Hey, guys. Not a practitioner of BJJ myself (at least not for a long time), but I just came across this 10 min long video called “Rufino dos Santos: the man who beat Carlos Gracie” and I thought you might want to check it out. Not sure if it’s okay to post it here. If not, tell me and I’ll take it off right away.
Apparently, Rufino dos Santos is one of the forefathers of catch-wrestling here in Brazil. The translation of the documents (mostly journal articles) shown in the video is spot on - they’re pretty old, that’s for sure, and the language is kind of out of style, but it’s all correct.
[QUOTE=Drunken Soim;2993923]Hey, guys. Not a practitioner of BJJ myself (at least not for a long time), but I just came across this 10 min long video called “Rufino dos Santos: the man who beat Carlos Gracie” and I thought you might want to check it out. Not sure if it’s okay to post it here. If not, tell me and I’ll take it off right away.
Apparently, Rufino dos Santos is one of the forefathers of catch-wrestling here in Brazil. The translation of the documents (mostly journal articles) shown in the video is spot on - they’re pretty old, that’s for sure, and the language is kind of out of style, but it’s all correct.
Yeah, I watched that yesterday too and found it quite interesting. I haven’t had occasion to do some basic fact checking yet, nor do I speak Portugese to read any primary sources. However, the incident is mentioned on Carlos Gracie’s Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Gracie
If true, which thus far seems to be the case, I find it rather ironic and humorous given certain individuals’ positions on BJJ as a martial art and vehicle for moral self-improvement.
Nice revisionist history going on there. Why can’t people just admit that what is today called “Catch Wrestling” is pretty much a new thing. Freestyle wrestling had submissions(in fact in two of the Olympics it was submission only, the matches just went too long) and when the French took over the IOC in 1925 they started ruining things. In the English speaking world(US, Canada and UK) the sport died, and only sorta lived on in WWE style professional wrestling. Catch Wrestling as a serious martial art in the US came as a response(and backlash) to BJJ/GJJ dominance in UFC. Now the Catch guys all want to insist that Catch is superior to BJJ/GJJ.
[QUOTE=Michael Tzadok;2993954]Nice revisionist history going on there. Why can’t people just admit that what is today called “Catch Wrestling” is pretty much a new thing. Freestyle wrestling had submissions(in fact in two of the Olympics it was submission only, the matches just went too long) and when the French took over the IOC in 1925 they started ruining things. In the English speaking world(US, Canada and UK) the sport died, and only sorta lived on in WWE style professional wrestling. Catch Wrestling as a serious martial art in the US came as a response(and backlash) to BJJ/GJJ dominance in UFC. Now the Catch guys all want to insist that Catch is superior to BJJ/GJJ.[/QUOTE]
You’re saying catch guys nowadays don’t really have a connection to pre-1925 cacc/freestyle wrestling?
More to the point of the article though, If the guy was competing in catch-as-catch-can / freestyle at the time, then he was a catch wrestler in any case, just not in the tradition of modern catch wrestling. In any case it doesn’t tell us anything about the accuracy of the video.
[QUOTE=Guird;2993971]You’re saying catch guys nowadays don’t really have a connection to pre-1925 cacc/freestyle wrestling?
More to the point of the article though, If the guy was competing in catch-as-catch-can / freestyle at the time, then he was a catch wrestler in any case, just not in the tradition of modern catch wrestling. In any case it doesn’t tell us anything about the accuracy of the video.[/QUOTE]
I’m saying all the modern catch guys in the US and UK trace their lineage back to “professional” wrestlers. I.E. entertainment wrestling. “Judo” Gene Lebell used to do it to, he was just honest about what he did and where the majority of his submission grappling came from.
It wasn’t called Catch-As-Catch-Can it was called Freestyle Wrestling. Hence in Brazil it is now Luta Livre(Freestyle Wrestling in Portuguese). Apparently in Brazil both the modern Olympic sport and the submission wrestling sport are called the same thing. Not quite as confusing as in Mexico where Lucha Libre(Freestyle Wrestling in Spanish) is both the masked entertainers and the International style wrestlers. Freestyle Wrestling was only ever briefly called Catch-As-Catch-Can in England in the mid-1800’s operating under varying rule sets at county fairs.
