That is true. THe art was developed in Japan. I forget the mans name but he was a Jui Jitsu master traveling from Japan and was in Brazil, not long after the Gracie's immigrated there from Ireland.
Japanese Jui Jitsu, unlike Brazilian jui jitsu has more powerful tosses, like Judo. The Gracie's were all bigger guys and were taught the art by this man (i really wish i could remember his name). The Gracies were very good at Jui Jitsu and started teaching it in Brazil. Helio (Royce's father) was small and sickly and could not participate, but he watched and would do the moves by himself.
Helio was the man who basically created Gracie Jui Jitsu, or as its nknow now, Brazilian Jui Jitsu. Becasue he was so weak he had to do the moves differentlly to make up for it. When Helio had to teach the class one day becasue his one brother was injured and the other sick, the were surprised to see little Helio at 135lbs take down a man in the class twice his size with little to no effort. His brothers thought, if Helio can take him down like that, than surely we could take down someone that much bigger than us. It worked and BJJ was formed.
I may have jsut repeated my first post from this thread jsut now, but whatever, im too lazy to go and look right now, lol.
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RIP Rick James
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