It was an offer than was repeated many times. A few bold men took up the challenge. With nothing to lose except possibly their self-esteem, it is surprising that not more men accepted the challenge.
Articles, short news items, and ads appeared every day in one or more newspapers plugging the upcoming jiu-jitsu campeonato along with results of the already in progress luta romana tournament and the days’ match-ups. March 29 was the Youssouf versus Kormandy match.
Seventeen years later, Youssouf would challenge jiu-jitsu champion Geo Omori to a luta livre or jiu-jitsu match and get choked out for his trouble.
The regras [rules] of jiu-jitsu for the 2nd campeonato of jiu-jitsu to be held at Theatro Carlos Gomes were published Tuesday March 30, 1915 in O Imparcial and Friday April 12, 1915 in Gazeta de Noticias. As described in chapter 5, the jiu-jitsu challenges were not “anything goes,” but rather contests of “submission grappling”.
Koma and his troupe visited the editorial office of Correio de Manhã Saturday evening April 3, 1915. They planned to spend the final week before their debut at Theatro Carlos Gomes giving demonstration lessons [“classe academica”] and visiting the press.
According to the report of the visit, Conde Koma fought in England in 1914 and became a professor to the English police, subsequently doing the same in Russia, North America, Havana, Mexico, and San Salvador. With him were Satake (New York champion in 1913), Shimizu (Peru champion), Okura (Chile champion in 1914), and Raku (Mexico champion in 1913). Conde Koma’s standing offer was repeated: 5,000 francs to anyone who could beat him and 500 francs to any amateur who could last 15 minutes without tapping.7
The next day, Koma, Shimizu, Okura, and Raku visited A Epoca offices. The A Epoca report added the details that Koma was the wearer of the “belt of gold” [ceinture d’or] after winning a tournament in London in 1914.
Before the beginning of the 2nd campeonato of “the terrible Japanese Game” [o terrivel jogo nipponico], Koma offered a special session for doctors and representatives of the press in which he explained in minute detail the effects of the “terrible techniques of attack and defense”.8
On Wednesday April 7, the Japanese minister attended a performance of the Koma troupe at the Carlos Gomes, returning the visit that Koma had paid to him earlier.9
The jiu-jitsu tournament did not begin until May 1 but Koma and the troupe generated interest in their forthcoming “jiu-jitsu” campeonato by giving demonstrations during intermissions of the luta romana tournament.
Luta romana was popular, judging by the media attention. Results of matches were reported in some detail, using French, without translation, to describe the winning techniques, which indicates that fans were familiar with them.
On April 7 Gallant defeated Umberto by ceinture á rebours en tourbillon, Pampuri from Italy easily subjugated Goldbach of Austria with a prise de hanches en tête, and Schultz defeated Matuchevich by ceinture en souplesse. Matches scheduled for Wednesday April 8 were Chevalier versus La Pelada, and Pampuri versus Kormandy and a tie-breaker between the 128 kilo Turk Youssouf and 142 kilo German Lobmeyer.10
On Sunday April 4, local champion João Baldi expressed interest in participating in the 6th campeonato. Paschoal Segreto reluctantly agreed.
According to Gazeta de Noticias, in a few days Baldi would be demonstrating his vast knowledge of the sport of Greco-romana and commented that Baldi appeared to be in excellent shape and that it was a shame that other fighters didn’t emulate him.11
On Saturday April 24, the luta Greco-romana campeonato moved to the Cinema-Rio in Nictheroy. Some wrestlers made the short 14 kilometer (8.7 miles) ferry trip across the Baia da Guanabara [Guanabara Bay]. The other wrestlers stayed in Rio and continued their nightly battles at the Carlos Gomes.12
Finally, the day came. On Friday April 30, it was announced in A Noite that the jiu-jitsu championship that everyone had been kept anxiously waiting for was going to begin the next day, Saturday May, 1915. Conde Koma and his troupe of skillful Japanese fighters would take part.13
The Saturday May 1, 1915 editions of O Paiz, O Seculo, Gazeta de Noticias, A Epoca, and O Imparcial made sure that no would be fail to know about it. Gazeta de Noticias reiterated Koma’s standing offer of 5,000 francos to anyone who could beat him and additionally announced that the first match would pit Satake (champion of New York) against Raku (champion of Mexico).
