Bartitsu: MMA one hundred years ago

[Devon]

Few people realize that the original Asian/European MMA style was actually founded over a century ago, in merry old England.

"Bartitsu" was a combination of two styles of traditional jujitsu with early Kodokan judo, plus British boxing, French savate and stick fighting. It was a self-defense oriented style that also included serious MMA competition (jujitsu vs. savate, jiujitsu vs. English wrestling, etc.) Bartitsu Club champions like Yukio Tani, Sadekazu Uyenishi and Armand Cherpillod fought thousands of mixed-style matches in the early year of the 1900s.

Sadly, Bartitsu itself only lasted for a few years before being over-shadowed by jujitsu and was almost forgotten until recently.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartitsu for a good overview and http://www.bartitsu.org/ for more detail.

Under Bartitsu is included boxing, or the use of the fist as a hitting medium, the use of the feet both in an offensive and defensive sense, the use of the walking stick as a means of self-defence. Judo and jujitsu, which were secret styles of Japanese wrestling, he would call close play as applied to self-defence.

In order to ensure as far as it was possible immunity against injury in cowardly attacks or quarrels, they must understand boxing in order to thoroughly appreciate the danger and rapidity of a well-directed blow, and the particular parts of the body which were scientifically attacked. The same, of course, applied to the use of the foot or the stick.

Judo and jujitsu were not designed as primary means of attack and defence against a boxer or a man who kicks you, but were only to be used after coming to close quarters, and in order to get to close quarters it was absolutely necessary to understand boxing and the use of the foot.
(E.W. Barton-Wright, 1902: 261)

Devon