In the second part of my series on the birth of MMA in Brazil, originally published in FIGHT! Magazine,  I learn about how the social dynamics of the country impacted the growth of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and ultimately MMA. 

The View From Ipanema

“This is close to where Rick­son Gra­cie had the famous fight with Hugo Duarte,” Mas­ter Ricardo Murgel tells me as we jog along Ipanema beach after a morn­ing work­out. Murgel is that rarest of crea­tures, a Brazil­ian with a cor­rect sense of punc­tu­al­ity. He meets me every morn­ing at 8:00 sharp and we go run­ning along the famous Ipanema beach. The fight Murgel is refer­ring to took place when a young Rick­son Gra­cie, golden child of the revered Gra­cie clan, was con­fronted at the beach by Hugo Duarte, a fighter from a com­pet­ing dis­ci­pline called Luta Livre. Gra­cie became incensed when Duarte said some­thing dis­parag­ing about his fam­ily, so he slapped Duarte. After a fight last­ing about eight min­utes, Gra­cie mounted Duarte and beat him into sub­mis­sion. The fight was caught on tape by a tourist. It sub­se­quently became very famous when the Gra­cies fea­tured the footage in videos they used to mar­ket Jiu-Jitsu as a real­is­tic fight­ing system.

Gracie’s beat­down of Duarte was one of the most famous bat­tles in a war that took place in Brazil dur­ing the 80s and 90s between the prac­ti­tion­ers of Brazil­ian Jiu-Jitsu and Luta Livre (free fight­ing). In gyms, on the street, on beaches, and ulti­mately in front of the whole nation in huge live events, the two sides engaged in a bit­ter rivalry that had social impli­ca­tions as well as fistic ones. The tra­di­tional gi became a sym­bol of con­tention between the two camps. Jiu-Jitsu devo­tees who swore by the gi said it helped develop tech­nique. Luta Livre fight­ers said that since peo­ple don’t walk around wear­ing gis, it was silly to train tech­niques that required them and the two sides often came to blows over the effec­tive­ness of the tra­di­tional gi as a train­ing tool. There was also a less obvi­ous ele­ment to Luta Livre’s argu­ment against the gi: a gi costs money to buy, and from the begin­ning Luta Livre was from the slums, for the poor peo­ple of Brazil.

The hills that sur­round the city of Rio de Janeiro are cov­ered with these col­or­ful shan­ty­towns, or fave­las. Although they are home to the some of the most des­ti­tute mem­bers of Brazil­ian soci­ety, when viewed from the beach they are not unsightly, with red roofs and stark white walls reflect­ing the bright sun. Pow­er­ful gangs con­trol the slums and run the drug trade in Rio. The biggest is called Red Com­mand. Every­one in the city knows which slums are Red Command’s ter­ri­tory and there­fore off lim­its to any­one with­out per­mis­sion to enter. This includes the police.

While the wealthy res­i­dents of Rio never ven­ture into the fave­las, the same can’t be said of the reverse. A wave of poor and less for­tu­nate cit­i­zens floods into the city every day. The lucky ones work at the city’s menial jobs, but many come to beg and com­mit crimes. Rio has one of the high­est crime rates in the world, and the rich and the poor exist in close prox­im­ity. The unfor­tu­nates here seem dif­fer­ent than those back home. In Amer­ica, the very poor and home­less often have a glazed over, defeated look to them. In Rio, they are wide awake and their eyes are fierce.

A Favela in the hills above Rio. Photo Credit Levy Ribiero

The Archimedes of Grappling

Later in the day I meet one of the found­ing fathers of Luta Livre, when Murgel accom­pa­nies me to meet Mas­ter Roberto Leitao. Leitao has trained many promi­nent mixed mar­tial artists, includ­ing Babalu Sobral, Pedro Rizzo and Marco Ruas. He is sought out for his exper­tise in grap­pling by fight­ers all over the world . Leitao, a well-preserved 71, is teach­ing his class above a gym in a fash­ion­able sec­tion of Rio. As we enter, two huge heavy­weights are toss­ing around a 120-pound slam dummy like a pillow.

