This article is one short piece of a long, ongoing effort by MixedMartialArts.com to understand what really works. The focus is not on what happens in the arena, but rather what happens on the street, or in this case, in a hotel ballroom decades ago. Check out more best of stories on:
•Rickson Gracie
•Chuck Norris
•Martial Arts on The Street
Many people don’t realize that Chuck Norris was one of the catalysts in spreading the word about Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the Gracie family in the United States.
The Birth of BJJ in America
Norris began studying jiu-jitsu under the Machado family (notably Carlos Machado) in the 1980s, and in 1988 formally introduced the Gracies to his United Fighting Arts Federation (UFAF) at their annual convention. In this seminar footage shot by one of Chuck Norris’s top instructors, Danny Lane, you see a full lineup of the Gracie clan, including Rorion, Relson, Rickson, Royce, Rilion, Rolker, Renzo (?), Carlos Machado, and Royler, sharing their art with a room full of Tang Soo Do black belts.
Lane explains how the seminar came about.
“Chuck Norris and Bob Wall visited the Gracie family in Rio, Brazil, and experienced the training first hand, and were impressed so much that Chuck wanted his black belts in the UFAF to learn the system,” wrote Lane. “In 1988 they flew to Las Vegas and taught for the first time. That was the beginning of American acceptance that the skill the Gracies and BJJ had was different than the Japanese jujitsu.”
In the opening, Norris suggests that merging his striking art with jiu-jitsu would be formidable. It took the world a while to catch up to that concept.
The video below shows one of the first times the effectiveness of jiu-jitsu from Brazil really was understood in the USA.
What Happened
Rickson goes up against Chuck Norris. Norris and Superman once fought each other on a bet – loser had to start wearing his underwear on the outside. We all know how that one went, so could Rickson do better?
The karate champion is in the fully bladed stance characteristic of sport karate. When he attempts a side kick, Rickson closes the distance, takes him down, takes his back, and finishes with a rear naked choke.
It doesn’t last very long. There is no shame in that, as Rickson is actually a mind-reading, 400-pound anaconda. Further, jiu-jitsu comes from judo, and Tang Soo Do from karate; the former is demonstrably a more effective martial art. And perhaps even more importantly, jiu-jitsu was tested for generations in real fights, while Tang Soo Do was tested in point karate tournaments.
As a result, jiu-jitsu is extraordinarily more effective than Tang Soo Do. As you can see, an expert in the former can defeat an expert in the latter, without any harm being done, over and over.
The Aftermath
Norris’s reaction to discovering an effective martial art was not to reject it, or craft spurious arguments against it, but to master it. In 2015, Norris earned a 3rd-degree black belt in jiu-jitsu, under the Machado brothers’ lineage. His UFAF now has a well-organized Brazilian Jiu Jitsu program.
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