it. Unfortunately for Peres, George was. He deftly avoided it and applied a counter-armlock, sealing Peres’ doom. Arthur Riquetto, despite his great weight disadvantage, easily submitted Henrique Vicaro in 20 seconds of the first round.

Roberto Ruhmann needed to make some money to recoup what he lost betting on Peres. He made an appearance, performing demonstrations of strength.
27

Agility versus Brute Force

Ruhmann and Oninho faced off Saturday August 19. at Associação Athletica São Paulo, promoted by Jose Antonio Lage. The question that seemed to be on the public’s mind was, “Can brute force overcome the agile Japanese?” [
conseguirá a força bruta dominar o agil japonez
?]. Oninho certainly thought not, because the purse went to the winner [
bolsa ao vencedor
].

Oninho was blindly confident [
confiança cega
] of his muscles and technique. But so was Ruhmann, who had not just ordinary muscles but muscles of steel. Oninho had one advantage in that pinning was not permitted, or rather, was not a route to victory [
sem valer o encostamento de espaduas
].
28

It was a luta livre match. Oninho fought valiantly, but the lack of kimono must have stacked the odds against him. He was left prostrate and bereft of his senses [
prostou sem sentido
] in the fourth round, courtesy of Ruhmann’s potent choke.
29

For some reason, George Gracie didn’t even wait for the fight to begin before challenging Ruhmann to another rematch, this one without pinning [
sem encostamento de espaduas
]. It was almost as if he knew what the outcome would be before it happened.

Kodokan
Jiu-Jitsu Exhibition

In July and August, the League of Marine Sports and the Embassy of Japan [
Liga de Esportes da Marinha and Embaixado do Japão
] sponsored a series of demonstrations of “judo” featuring Suniyuki Kotani and Chugo Sato, to be held at Escola de Educação Physica do Exercito na Fortaleza de São (July 31), Stadium do Fluminense (August 1), Corpo de Fuzileiros Naveas (August 3), and finally, open to the general public, at Stadium Brasil (August 4).
30

Kotani and Sato had returned from a two
-year stay in Japan where they perfected their technique. They arrived Saturday July 29, 1939 on the “Buenos Aires Maru” from Argentina (where they obviously had given similar demonstrations).

All of the demonstrations were well-publicized. On August 1, local practitioners of judo, or jiu-jitsu as it was
generally known in Brasil, were invited to participate. They included Helio Gracie and two of his students, Paulo Cunha and Manoel Azevedo Maia, and from São Paulo, Shojino Higuchio, Seiseton Fucikaya, and Tokanuo Toresoki.
31

A picture in
Gazeta de Noticias
on August 1 showed Helio Gracie in a standing “sleeve and collar grip position” position with one of the professors, surrounded by spectators and three kimono-clad Japanese sitting in the traditional kneeling “
seiza
”
(
正
座
) posture, observing intently.
32 
Helio Gracie declared that he had no doubt that Kotani and Sato were authentic masters.
33

It is unknown what the
Rio based jiu-jitsu representatives learned from the experience. Possibly that judo is not real jiu-jitsu, as Helio Gracie would later claim, but equally possibly that their access to the limited self-defense instruction market would be better maintained by de-emphasizing competitive throwing and by not calling it “judo”.
34

The Return of Donato Pires dos Reis

One day in late August or possibly on Friday September 1, 1939, Dr. Donato Pires dos Reis visited the editorial offices of
Correio Paulistano
to discuss something that the São Paulo public needed to know. It concerned his recently opened school of scientific self-defense in São Paulo. It was called “Studio Scientifico de Defesa Pessoal,” located on the 15
th
floor of the Martinelli Building [Edificio Martinelli], room 1,526 in the city center.
35

Earlier in the decade, George Gracie, along with one or more of his brothers, tried but failed to ambush and beat Donato senseless. Today, he was at Donato’s side, singing his praises. “I consider Donato Pires dos Reis a profound expert of jiu-jitsu. I don’t believe anyone knows more than he does,” George testified [“
reputo Donato Pires dos Reis como um profundo conhecedor do ‘jiu-jitsu’. Não acreditando mesmo que haja maior technico no assumpto
”].

Donato Pires’s school offered four plans of study (A, B, C, and D), one for each type of person. Plan C focused on the essentials of self-defense, consisting of five segments, each described
in some detail in the article.

Plan D was ‘
kuatsu
’ [resuscitation”].
36
Plans A and b were not described but one of them might have been the program of ring fighting, taught by “the greatest jiu-jitsu and luta livre fighter in South America, George Gracie” [“
programma de ensino de luta directamente no ring que será chefiado pelo mais perfeito lutador de jiu-jitsu e luta livre da America do Sul, George Gracie
”].

The cost for George’s instruction was 300$000 [300
milreis
] per month. Poor kids would be taught for free [
secção gratis a juventude reconheciamente pauperrima
].
37

Several weeks later
Correio Paulistano
visited the “Estudio Scientific de Defesa Pessoal” where Dr. Donato Pires dos Reis was teaching a group of students the “secret technique” [
golpe secreto
], which not even the strongest man could withstand [
nenhum homem, por mais forte, resiste ao ‘golpe secreto
’].

The secret technique was part of “higher jiu-jitsu” [
jiu-jitsu superior
], and was useful for weak people who never took part in sports [
pode ser applicado por um homem fraco que nunca praticou esportes algum
]. The higher techniques of jiu-jitsu didn’t need to be practiced in a ring [
não necessitam de treinamento no ringue
]. They didn’t even require an instructor [
nem de aulas com instructors
]. All that was needed was a lecture and an anatomical diagram.

The other form of jiu-jitsu (the “lower” form) was “
jiu-jitsu do tablado
” or sport jiu-jtsu. It was also useful but in a different way, and only if done correctly, Dr. Pires explained. The student should practice the technique with a qualified instructor. The training must be systematic and methodical, or the student would not learn the techniques properly.
38

No mention was made of George Gracie in the September 17 article.

German Giant

September 2, 1939
. George Gracie took his turn in front of the giant German Fritz Weber at the gymnasium of the Associação Athletica São Paulo. Weber weighed at least 134 kilos to George’s 70 kilos.
39