Now if you hang out in modern CACC circles both online and IRL, you would notice that there has been a recent resurgence in the attempts to discredit BJJ. Both in claiming that it is not effective, and that it has no history(essentially the Gracies never learned from Maeda, they just made it up, and Luis Franca and Oswaldo Fadda learned it all from the Carlos and Helio too).
So now you got this video, clearly intended for English speakers who can’t read Portuguese and won’t pay attention to the newspaper clips in the background. Nearly every clip shown there calls Rufino dos Santos a Luta Livre player. Not a catch wrestler, and more importantly the clips predate when the video claims Luta Livre was “born”.
I might also point out that the same group claims that Karl Gotch taught Kimura the “double wrist armlock”(i.e. Kimura) that he used to defeat Helio Gracie. Only problem with that is that Kimura faced off against Helio in 1949 and Karl Gotch didn’t arrive in Japan until 1960, but hey don’t let things like history and dates get in the way of a good story.
I’m not disputing that Rufino dos Santos beat Carlos Gracie. That is the nature of the fight game. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. I’m disputing the BS propaganda line that is going along with it:
[QUOTE=Michael Tzadok;2993954]Nice revisionist history going on there. Why can’t people just admit that what is today called “Catch Wrestling” is pretty much a new thing. Freestyle wrestling had submissions(in fact in two of the Olympics it was submission only, the matches just went too long) and when the French took over the IOC in 1925 they started ruining things. In the English speaking world(US, Canada and UK) the sport died, and only sorta lived on in WWE style professional wrestling. Catch Wrestling as a serious martial art in the US came as a response(and backlash) to BJJ/GJJ dominance in UFC. Now the Catch guys all want to insist that Catch is superior to BJJ/GJJ.[/QUOTE]
You’re kind of ignoring carni wrestling.
Carni and circus wrestling continued all the way through in a relatively unbroken way,
just on a small scale.
I met a carni wrestler back when I was in my early 20’s
who spoke “carni gibberish”,
knew carni wrestling submission holds,
and was quite a character.
[QUOTE=Michael Tzadok;2993954]Nice revisionist history going on there. Why can’t people just admit that what is today called “Catch Wrestling” is pretty much a new thing. Freestyle wrestling had submissions(in fact in two of the Olympics it was submission only, the matches just went too long) and when the French took over the IOC in 1925 they started ruining things. In the English speaking world(US, Canada and UK) the sport died, and only sorta lived on in WWE style professional wrestling. Catch Wrestling as a serious martial art in the US came as a response(and backlash) to BJJ/GJJ dominance in UFC. Now the Catch guys all want to insist that Catch is superior to BJJ/GJJ.[/QUOTE]
There’s Erik Paulsen, the snake pit guys and The Anoki Dojo(maybe a couple more) in Japan. If you’re not training with those guys then you don’t really have a direct lineage to Classic catch wrestling of the early 20th century.
It’s mostly filled with hacks. I dont recommend anyone goes to a “catch as can catch school” but I do recommend Bjj black belts Erik Paulson and Josh Barnett as teachers.
[QUOTE=WFMurphyPhD;2993981]You’re kind of ignoring carni wrestling.
Carni and circus wrestling continued all the way through in a relatively unbroken way,
just on a small scale.
I met a carni wrestler back when I was in my early 20’s
who spoke “carni gibberish”,
knew carni wrestling submission holds,
and was quite a character.[/QUOTE]
You are correct. Intentionally because catch guys like to pretend that it never happened and carni/circus guys weren’t some of the true retainers of the skills of those old Freestyle guys. I guess going around and beating state and national collegiate champions with submission holds isn’t the kind of proud history they want. They just like being able to say they beat BJJ every time they came up against it(which is false).
Catch wrestling is the bestest and stuff because leg locks and throws and stuff and Bjj fighters dont know leg locks… get off my lawn.
