“The Best Capoeira in Brazil” Was a Jiu-Jitsu Teacher

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Aleixo is the link every genealogy forgets: fellow pupil of the Gracies through their common master, direct heir of Miura, collector of the forgotten blows of capoeiragem. His trajectory joins in a single man the two lineages — Japanese and Brazilian — that history recounts as enemies.

A one-man orchestra of the body

The inventory of his functions is dizzying. Capoeira. Trainer of football clubs — including Fluminense F.C. Teacher of Swedish gymnastics. Teacher of jiu-jitsu. Master of bayonet and sword fencing. Physical educator in the colleges. Combat instructor at the School of Infantry Sergeants and at the School of the Civil Guard. Mario Aleixo was “an inescapable figure of sport and of capoeiragem during the first decades of the twentieth century in Rio de Janeiro.”

By the late 1920s, for many, he was “the best capoeira in Brazil” — the title is the press’s, and it is George Gracie himself who so designates him in 1931, promising to defeat him. And he was “without doubt the first to give paid capoeiragem lessons within an official academy recognised as such” — inaugurated before the press in the week of 16 August 1920. The first paying academy in the history of the discipline.

The founding paradox: pupil of Miura

Whence came his science? From the hereditary enemy — in the literal sense. His first jiu-jitsu teacher was Sakuzo Miura, the “Sada Miako” beaten by Cyriaco. Aleixo “said he had spent several nights fighting at his side and exchanging on the theme of personal defence.” He continued his training with Count Koma, arrived in Brazil in 1915, sixth-dan black belt of the Kodokan — the man who taught jiu-jitsu to Carlos, Hélio and George Gracie, “the founding fathers of contemporary Brazilian jiu-jitsu.”

Measure what this means: the best capoeira in Brazil and the Gracie brothers had the same master. The two lineages the 1930s would set against one another in a “fratricidal war” come out of the same room. And it was Cyriaco’s victory that swung Aleixo. A jiu-jitsu teacher first, he became aware that evening of the real efficacy of the Brazilian game — and set about “collecting the forgotten blows of capoeiragem, in silence, without anyone knowing.”

The “Brazilianised jiu-jitsu”

As early as 1914, the press presents his “new system,” founded on “the alliance between Japan and Brazil”: “It was proven with this experiment [1 May 1909] that the game of our ‘capoeiras’ was incontestably superior to ‘jiu-jitsu’ […] Mario Aleixo, drawing from each of the games what it had that was most profitable and making the ‘brazilianised jiu-jitsu,’ which already knows success.”

His technical diagnosis, delivered in 1921, is of a lucidity the purists’ quarrel would never reach: “The blows of the old national game deployed in fighting on open terrain. As it was a closed attack, close combat, one was forced to adopt other means of defence.” Capoeiragem reigns at a distance; jiu-jitsu, at contact. From the collection of forgotten blows he added to his system the head-butt, the sweeps (rasteira, banda), the scissor (tesoura), the Bahian (baiana), the median kick. And he invented one, which he baptised “guayamú” — after one of the most famous maltas of Rio. A codifier paying homage to the street bands in his nomenclature: the whole ambivalence of transmission holds in that word.

The beach against the salons

In the early 1930s, facing the Gracies, Aleixo performs a return to the sources that is also a declaration of cultural war. Against the palaces: “That is why I disagree with competitions in salons, rings, etc. Capoeira requires free terrain and… fighting for real. Capoeiragem does not lend itself to fantasies, like jiu-jitsu (Japanese game) which prepares man to run the world winning sums in demonstrations, in palaces, in soft and magically lit salons […] Capoeiragem permits neither exhibitionism nor ‘mise-en-scène.’”

For health: “The capoeira is not a vagabond or an alcoholic (as one might erroneously suppose), but an individual who takes care of his body and his health.” Open air, bare-chested “like the fishermen,” amateurism, effort for effort’s sake: the thesis reads in it the echo of hygienist theories and of Georges Hébert’s natural method. Miura’s pupil ended as a defender of nature against money — while the pupils of his fellow student Koma built, in the lit salons, the empire that would bear the name Cadaval had forged: Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

SOURCES

National Library of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro): “O ‘jiu-jitsu’ combinado com o ‘jogo da capoeira’,” A Noticia, 14–15 Sept. 1914; J. A., “A Arte da defesa pessoal,” Revista da Semana, 18 June 1921; “Jiu-jitsu versus capoeiragem. Vencerei a maior capoeira do Brasil — disse-nos George Gracie,” A Noite, 30 Nov. 1931; and press 1909–1921. — Hébert, G., Le sport contre l’éducation physique, 1925. — 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. C.3.

IN THE CORPUS

→ Capoeira Had Teachers and Textbooks Long Before Its Official “Rebirth”

→ The First “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu” Dates from 1912 — and Has Nothing to Do with the Gracies

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. “The Best Capoeira in Brazil” Was a Jiu-Jitsu Teacher. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 34. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-best-capoeira-in-brazil-was-a-jiu-jitsu-teacher. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.