Challengers
The troupe’s advance work had not been wasted. Four amateurs had already signed up to challenge Koma. They were Paulo Jeolas, Joaquim Guadencio Alves, Edmundo Esteves de Assumpção, and Antonio Dias Guimaraes.
There would also be luta romana matches, and the comic acrobats Les Fredonis would also be on stage.14
That night, Koma performed an exhibition. Satake fought Raku. The next day Gazeta de Noticias mistakenly reported that Satake defeated Okura by knee bar in the fifth round [Okura foi vencido por uma chave de perna]. Such misreporting was not the norm, but it was not rare. It may have been an editorial slip, or it may have been that the writer did not really see the fight.
O Paiz reported that it would not attempt to write the Japanese name of the “truque” [trick, technique] that Satake defeated Raku with, to avoid confusing readers [não escrevemos em japonez, para não atrapalhar os nossos leitores] but the technique was called “chave de pernas” in Portuguese. Chave de pernas is “leglock”.15
The next match was Okura versus Schimizu, scheduled for May 2, 1915, 10:30 p.m.16
Meanwhile luta romana continued to attract fans. With 12 rather than five fighters, each from a different national or cultural group, they could offer more variety and appeal to multiple fan bases. Instead of one match per day, the luta romana fighters typically presented three. For example, the May 2 matches were Schulz from Germany versus Gallant from Russia; Goldbach from Austria versus Le Boucher from France; and Yusuf [Youssouf] from Syria versus Umberto from Italy.17 Thus there were six fighters representing six different countries (or regions).
The jiu-jitsu fighters needed to recruit amateur challengers to round out their show. They could of course perform self-defense demonstrations but fans quickly grew bored and wanted to see real fights or at least fake but convincing fights, with exciting action. Unfortunately, the amateurs seldom put up a good fight. As one observer commented “they don’t make a good impression, the amateurs of jiu-jitsu who show up to try for the prize offered by Conde Koma, who easily nullified their attacks”.18
Jiu-jitsu fights seemed generally to be less compelling. They were reported in less detail. Perhaps fans and writers were less familiar with the techniques, which were less intuitively comprehensible than the luta romana techniques. Anyone could understand luta romana. People who hadn’t experienced arm bars and chokes and what was required to set them up were less able to appreciate the drama in a jiu-jitsu match.
For example, on Monday May 3, Satake and Shimizu faced off for the first of three times in seven days. One newspaper reported only that the five-round fight ended in a draw [terminou por um empate].19
According to another report, Referee Cesareo was unfamiliar with the rules of jiu-jitsu and failed to keep one of the fighters under control, which accounted for the inconclusive result.20
Another problem was the fact that the jiu-jitsu masters were all obviously friends and colleagues. They all learned their secrets in the same school.21 They were too constrained by racial stereotypes to be able to enact the stock characters of professional wrestling. They may have tried. According to the review of one fight, “Satake was the youngest member of the troupe, and was so nervous that he became violent at times”.22
This was unusual however, as it clashed with the fans’ image of what a Japanese jiu-jitsu expert should be. They were all equally mysterious, calm, polite, and scientific. In other words, they were the Japanese stereotype, with science added. Unlike the luta romana and luta livre wrestlers, Conde Koma and the troupe couldn’t convincingly pretend to be enemies in order to artificially
enhance dramatic interest. They lacked the elements to pose as rivals. Theatrical jiu-jitsu was packaged to be entertaining, with enormous brutes being flipped through the air with effortless flicks of the wrist. But staged demonstrations were too predictable after a while to sustain public interest. Fans wanted fights, preferably with heroes to root for and villains and rivals to root against.
Amateur challengers provided this to a degree. The problem, as observers pointed out, was that they lacked the technical knowledge and skills that could make the outcome of a match uncertain, hence interesting. For a master to fight a novice would be not much more appealing than watching a demonstration.
A secondary problem might have been that local challengers blurred the line between heroes and villains. It was obvious who was better at jiu-jitsu, but who was the “good guy”, the “hero”, the “champion”, that the local fans wanted to identify with? No one doubted Koma’s greatness, but he and his fighters were outsiders, just passing through. The matches lacked an ingredient that all commercially successful spectacles and series need, and that is rivalry. Rivalry is a relationship between personalities, or aggregates of them. Rivalry implies a general equality of forces. There must be a possibility of defeat. That is what creates the drama that people will pay to see.
A partial solution was mixed styles matches. A few were offered.