Leitao is stately, and seems gen­tle­manly even stripped to the waist and clad in wrestling tights. He speaks Eng­lish, with the fl air and elo­cu­tion of a man famil­iar with the tenets of clas­si­cal ora­tory. “Luta Livre is the old­est sport known to man. It began in pre­his­toric times because man used to fight to sur­vive,” he begins with panache. “Man has always had to fight to sur­vive.” He ges­tures with his hand in a flour­ish wor­thy of Cicero. He is a born show­man. He tells me about the devel­op­ment of MMA in Brazil and his ver­sion is dif­fer­ent form the one I’ve heard from the Jiu Jitsu Grandmaster’s I’ve spo­ken to.

“There are two paths for MMA in Brazil. One starts with the Jiu-Jitsu peo­ple who learned from Count Koma in the north of Brazil. He taught Car­los Gra­cie, George Gra­cie, and Gas­tao Gra­cie.” I notice he doesn’t men­tion Helio, who is regarded as the patron saint of BJJ by most peo­ple. “But you know, Koma was a Judo teacher…” he says slyly. I sense that this is some sort of dig. “They learned Judo from him, but since Judo is basi­cally take­downs and they liked to fight on the ground, they called it Brazil­ian Jiu-Jitsu.” I notice out of the cor­ner of my eye that Murgel, a griz­zled BJJ vet­eran, looks like he wants to say some­thing but doesn’t.

“In the other ver­sion, you have peo­ple who came from pro wrestling,“ Leitao con­tin­ues in his most pedan­tic tone. Look­ing at the bare-chested, sil­ver­haired old fox as he lec­tures, I think that this is what Socrates might have looked like. “When most peo­ple in Amer­ica hear the term pro­fes­sional wrestling, they think fake.” I say.

“Well the pro wrestling guys are artists. It’s a show. But Luta Livre isn’t a show at all. It’s a real fight. You have to sub­mit the guy by a choke or arm bar. There is no punch­ing, it’s very tech­ni­cal. If you put punches with Luta Livre, it becomes MMA.” One of Leitao’s best stu­dents, MMA leg­end Marco Ruas, was one of the fi rst fi ghters in MMA to incor­po­rate Muay Thai and strik­ing with his grap­pling exper­tise. It was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­cept for it’s time and he was a pro­to­type for today’s bal­anced mixed mar­tial artist.

“Why don’t more peo­ple do Luta Livre?” Murgel asks Leitao pointedly.

“The prob­lem is that for a true sport to develop, you must have teach­ers who are able to make a liv­ing teach­ing it. And it used to be that many guys started doing Luta Livre but they didn’t earn money teach­ing, and that’s a big prob­lem. Judo and Jiu-Jitsu devel­oped because they had many teach­ers liv­ing off teach­ing Judo or Jiu-Jitsu.” Leitao answers with a scowl. “And why is that?” Murgel presses.

“Because when Gra­cie started Jiu-Jitsu, he was selec­tive in whom he trained so in the begin­ning Jiu-Jitsu peo­ple had more power and money. Back then, Luta Livre had no money or power, it was for the poor peo­ple,” he says, his deliv­ery denot­ing a trace of hos­til­ity long buried.

Leitao con­tends that it was the greater finan­cial and orga­ni­za­tional resources of the Jiu-Jitsu peo­ple, as he calls them, which caused it to be more wide­spread and well known than his own Luta Livre. Despite this, he thinks that Luta Livre, which he helped cre­ate, is the supe­rior mar­tial art. “ I stud­ied bio­me­chan­ics for thirty years” he says.

I notice that Murgel’s atten­tion has drifted and he leaves us to go watch the two behe­moths train. And to speak to Pedro Rizzo who has just walked in for his daily train­ing. When I ask Mas­ter Leitao about BJJ and mod­ern MMA, he tells me some­thing that would be con­sid­ered blas­phemy by many peo­ple in Rio.

