Ground Game: A Short and Wandering History of Jiu Jitsu in Europe

Before it became a mainstay of modern gyms, café conversations, and algorithm-driven highlight reels, Jiu Jitsu was a strange and slightly elusive presence in Europe: somewhere between self-defence and theatre, between the battlefield and vaudeville.

It begins, as many good martial arts stories do, with the samurai. Traditional Japanese jujutsu was developed for life-or-death scraps when weapons failed. These were throws, joint locks, and control techniques designed to work while wearing armour, on muddy ground, against someone trying very hard to kill you.

In 1882, Jigoro Kano reworked that rough, chaotic history into something more structured. Judo was clean-lined, teachable, and, crucially, exportable. Within a few decades, it was turning up in cities across Europe, usually under the broader, more mysterious label of “Jiu Jitsu,” with travelling Japanese practitioners performing techniques on willing (and often winded) volunteers.

One of the more curious chapters came courtesy of Edward William Barton-Wright, an English engineer who studied in Japan and returned with big ideas. He combined Jiu Jitsu with boxing, French savate, and walking stick techniques to form Bartitsu, probably the first mixed martial art taught in the West, and still the best-named. It had a brief cultural moment. Police learned it. Suffragettes used it. Music halls added it to the bill between the knife jugglers, ventriloquists and strongmen. There were instructionals in newspapers and how-to columns in the Illustrated London News.  It was exotic, useful, and just weird enough to feel modern.

Over the decades, Judo gradually took over the Jiu Jitsu mantle in Europe. It was easier to organise, better for clubs, and came with official rankings and crisp white uniforms. By the mid-20th century, “Jiu Jitsu” in most European cities really meant Judo: neat, effective, but largely upright. The messier, ground-based stuff had faded into the background.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, something else was happening.

Mitsuyo Maeda, a Japanese Judoka, had landed in Brazil in 1914 and passed his knowledge to a young Carlos Gracie. Carlos's younger brother, Helio, who was smaller, lighter, and less able to rely on strength, began adapting the techniques and stripping them down to essentials. The result was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu: a system built around timing, leverage, and making someone much bigger than you look suddenly quite silly.

In the 1990s, the Gracie family took BJJ to America via a series of unsanctioned challenges and, eventually, the first UFC. Watching Royce Gracie beat larger opponents with calm, unhurried control became something of a watershed moment. A whole generation of martial artists suddenly realised there was more to fighting than big punches and bigger shorts.

By the mid to late ’90s, Europe had started paying attention again. Seminars were happening. VHS tapes were circulating. In 1997, Mauricio Gomes opened the first proper BJJ academy in the UK. By the 2000s, there were black belts in most major cities. Today, places like London, Paris, and Copenhagen are considered serious grappling hubs, home to world champions, major competitions, and tightly packed 7am open mats filled with accountants and art students alike.

There’s something appealing about the way Jiu Jitsu has travelled: always shifting, always adapting, always half-misunderstood and then reinterpreted. From feudal battlefields to Edwardian drawing rooms to industrial units in Bermondsey, it has survived because it never quite stays the same.

And maybe that’s part of the charm, not just in Jiu Jitsu, but in anything worth doing. You learn the rules, then you learn to bend them. You take what works, leave what doesn’t, and figure the rest out as you go.