Carlos Gracie Quotes

If you want to be a lion, you must train with lions.

There is no losing in jiu jitsu. You either win or you learn.

Maeda opened a martial arts school in Belém, where he and an assistant taught my uncles Carlos, Oswaldo, George, Gastão Jr., and a handful of others his modified style of Jiu Jitsu. After Gastão Gracie went bankrupt in the 1920s, the brothers moved to Rio and opened their first Jiu Jitsu academy. They were confident enough in their abilities to invite fighters from any style to test their skills in a match against Jiu Jitsu. A “Gracie challenge” could be a sporting match that a tap on the ground could end at any time, but my uncles also fought vale tudo matches.

Sometime during the second decade of the twentieth century, a “touring Japanese master” taught the rudiments of a secret, ancient, and scientific system of fighting called “jiu-jitsu” to a sickly Brazilian adolescent named Carlos Gracie, who taught it to his younger brothers, with the possible exception of the youngest, Helio, who taught himself. Meanwhile, Japanese immigrants in Brazil were practicing and teaching a fake form of jiu-jitsu, called “jiu-do” [judo] in order to keep their scientific combat art hidden from foreigners, except for the Gracies, who had already learned real jiu-jitsu from the touring Japanese master and wanted to share their knowledge with other Brazilians. That is the story, at least. Some of it might be true. Some of it probably isn’t.

Carlos [Gracie Jr.] deserves much of the credit for creating sport Jiu Jitsu, but with it came a problem. it transformed our martial art and created a lot of paper tigers who would never step into the ring to carry the flag of Gracie Jiu Jitsu. My father didn't like the sport version because he thought it was watering down our martial art. Hélio [Gracie] used to say, "This is not my Jiu Jitsu, because competitive Jiu Jitsu is not a martial art. The Jiu Jitsu I created is a martial art so a person can defend themselves on the street without getting beaten up.