Jiu-Jitsu versus Luta Romana
Jiu-jitsu champion of Mexico Raku faced luta romana representative Goldbach Tuesday May 4 at 10:30 p.m.23 Conde Koma was the referee. This was the first opportunity the public had to witness a style versus style fight, one newspaper commented.24
Jiu-jitsu prevailed but the fight may not have live up to expectations in terms of excitement. Raku did nothing during the first two rounds, feeling out his opponent. Apparently Goldbach did nothing as well.
In the third round Raku launched an unrelenting and ferocious attack. In the fifth round he applied a chave de pescoço [necklock] or gravata [guillotine choke], and Goldbach conceded defeat.25
Another style versus style confrontation was scheduled for Wednesday May 5, the Cossack luta romana representative Matuchevich versus New York jiu-jitsu champion Satake.
However the match was not precisely style versus style, but rather stylist versus stylist. The crowd was intrigued by the clear disparity in size between the fighters. It seemed that it would be a contest between force and brute size [força, massa bruta], and agility [agilidade]. Reports did not indicate whether Matuchevich wore a kimono, but the fact that it was described as a jiu-jitsu match [“poule” de jiu-jitsu], suggests that he did.
Matuchevich weighed 90 kilos. Satake may have had difficulty taking him to the ground, but when he finally did, he sank a choke [chave auto-collar] in and to the shock of the fans, won the fight. Presumably, Matuchevich tapped out.26
Apparently more such mixed fights were planned. An ad in one newspaper promised sensational encounters between luta Greco-romana champions and jiu-jitsu fighters.27
Few or none actually took place. Paschoal Segreto became the most successful promoter in Brazil by giving the public what it wanted at affordable prices. It is possible that the wrestlers or jiu-jitsu men didn’t want to engage in these mixed styles fights, or possibly demanded excessive additional compensation. But the most likely reason there weren’t more fights was that the public didn’t want to see them enough to pay for them.
Thursday through Sunday May 6 to May 9, 1915, some luta romana fighters and member of the Conde Koma troupe, including Koma himself, performed at Cinema-Rio, Paschoal Segreto theater in Nichteroy. Conde Koma, Satake, Shimizu, Raku, Okura were the jiu-jitsu representatives. The luta romana representatives included Umberto, Lobmayer, Jose Floriano Peixoto, Kormandy, Tigre, and Gonzales and Goldbach, who fought a luta livre match on May 9. The fights ended at 11:00.28
On May 8, Raku defeated Okura 7 minutes into the second round with a chave de perna [leglock]. Conde Koma was scheduled to face Okura the next day.29
The final matches [Ultimas Poules] of the Grande Campeonato de Lucta Greco-Romana were scheduled to take place soon and the fighters would be departing [Despedida des luctadores que se enscreveram no Grande Campeonato de Lucta Greco-Romana].
Although the current luta romana tournament would conclude, there would continue to be luta romana matches and some of the competitors in the campeonato would likely be among the fighters. They could also participate in luta livre, as many already had done. Conde Koma and his troupe would be staying.30
On Sunday May 9, Satake and Shimizu met to break their drawn match on Thursday May 6. This time Satake came out on top of his agile and courageous opponent, who succumbed to a “vigorous” leglock in the fourth round. Satake won, but not without considerable difficulty. One observer felt that if it had not been for that unfortunate leglock, Shimizu would have emerged as the victor.31
The first challenge matches between jiu-jitsu amateurs and Conde Koma were scheduled to began Monday May 10, 1915.32 It was not specified that the jiu-jitsu amateurs actually had any jiu-jitsu background, which in any case would not have been easy to obtain in Brazil at that time, but simply that they were willing to compete under the jiu-jitsu rules in force during the matches.
That evening (Monday May 10), Paulo Jeolas33 stepped up to challenge Conde Koma in a jiu-jitsu match. He would be trying to survive 15 minutes and thereby win 500 francs.34
Jeolas went home empty-handed. He was easily defeated.35
According to one observer, Jeolas was “a mosquito” who only managed to survive the first minute thanks to Koma’s gentlemanly attitude.36
Jeolas nevertheless could truthfully say that he fought Conde Koma. There is no evidence that he ever opened up a jiu-jitsu academy but if he did, he might have inflated that story a bit as other people sometimes did. Perhaps in the Jeolas family the fight was remembered as a moral or some other sort of victory.
