“Brothers in Race”: The Fight That Never Happened

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Between the triumph of 1 May and the death of 1912, the myth tells nothing. The sources, on the other hand, tell: a challenge thrown at giants of over a hundred kilos, a demonstration before the champions, and a declaration to the press that makes Cyriaco the first capoeira to publicly claim the status — and the salary — of a professional athlete.

The challenge to the giants

Cyriaco attends the Smykal–Dierry match, the capital’s first luta livre. Before this form of duel so close to capoeiragem, he is “agreeably surprised” — and he sees at once “a new opportunity to fight professionally.” On 8 October 1909, in the middle of the championship, he challenges the whole troupe of wrestlers. Measure the audacity. These champions all weigh over a hundred kilos — far more than the jiu-jitsu professor he felled in May. “But, sure of his technique and armed with an unshakeable confidence, he saw in it no argument against himself.” His reputation has preceded him: all the wrestling champions refuse. All, save one.

Dierry accepts

The one who takes up the challenge is Dierry N’Diage — the Senegalese of atypical style, connoisseur of his country’s wrestling, first combatant of the luta livre, and whose technique had several times been compared to that of the capoeiras. An adversary of choice in every respect. And the press retains one further parameter: like Cyriaco, he is Black. A Imprensa announces a fight between “brothers in race.” A creole capoeira from Campos against a wrestler from Senegal, in a Rio theatre, under the open rules of the nascent luta livre: the whole Black Atlantic held in that bill. The fight is fixed for 11 October.

The demonstration of 9 October

On the eve of the deadline, on 9 October, after the evening’s last match, Cyriaco climbs into the arena — not to fight, but to show: he “showed the wrestlers the national game and its consequent defence, the creole’s skill provoking admiration and enthusiasm.” The scene condenses the discipline’s new status: “Capoeiragem was now both a competitive sport disputed between the four ropes of a ring or in the middle of an arena, and a spectacle admired from a seat in the stands.” But Cyriaco has not come to amuse the gallery. He has come to promote his fight — and to set his conditions.

The sentence that stopped everything

Before the assembled press representatives, he declares: “Cyriaco ‘the wrestler’ Brazilian declared, in the circle of press representatives, that without being financially guaranteed, he would not go onto the ‘ring’ of the Concerto Avenida to fight with […] Dierry.” No guarantee, no fight. The request came to nothing. The duel of the “brothers in race” never took place.

One can read this episode as a missed appointment. It must be read as a declaration of existence: the European champions he rubs shoulders with are salaried, framed, guaranteed; Cyriaco demands the same treatment — to be paid for his art, as they are. The hero of 1 May refuses to be a free attraction. And his demonstration of 9 October nonetheless “worked a little more toward the recognition of capoeiragem within the milieu of combat sports.”

The man who sums up half a century

The thesis gives his trajectory its just measure: “Cyriaco allowed himself every extravagance: to fight a jiu-jitsu professor or a wrestling champion, to demonstrate his skill inside a theatre before a gathering of journalists and spectators or within a faculty of medicine, and to teach capoeiragem to young men of the carioca bourgeoisie. He alone sums up the path travelled by the discipline during the first half of the twentieth century.”

Solicited to “systematise the game so as to form an efficient school,” he is stopped by illness and dies in 1912. The journalists then salute “one of the most characteristic representatives of our classic capoeiragem.” A few months later, carried by that halo, the second capoeiragem championship opens at the Circo Spinelli. The fight of the brothers in race did not take place. But Cyriaco’s sentence remains — the most modern of his whole story: without a guarantee, I do not climb up.

SOURCES

National Library of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro): “Luta Romana,” A Imprensa, 9 Oct. 1909 (“irmãos na raça”; declaration to the press); “Lucta Romana. Grande campeonato internacional,” O Paiz, 8 Oct. 1909; “O Cyriaco,” O Paiz, 19 May 1912; “O ‘Moleque Cyriaco’. Sua morte,” Gazeta de Noticias, 19 May 1912. — Pederneiras, R., “O jogo da capoeira,” Jornal do Brasil, 28 June 1931. — Malo, O., La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020, Part I, chap. A.2–A.3.

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Champion Who Refused to Fight a Black Man

→ The Night When All Blows Were Allowed

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. “Brothers in Race”: The Fight That Never Happened. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 27. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/brothers-in-race-the-fight-that-never-happened. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.