100 Year Anniversary of Gracie Humaita
The year 1925 has special significance, not only for the Gracie Humaita team, but for the entire Brazilian jiu-jitsu community in general. That year, the very first BJJ academy opened its doors in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
As we noted in an earlier blog post, the story of jiu-jitsu in the began many years before that fateful day in the Cidade Maravilhosa (“Marvelous City”), when a Japanese judoka by the name of Mitsuyo Maeda arrived to the country that would become his new home. This is well known, and well documented already. However, it is widely accepted by many in the BJJ world that the origins the uniquely Brazilian style of martial art was there, at the original Academia Gracie, at Rua Marques de Abrantes, in the Flamengo neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.
Having trained under Maeda for nearly 10 years, Carlos Gracie - the eldest of five brothers - opened the academy after the family moved to Rio from Belém do Pará. It was there that Carlos continued to teach his four younger brothers, including Helio, whose own childhood weaknesses played an outsized role in transforming the sport into what it is today.
Over the subsequent years, the Gracie Academy moved several times, until in 1985 it finally settled in the location that birthed the name “Gracie Humaita”: the Padre Antonio Vieira High College in the neighborhood of Humaita.