The Man Who Beat Carlos Gracie — and Was Assaulted by Three Brothers

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The Rufino Santos file is doubly precious: it documents a victory over Carlos Gracie that family legend does not tell, and the extra-sporting response it aroused. And its author was not even a capoeira — only a man who refused to have proofs rigged.

The challenge of 3 July

On the evening of the triple fight, as the public rumbles, a man surges onto the ring: “challenging the Gracie brothers, for a fight of American free wrestling against jiu-jitsu. A challenge completely out of place at that moment because it took on the character of a provocation that could degenerate into a brawl. The police had to intervene, putting a stop to the tumult that threatened.”

The man is Manoel Rufino dos Santos, specialist in free wrestling, animated that evening by “a great patriotic ardour.” He is not a capoeira — but he admires “this essentially Brazilian discipline, which it was necessary to transmit to the youth”: it is he who, in 1927, had prefaced the book of Annibal Burlamaqui. And in the press, he tirelessly denounced “the rulebook in the manifest disfavour of the professors of the national game.”

The victory legend ignores

The provocation of 3 July “was the beginning of the hostilities between the Gracie camp and the free wrestling champion.” A fight ensued, against Carlos Gracie in person. Result, recorded by the thesis: Carlos Gracie “was declared loser after abandoning the ring twice.” The founding father of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, leaving the ring twice before a free wrestler: the scene belongs to no hagiography. It belongs to the archives.

18 October 1932

What followed exceeds sport. “On 18 October 1932, Rufino Santos was the victim of an assault perpetrated by three members of the Gracie family. He was seriously wounded and his aggressors condemned by the courts for these acts.” The front page of the Diario de Noticias of 20 October names everyone: “Prof. Manoel Rufino dos Santos, of the Tijuca Tennis Club and of the A.C.M., seriously wounded. His aggressors were the brothers Helio, Carlos and Jorge Gracie.” The motive, according to the thesis: “The jiu-jitsu professors did not tolerate the questioning of their hegemony expressed by Santos on many occasions in the carioca newspapers.”

What a judicial file weighs

In the economy of proof, the Rufino Santos affair occupies a place apart: a court condemnation is not a contestable sporting report — it is a fact established contradictorily. It lights up retrospectively the whole sequence of 1930–1932: the counter-legend of 1909, the cunning contracts, the non-fights of 3 July, and finally the fists three against one when words no longer sufficed. The nascent hegemony did not tolerate contestation — neither on the ring, nor in the columns, nor in the street. The man who had best understood it was neither capoeira nor theorist: a prefacer of Burlamaqui, climbed one evening onto a ring to say no.

SOURCES

“Os lutadores de jiu-jitsu venceram os capoeiras,” Correio da Manhã, 4 July 1931; “O prof. Manoel Rufino dos Santos […] sériamente ferido. Foram seus aggressores os irmãos, Helio, Carlos e Jorge Gracie,” Diario de Noticias, 20 October 1932 — National Library of Brazil. — Burlamaqui, A., 1928 (preface by M. Rufino Santos). — Malo, O., La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles (1905–1984), doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020, Part II, chap. A.2.

IN THE CORPUS

→ 3 July 1931: The Rulebook That Forbade Winning

→ Without the Gracies, No Modern Roda

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Man Who Beat Carlos Gracie — and Was Assaulted by Three Brothers. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 49. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-man-who-beat-carlos-gracie-and-was-assaulted-by-three-brothers. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.