Meanwhile, at popular request, the theatre’s management promised to continue the lucta romana campeonato with Youssouff, Chevallier, Gallant, and Lobmayer.37
On Tuesday May 11 Raku applied a footlock [chave de pé] to submit Okura in the fourth round of a hotly disputed [bastante disputada] fight. Conde Koma was scheduled to face Shimizu in the next day’s match.38
After his humbling experience at the hands of Conde Koma, Paulo Jeolas must have believed that he would fare better a second time. He was matched with Raku next, who was smaller than Koma. The fight was set for Saturday May 15.
In the mean time. Koma faced “o Lisboeta” (Joaquim Gaudencio Alves) on Thursday May 13.39 O Lisboeta did not have any better luck than Paulo Jeolas. A footlock in the second round was his downfall.40
On Friday May 14, Satake defeated Okura by armlock [chave de braço] in the fourth round.41
Tuesday May 18 was announced as the last night of the lucta Greco-Romana campeonato. The message was ambiguous however. The troupe was leaving [despedida] but some of the individual fighters would be staying (indeed some never left) and taking part in luta romana and other types of matches. Sunday (May 16) and Monday (May 17) were also both advertised as the final night of luta romana matches [ultimas Poules, ultimata noite].42
Family entertainment would not come to a stand-still. English ballerina Miss Coktail [written “Miss Captail” in later editions] was debuting. Aldon and Lopez, and La Muse were also performing. The campeonato of jiu-jitsu with Conde Koma and his troupe of Japanese fighters continued.43
Jiu-Jitsu versus Capoeiragem
Rapheal Golthus was a capoeira, believed by some to be a worthy exponent of the national game. On Saturday May 15, Conde Koma, knowing that Golthus was in the audience, deviated from the script and directly challenged him. Golthus accepted, but asked for eight days to prepare.
A curious writer wondered if Golthus was another Cyriaco.44
Perhaps eight days was not enough for Golthus after all. There was no report of the fight happening, and the Koma troupe departed soon after.
On Monday
May 17 or Tuesday May 18, Chemisura [sic, Shimizu] defeated Raku in the third round by armlock [chave de braço].45
Cops
On Wednesday, May 19, 1915 Conde Koma gave a demonstration of jiu-jitsu self-defense to the Rio civil guards. The visit was covered by A Noite, Correio da Manhã, and A Epocha. A Noite included a photograph of Koma demonstrating an armlock on the ground, (with both legs over the opponent’s neck).
Chief of Police Dr. Aurelino Leal and seven or eight (presumably) civil guards were shown standing, observing. All but one (probably Dr. Leal) was wearing kimono tops, dark belts, and dark pants, suggesting that they participated.
According to the report, the class was impressive, and jiu-jitsu training was going to be made mandatory for the civil guards [“jiu-jitsu” vae ser obrigatorio para os guardas civis]. Classes would take place mornings in the patio of the Central Police Building [Edificio da Policia Central]. Officers were satisfied with the demonstration class, but insisted that the lessons take place during their service hours [tempo de serviço] and not on their own time [horas da folga].46
A Epoca pointed out for those who hadn’t already heard, that “jiu-jitsu is a game by which the weak can use the force of the adversary to easily defeat him” [“O ‘jiu-jitsu’ é um jogo que facilita ao mais fraco utilisar-se das força do adversario e vencel-o facilmente”].
The techniques were of the traditional self-defense variety. Whether the secrets of “real fighting” were covered was not mentioned. Conde Koma taught the police finger locks [torsão dos dedos] and defenses against knife [faca], club [páo], punch [soco], thug chokes [gravata de um ‘apache’] and techniques for arresting a person “without fear that they would escape”.
But the class was not limited to self-defense techniques. Koma sparred with some guards and defeated them easily [conde de Koma lutou com alguns guardas, vencendo-os facilmente]. No doubt this aspect of the class was less a lesson and more a demonstration of credibility.
The reporter mentioned that jiu-jitsu was not entirely unknown among Cariocas. Various troupes of “players” [jogadores] of this sport had already visited Rio to entertain the people. However the fame of one troupe was shattered after the leader was knocked out in a few minutes by a capoeira using a “sting ray tail kick” [rabo de arraia]. The writer was alluding to the Cyriaco versus Sada Miyako challenge match in 1909. But, he added, Cyriaco died and other capoeiras didn’t want to fight in public, which allowed jiu-jitsu to come back.47
Choque: The Untold Story of Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil 1856-1949 (Volume 1) Page 7