Meanwhile the Adcc medal Gold count by discipline:
1 Gold for Sambo/Dagestani Freestyle: Karimula Barkalaev (1/1)
2 Japanese Catch: Sanae Kikuta & Sayaka Shinoda
3 Freestyle and subs from video tapes: Mark Kerr 2 at +99k and 1 in absolute. The only non bjj fighter to win an Absolute out of 12 ADCCs
Catch wrestling is the bestest and stuff because leg locks and throws and stuff and Bjj fighters dont know leg locks… get off my lawn.
Meanwhile the Adcc medal Gold count by discipline:
1 Gold for Sambo/Dagestani Freestyle: Karimula Barkalaev (1/1)
2 Japanese Catch: Sanae Kikuta & Sayaka Shinoda
3 Freestyle and subs from video tapes: Mark Kerr 2 at +99k and 1 in absolute. The only non bjj fighter to win an Absolute out of 12 ADCCs
BJJ Gold Count: 83[/QUOTE]
Catch response is that ADCC is a BJJ comp with rules that favor BJJ.
[QUOTE=Michael Tzadok;2993973]I’m saying all the modern catch guys in the US and UK trace their lineage back to “professional” wrestlers. I.E. entertainment wrestling. “Judo” Gene Lebell used to do it to, he was just honest about what he did and where the majority of his submission grappling came from.
It wasn’t called Catch-As-Catch-Can it was called Freestyle Wrestling. Hence in Brazil it is now Luta Livre(Freestyle Wrestling in Portuguese). Apparently in Brazil both the modern Olympic sport and the submission wrestling sport are called the same thing. Not quite as confusing as in Mexico where Lucha Libre(Freestyle Wrestling in Spanish) is both the masked entertainers and the International style wrestlers. Freestyle Wrestling was only ever briefly called Catch-As-Catch-Can in England in the mid-1800’s operating under varying rule sets at county fairs.
Now if you hang out in modern CACC circles both online and IRL, you would notice that there has been a recent resurgence in the attempts to discredit BJJ. Both in claiming that it is not effective, and that it has no history(essentially the Gracies never learned from Maeda, they just made it up, and Luis Franca and Oswaldo Fadda learned it all from the Carlos and Helio too).
So now you got this video, clearly intended for English speakers who can’t read Portuguese and won’t pay attention to the newspaper clips in the background. Nearly every clip shown there calls Rufino dos Santos a Luta Livre player. Not a catch wrestler, and more importantly the clips predate when the video claims Luta Livre was “born”.
I might also point out that the same group claims that Karl Gotch taught Kimura the “double wrist armlock”(i.e. Kimura) that he used to defeat Helio Gracie. Only problem with that is that Kimura faced off against Helio in 1949 and Karl Gotch didn’t arrive in Japan until 1960, but hey don’t let things like history and dates get in the way of a good story.
I’m not disputing that Rufino dos Santos beat Carlos Gracie. That is the nature of the fight game. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose. I’m disputing the BS propaganda line that is going along with it:
freestyle wrestling is “lotta libera” in italian, pretty similar to spanish and Portuguese. By Lotta libera we mean sport wrestling, the masked entertainment is called using the English word “wrestling”, since we got this from the USA. When I read first on Bullshido that wrestling is common in USA high schools, I was surprised because I thought of the masked entertainers, it took to me some minutes to understand my error.
udegarami (Judo name for the Kimura) is already present in the old book “Judo” by Yokoyama (1915), plus is present in a judo kata of, I think, the same period. It is the version from side control.
[QUOTE=Michael Tzadok;2994076]Catch response is that ADCC is a BJJ comp with rules that favor BJJ.[/QUOTE]
Well thats a silly response. Slamming to defend a submission is allowed, no crossface and giving up a top position for a bottom one incurs negative points penalty (no pulling guard, or jumping guard). These are just three examples that are not in favour of bjj, however i do like the adcc ruleset. Its probably superior to ibjjf.