Bartitsu: THE MIXED MARTIAL ARTS OF VICTORIAN LONDON

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sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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MelE5150 said:
So. I'm attempting a turn of the century romance inspired by this thread. I've never been able to break the 200 page romance marker so I'll probably fail but my hero is Roarke De Braco lol. Keep posting pleeeease.
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Sweet. Give him a handlebar mustache and monocle
 
sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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1904-1-10 NY Tribune Supplement.. The author of the article, Irving Hancock ,wrote several books with Higashi.



1904-2-21 Indianapolis Journal



1904-2-26 Minneapolis Journal



1905-1-29 Pacific Commercial Advertiser. More Higashi and Ajax




1905-4-14 Pacific Commercial Advertiser.
 
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Lord Vutulaki

Lord Vutulaki

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MelE5150 said:


The list of things given to the human race by Queen Victoria’s London is long and, like a letter to Santa written by Wednesday Addams, largely grim. Victorian London may have seen itself as the ‘heart of civilization’.

There is, however, a source of pride that emerges from this maelstrom of Victorian London—perhaps inevitably, since the city stretched its claws halfway around the globe—was also the birthplace of the first mixed martial art, and home to some of the original Ultimate Fighters.

A whole technological revolution before Royce Gracie cemented the superiority of his family’s style of jiu jitsu by slaying the giant Shamrock at the first UFC, Edward Barton-Wright, a colonial engineer, was shocking and impressing London society in equal measure with his new combat system, which he called ‘Bartitsu’. His martial art combined jiu jitsu, Savate, bare-knuckle boxing and street fighting techniques to create a style which, in Barton-Wright’s own words, ‘should enable a man to defy anything.’



Like Gracie, Barton-Wright was a slight, unassuming man. Which must have made it all the more galling for the professional pugilists and wrestlers at St. James Hall in London when, fresh off the boat from Japan, he strode into their hangout and challenged the whole lot of them to a fight. ‘I overcame seven in succession in three minutes,’ he recalled in an interview given shortly before his death. ‘All,’ he added with satisfaction, ‘were fourteen stone.’

When Barton-Wright arrived in London at the end of the nineteenth century the city was in the grip of a mighty panic, thanks largely to the efforts of the nascent tabloid press. The Ripper had made such good copy that they decided to fill the back-alleys of London with a hundred more like him. Garrotters, Thugs, Footpads, and Scuttlers loomed menacingly from the front pages, put there by cynical newspaper editors hoping to part gullible readers from their money, and it was this wave of fear that Barton-Wright hoped would bear him all the way to the bank.

Bartitsu was never meant for popular consumption and, sadly, with the exception of a few public spectacles, it never really made it into the ring. Barton-Wright may have been the first mixed martial artist, but he was also an arch capitalist. More interesting to him than the creation of a new sport was the prospect of using his system to tease open the purse strings of the upper classes. He pitched Bartitsu to the cash-splashing man-about-town who longed to be able to swagger through the East End in a silk top hat without having to worry about having his teeth kicked in. With techniques that demonstrated how to fend off armed assailants with nothing but an opera cape, walking stick, and ‘the superior intelligence of the better classes’, Barton-Wright promised them all this and more.



With a little clever PR—and a few words of encouragement from the Prince Regent—he had soon generated enough interest from the moneyed classes to establish the Bartitsu Academy of Arms and Physical Culture in the heart of Soho. The Academy was lush—one visitor described it as “a huge subterranean hall, all glittering, white-tiled walls, and electric light, with ‘champions’ prowling around it like tigers”—and entry was only for the few.

Continue reading at Fightland.The Mixed Martial Arts of Victorian London | FIGHTLAND
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Plot Hole: Royce Gracie wasn't slight, his dad was and didnt invent anything besides an emphases on newaza because......physic!
 
sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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^^This slight guy with no muscle definition outweighed the vast majority of the Japanese jiudokas actively wrestling in the western world by at least 15 pounds.


And by "emphasis on ne-waza" You mean an major deficit of nage-waza, then you are correct.
 
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sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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1905-4-17 Pacific Commercial Advertiser



1905-5-12 L.A Herald



1906-8-3 Quincy Daily Herald



1908-3-28 The(St Paul) Appeal. The Appeal was a Afro-American paper



1909-11-7 University Missourian
 
sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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1909-11-11 Seattle Star


1910-3-17 Tacoma Times


1910-8-11 Quincy Daily Herald . I have no idea where the rest of this article went



1911-10-8 Arizona Republican. Bully! Yokoyama vs Shidleblower.



1912-5-4 Washington Evening Star
 
OhWhopDaChamp

OhWhopDaChamp

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Was Ono really permanently disfigured by the cheating ass wrestler? Fascinating that a president endorsed and trained JJ
 
sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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He received and returned a pretty good amount of eye gougings, bites and elbows on the ground. He was later active in the UK and Brazil so i think there was no permanent damage. He's lucky Olsen liked him and didn't kill him, later that week two guys stabbed Olsen and he fucked them up bad, the only thing that saved them was popo intervention.


This is a good little blurb from Mark Hewitts excellent book,



 
sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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1905-8-18 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Esai Maeda, AKA Count Koma



1914-12-2 Daily Missoulian



1915-7-8 South Bend News-Times



1918-1-1 Jiu-Jitsu, K. Yamanaka. Not a bad little book. The Kodakan looks a bit crowded.




1918-2-17 Brooklyn Daily Eagle
 
sebastien haff

sebastien haff

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found this and thought it had great graphics. The sumo guy on the mat is going for a stock or crucifix
 
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sebastien haff

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sebastien haff

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1904-8-21 Brooklyn Daily Eagle



1905-10-14. The 2 cylinder Reo Speedwagon = $32,434.50(2014)



1911-11-2



1918-1-29


1918-1-30
 
OhWhopDaChamp

OhWhopDaChamp

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I just noticed there aren't any Asian romantic heroes in modern fiction. Writing group suggests non Asian JJ practitioner. Huh.
 
sebastien haff

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Here's the armlock from kesa gatame shown in the beginning montage.










Stolen from Jeff Meszaros


 
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sebastien haff

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1904-8-19 Pittsburgh Press



1905-12-1 Outing Magazine



1929-1-7 Deseret News



1930-3-5 Sydney Mail. The famous nut, Capt Leopold McLaglen



1936-1-28 Prescott Evening Courier
 
sebastien haff

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1906. The Game Of Jiu Jitsu. Yukiio Tani, Taro Miyaki. Along with Raku's book, the best of the period. The Bas Rutten neck crank
 
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