“Gra­cie was stub­born,” he says, refer­ring to Helio Gra­cie, the great archi­tect of BJJ and patri­arch of the Gra­cie fam­ily. ”He believed that lever­age was enough, but he was wrong.” Leitao offers as evi­dence how well wrestling, which he says is iden­ti­cal to Luta Livre, did against Jiu-Jitsu fight­ers in the early days of MMA once they had adapted.

He tells me that he has recently com­pleted a book about Luta Livre. It has taken him thirty years to com­plete and rep­re­sents his life’s work. “I have taken the prin­ci­ples of Archimedes and New­ton and applied them to Luta Livre.” He says proudly.

Master Leitao Invented Luta Livre in response to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Photo Credit: Levy RIbeiro

Car­ry­ing The Flag

“In the old days, Jiu-Jitsu and Luta Livre hated each other. You did Jiu-Jitsu or you did Luta Livre, and it was like car­ry­ing the flag for your country.”

I have just met Walid Ismail, one of the Late Carl­son Gracie’s best stu­dents and one of the main sol­diers in old BJJ/Luta Livre wars. A short stocky man with a bald head and cau­li­flower ears that jut off his head at odd angles, he reminds me of a faith­ful pit bull. This is a good man to call your friend and a dread­ful one to be your enemy. He is beloved in Brazil for his ded­i­ca­tion to BJJ and his mas­ter the late Carl­son Gra­cie, and for his habit of always speak­ing from the heart. Stand­ing next to him I feel like Walid is going to bite my head off.

“[To prove Jiu-Jitsu] we had many fights in the street!” He is so excited telling me about the old days that he becomes side­tracked, los­ing his train of thought. “What was your ques­tion again?” he asks. “About Luta Livre,” I say to him, and he looks at me con­fused. Murgel jumps in to gen­tly guide him. “This was the man who won a famous chal­lenge match between Luta Livre and Jiu-Jitsu.” He says. “Yes!” Walid says, sud­denly remem­ber­ing. He then announces tri­umphantly, “I was the one who chal­lenged Luta Livre!”

As a young man, the hot-blooded Walid became incensed when a Luta Livre fighter named Euge­nio Tadeu beat a BJJ fighter named Renan Pitan­guy. “This is one of the few times this hap­pened,” he assures me. To add insult to injury, Tadeu won the fight by hold­ing onto the jacket of Petanguy’s gi, the sym­bol of BJJ’s power and influ­ence, with one hand and beat­ing him with the other until Petanguy’s cor­ner threw in the towel. Walid, who was a young pur­ple belt at the time, swore revenge. He says Carl­son Gra­cie cooled him down, telling him he was too inex­pe­ri­enced to fight the older Luta Livre fighter. A few years later, Tadeu had another high-profile match, against Royler Gra­cie, that ended in a draw. In that fight, Royler didn’t wear a gi. He instead fought in tights like the Luta Livre fighter. It was a moral vic­tory for the under­dog Luta Livre style.

“I said, ‘This can­not hap­pen,’” Walid growls. “Luta Livre was grow­ing a lot at the time and Jiu– Jitsu was start­ing to lose its stake in the mar­ket,” he admits frankly. In the early days, many of Jiu-Jitsu’s chal­lenge matches were held in order to pro­tect the eco­nomic turf of the Jiu-Jitsu schools that were spring­ing up around the country.

“I started train­ing, and when I felt good, I went to the paper and I chal­lenged them.” The move was a gutsy one by Walid who was by this time, a brown belt under Carl­son Gra­cie. Sur­rounded by media hype, the fight became huge. Called Desafio, it was shown on net­work tele­vi­sion in Brazil and three BJJ fight­ers were matched against three Luta Livre fight­ers. The main event was Walid vs. Tadeu. Walid fought with­out a gi and dom­i­nated Tadeu. “Before the sec­ond round,” he recalls “ I took out my mouth­piece and threw it to the crowd and they went crazy.” He re-enacts toss­ing some­thing into the bleach­ers and whip­ping the crowd into a frenzy, reliv­ing the moment in his mind.

