The Secrets of Jiu Jitsu - Paperback

by [translated] M. P. Lynch (Author)

A renowned kickboxer steps into the ring to face off with the first man in his country to assert that Jiu Jitsu is superior to all other martial arts. The bout is over in 26 seconds when the Jiu Jitsu man applies an armbar.No, this isn't the mid 1990's we're talking about: This matchup took place in Paris nearly a century before! In 1905 the Jiu Jitsu professor Re Nié, having been classically trained in Japan, went head-to-head with Master-at-arms Georges Dubois, head of security at the Paris Opera. Dubois was an ardent sportsman, powerful from his weight training regimen, and skilled in boxing as well as savate - in short an all around tough nut and a skeptic when it came to the mystique behind eastern martial arts. All he managed to do was throw a low kick, and then he was down and out, submitting before his elbow snapped. The five hundred or so sports journalists were dumbstruck by what they had witnessed.Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun. Dubois went on to study the Japanese art of locks and strangleholds, and even incorporated them into his book How to Defend Yourself. While Jiu Jitsu did find a wide and steady following, its popularity simmered in the background for another ninety years, when all at once televised tournaments brought its power before the eyes of millions, and now there is no fighter worthy of the name who has not mastered the armbar and the triangle choke. When professor Re Nié set forth the fundamentals of his technique under the title of The Secrets of Jiu Jitsu, he was a pioneer - but only in the West. In Japan, this jealously guarded secret art of the samurai had been practised for centuries, and maintained in a form that suited warriors: A lean, mean, intelligent, violent, and almost perfect method whereby a smaller man can defeat a larger man through tactics, physiological knowledge, and that terrible weapon known as leverage.