If you’re bored, here are some fun facts about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. These facts cover the most successful submissions to the first people to accomplish significant achievements in the sport. Also, this information looks at nerdy information such as the origins of names behind moves and how they first came about. You may be surprised by this interesting list which briefly looks at the history of the martial art and some of the quirkier details of how certain things came about.
1. Mitsuyo Maeda is considered the founder of BJJ as he translated the moves over from Judo. Born in Japan but living in Brazil, he taught Carlos Gracie how to use Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
2. Royce Gracie was the first ever UFC Champion. He achieved this by using BJJ to defeat his opponents including a Gi choke on Ken Shamrock, as Royce was allowed to fight in the Gi at the time.
3. The term ‘Kimura’ comes from Masahiko Kimura who used the submission on Helio Gracie in a superfight in 1949. Kimura was a Judoka and the move was named after him after he broke the shoulder of Helio during the match.
4. As of 2020, Robert Drysdale is the only American to have ever won Worlds (gi) and ADCC (nogi)
5. According to his family, Helio Gracie was still training BJJ at age 95. He trained BJJ weeks until his death where he finally past away due to old age.
6. Finalstep Marketing surveyed 727 BJJ practitioners, of those interviewed 691 were men, whilst 36 were women which shows BJJ is a male-dominated sport. Of those, the most common belt was blue belt, whereas the rarest belt was the black belt.
7. The first ever ADCC Absolutes winner was Mario Sperry back in 1998. He also won the -99KG division. This would be the first and only times he won medals at the competition.
8. The website BJJSurveys.com lists Gracie Barra as the biggest gym organisation in the world. According to the website, it has a 12% market share of all gyms with the second biggest being Alliance with 6% of the market.
9. The term ‘Jiu’ means ‘gentle’ and the term ‘Jitsu’ means ‘art’. This means the original Japanese translation means ‘gentle art’ in English.
10. BJJSurveys.com also put out a list with the average age for each belt. Most white belts are aged 28, blue belts are 31, purple 33, brown 36 and black belts are 35 years old.
11. On average, it takes roughly 10 years to get to black belt. This is far longer than most other martial arts where it takes roughly 3-4 years to achieve the rank.
12. The first ever Absolute winner of Worlds was in 1996. This was Amaury Bitetti who was Brazilian. He also went on to win the Absolutes the next year as well.
13. According to theselfdefenceexpert.com, BJJ would overtake Judo in 2020. This was based on predictions of growth patterns and was measured in terms of global participants in each martial art.
14. The first Jiu Jitsu school in Brazil was opened by Geo Omori in 1909. However, it should be noted the techniques here may look different from those used today.
15. Contrary to popular belief, the highest belt rank isn’t black belt. Whilst black belt is seen as the most senior rank to many – the highest belt is the red belt which is extremely hard to get. Many practitioners can get to black but very few will ever make it to red.
16. The spelling ‘Jiu Jitsu’ was the original, older form of spelling the word. Newer terms are spelt ‘Ju Jitsu’ without the ‘i’. Often, Japanese Ju Jitsu is spelt without the ‘i’ for some reason.
17. Children have a different belt ranking system compared to adults. Whilst both belts start at white, a kids belt ends at green which is considered a black belt in terms of adult status.
18. MMA forum Sherdog claims that from UFC 1 until UFC 16 the most common submission in UFC was the rear naked choke. This made up 32% of all submissions, the closest was the guillotine with 18%. This data was over 2557 fights.
19. According to MMA Leech, the most common submission in the 2015 ADCC tournament was the rear naked choke at nearly 25%. The closest was the armbar which was closer to 20%. Because of this, the rear naked choke can be considered the most common submission.