The fight ended in the sec­ond round when Walid threw Tadeu out of the ring. The Luta Livre fighter stayed on the f oor and was counted out, giv­ing Walid the victory.

After­wards, Tadeu con­tended that the huge crowd of BJJ sup­port­ers that gath­ered around him when he was hurled to the floor pre­vented him from reen­ter­ing the ring. Walid and the BJJ sup­port­ers say that it was because Tadeu was either injured or too fright­ened to return to the ring and face the wild man Walid. The video of the fight is inconclusive.

That fight made Walid a star in Brazil, and he speaks about it like a war vet­eran who long ago turned the tide of a bat­tle. In a way, maybe he did. On that night, all three Jiu-Jitsu fight­ers defeated their Luta Livre opponents.

The rivalry between BJJ and Luta Livre reached its cli­max six years after Walid’s vic­tory at Desafio. This time it would be Renzo Gra­cie vs. Tadeu. Many Luta Livre sup­port­ers were in the crowd at the event, and sev­eral hun­dred of them gath­ered around the cage, press­ing against it dur­ing the fight. Sev­eral min­utes into the match, which until that point had been even, the lights inex­plic­a­bly went out in the arena. Chaos ensued as the BJJ sup­port­ers and Luta Livre peo­ple saw their chance to get at each other. Fights broke out, chairs were thrown, and shots were even fired into the air. When the lights came back on, there was a near riot, and the police had to be called in to restore order.

After the Sept. 27, 1997 fiasco, Rio’s mayor banned live Vale Tudo events in the city. Things had got­ten out of con­trol between the two camps, and in a coun­try like Brazil, where social inequal­ity abounds and the tacit threat of unrest and vio­lence is always sim­mer­ing beneath the sur­face, that could not be allowed to happen.

“Thank God we have rules today,” Walid says, refer­ring to the old “any­thing goes” days of Vale Tudo in Brazil.

He has mel­lowed as he has grown older, and even con­sid­ers some of the Luta Livre guys his friends. A ris­ing tide lifts all boats, and the suc­cess of MMA in the United States and the finan­cial oppor­tu­nity it has cre­ated makes it more prof­itable for them to be at peace. Today, Walid is a suc­cess­ful pro­moter, putting on events and even work­ing with some of his old enemies.

“Before, it was crazy. We saw the Luta Livre guys on the street, and we would want to fight. There were weekly street fights. This is the old view – today this view doesn’t exist because every­body trains together, every­body is friends.” Walid is try­ing his best to end on a friendly note, but even when he smiles he looks like he wants to kick my ass.

Walid Ismail

Fight­ing to Live not Liv­ing to Fight

It is unde­ni­able that the vic­tor in the BJJ/Luta Livre war was Brazil­ian Jiu-Jitsu. In the major com­pe­ti­tions between the two styles, BJJ won all but two of the matches. BJJ and the Gra­cie fam­ily con­tinue to thrive. It is said only half in jest that you can find a Jiu-Jitsu gym on every block in Rio. The few schools that once taught Luta Livre were closed due to a lack of stu­dents. When they closed, many of more promi­nent Jiu-Jitsu teams picked up the fight­ers that began in Luta Livre.

Today the money isn’t in mar­tial arts schools. Now the money is in the actual fight­ing and pro­mot­ing, and the once elit­ist and aris­to­cratic BJJ teams have shown them­selves more and more will­ing to recruit from the Luta Livre tal­ent pool.

