The Gracie - Portugal fight was significant in that it would represent the entry of Helio into the ranks of the Gracie fighters. But wherever there are winners, there will be critics so speculation and rivalries would continue. And this was the young Gracie's ring debut, so despite Portugal's losing boxing record, he did have 18 fights worth of experience. He had even been honored during the inauguration the previous year of the very ring in which this fight took place. Perhaps an argument could be made that the Omori - Crespo fight was a mismatch given that the former had a reported 300 fights under his belt against a variety of opponents. The audience enjoyed the matches, but future events stood on shaky ground. While it's true that neither boxer was a champion or even top-tier, it was they who challenged the jiu-jitsu men and agreed to fight in the competition. In its opinion, their mere participation had disgraced the sport.
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The Brazilian Boxing Commission went so far as to suspend both boxers for a full year even before the matches. They claimed that Crespo and Portugal weren't top fighters, so the results proved nothing.
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Though the Gracies and most of the press lauded the two as having demonstrated the superiority of jiu-jitsu, many boxing partisans criticized the fights. For Brazilian sports fans, the question of which style was better remained unsettled. Yet his defeat tarnished jiu-jitsu's reputation in the Western World. Matsuda turned out to be a fraud, a white Englishman named John Payton with questionable fighting skills. An over-hyped affair, Matsuda lasted a mere 8-seconds before McVea's right cross found his chin. Of these matchups, the most well-known was when McVea had knocked out "jiu-jitsu" man Tano Matsuda in 1908 in Marigny, France. Boxers Sam McVea and Jack Johnson had both knocked grapplers unconscious in mixed fight challenge matches. However, not all jiu-jitsu fighters had been so successful.
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Mitsuyo Maeda arm locked professional boxer Brandon in England in 1907. Businessmen such as the famous Pascoal Sagreto promoted technical demonstrations, matches, and fights at variety shows to fulfill public demand and get rich.įights between jiu-jitsu men and boxers were not new. Capoeira, luta romana (Greco Roman wrestling), catch-wrestling, savate, and boxing were all popular with fight enthusiasts. Though Japanese immigrants and touring troupes of fighters had brought jiu-jitsu (early Judo) to Brazil in the early 1900s, it was still just one of many other martial styles. Following in the footsteps of his older brothers Carlos, Oswaldo, and George, he wanted to prove the effectiveness of the Gracie jiu-jitsu style in the ring against other established fighting arts.
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Helio Gracie was born on October 1st, 1913, in Belém do Pará, Brazil, the youngest of five brothers of Gastão and Cesalina Gracie.