A select few Luta Livre fi ghters who were left with­out a home when the orig­i­nal schools closed formed RFT or Ren­o­va­cao Fight Team, headed by one of Euge­nio Tadeu’s stu­dents, Mar­cio “Cro­mado” Bar­bosa. Watch­ing them train in their cramped gym, I am impressed by the ath­leti­cism and show­man­ship of the fight­ers. Cro­mado holds the pads for sev­eral of them work­ing in a row. He has them fin­ish each com­bi­na­tion with a showy jump­ing knee. How effec­tive the dra­matic maneu­ver is, I don’t know. But I am sure it is a crowd pleaser.

I speak to sev­eral of the fight­ers as my friend Mas­ter Murgel acts an inter­preter, Leonardo Nasci­ment, who goes by the nick­name Choco­late, tells me that when they started the team the idea was to go slow, step-by-step, but it sky­rock­eted. Today, the RFT fight­ers get invi­ta­tions to fight all over the world. Choco­late has made some waves in Europe where he recently won the Cage Rage Championships.

“The first rea­son for the suc­cess is our excel­lent coach and the com­mit­ment of the ath­letes. We all have one thing in com­mon; we want a bet­ter life,” he says, refer­ring to the team’s com­mit­ment to escape poverty and help their fam­i­lies do so as well. “We want to get out of the coun­try to fight in one with a strong cur­rency so that we have money to send back to help our fam­i­lies,” he says.

Luciano Azevedo tells me that his involve­ment in Luta Livre and MMA has saved him. “Many of my friends went to the wrong side of life with gangs and drugs, so I thank God that MMA has given me the oppor­tu­ni­ties to go to the right side, and also sup­port my fam­ily by doing what I love as a living.”

A fighter called Chatuba echoes this, and tells me that many of his friends that he grew up with have been killed, got­ten arrested, or caught up in the gang lifestyle. “Would you have ended up that way if it was not for Luta Livre?” I ask.

“Most likely,” he says. “Being a fighter is a less stress­ful lifestyle than the other,” he answers prag­mat­i­cally. “It’s less risky.” They all say that their Coach Mar­cio Cro­mado is the dri­ving force behind the team and the man most respon­si­ble for its success.

“Cro­mado is the man. He takes care of every­thing for us.” Says Choco­late. He says that in the old days the Jiu-Jitsu fight­ers had bet­ter orga­ni­za­tion and man­age­ment and this freed up their atten­tion to con­cen­trate solely on fight­ing. Luta Livre never had that until Cromado.

For his part, Cro­mado, a man who looks a good deal younger than his 35 years, with a kind face and happy eyes, is proud to be car­ry­ing the tra­di­tion of Luta Livre and of his teacher Euge­nio Tadeu into the future. He tells me that he started fight­ing in 2000, and cre­ated RFT as a ‘dream’ six years ago. The team’s record is not fan­tas­tic, and most of the fight­ers have many losses on their record. This isn’t how they judge suc­cess, how­ever. To them, it is a vic­tory just to be able to have the chance to earn a liv­ing fight­ing. “Oth­ers live to fi ght, we fight to live,” was the way Luis put it.

It is easy to believe that Jiu-Jitsu crushed Luta Livre in the great rivalry. In its after­math, the few major Luta Livre schools closed, and Brazil­ian Jiu– Jitsu schools sprouted up every­where. The final tally of the hun­dreds of street bat­tles that took place is unknown, but in the pub­lic events, BJJ dom­i­nated. In the vast major­ity of the times they faced BJJ fighters the ones from Luta Livre were resound­ingly defeated.

But the story doesn’t end there. The early Vale Tudo con­tests in Brazil were an inte­gral, if bru­tal, part of the huge mod­ern phe­nom­e­non of mixed mar­tial arts. And, no one, not even the Gra­cies, con­tin­ues to fight in the gi in MMA matches. All across the world, “no gi” Jiu-Jitsu is taught which is very sim­i­lar, some would say iden­ti­cal, to Luta Livre. So Luta Livre was at least vic­to­ri­ous when it came to the issue of the gi. But if you ask Mas­ter Cro­mado and his boys at RFT they will tell you that it was never really about the gi.

RFT Photo Credit Levy Ribiero