The Night When All Blows Were Allowed

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The official genealogy of free combat — vale-tudo, MMA — ignores its first chapter. It has a date, a place, two names and a rulebook published in the press. This article restores it piece by piece, with the hybridisation of styles that the chroniclers of 1909 were already describing in the terms of capoeiragem.

An unpopular Hungarian, an irresistible Senegalese

The 1909 edition of the international Greco-Roman wrestling championship takes place a few weeks after Cyriaco’s feat, in the very theatre that consecrated him. And something overflows the frame. Certain bouts free themselves from the canonical form founded on holds alone. On 5 August, O Paiz notes it: “3rd bout — Smykal, Hungarian, 110 kg against Massetti, Italian of 106 kg. This bout was not really a Greco-Roman fight […] a fight of head-butts, falls, punches […] The latter even used our kick, as a defensive weapon.”

Smykal is the man the public dislikes: violent, contrary to the rules and to sporting ethics — but his way of fighting, the journalists note, recalls capoeiragem. Dierry N’Diage, meanwhile, is the man the public adores: “the public grew enthusiastic when Dierry applied a few slaps” (16 September). Two fighters the Greco-Roman rulebook no longer contains. The entrepreneur Paschoal Segreto draws the consequences.

The open rulebook

For reasons of organisation and to meet the public’s expectations, Segreto officialises free fights — luta livre — with an open rulebook: all normally forbidden techniques are permitted. “It was a first in the capital.” The two combatants chosen to inaugurate the genre: Smykal and Dierry, “known for their inclination toward this type of exercise.” The press notice of 1 October fixes the rule in so many words: “into this fight will enter all prohibited blows, even those usual in the free fights of Senegal.” The bout is baptised the “Senegalese match.” Senegalese wrestling then associated throws and open-hand strikes — the very ones that, at the turn of the 1970s, would be supplanted by English boxing techniques. In 1909, in the heart of Rio, it enters the championship.

“No one really knew if it was a bullfight”

The account of the duel is a document for the anthology: “Dierry, in the arena, was priceless; now he seemed a clown, now an excellent capoeira […] gingando firmly, and other times leaping, defending himself with rare gallantry […] Smykal, always dancing like an old bear, hurling himself against Dierry, always fleeing in the most comical way possible […] No one really knew if it was a bullfight, a cockfight, a boxing game, or a high capoeiragem such as was even employed by Dierry.”

Two traits point straight to the universe of the Brazilian game: the gingando — the ginga, that swaying back and forth and side to side, recognised by the chroniclers in the body of a Senegalese wrestler — and the mockery of the adversary, the mark of the “Belle Époque” (the pre-1914 golden age) capoeiras. Another account enumerates the arsenal: “The first blows were slaps in the Brazilian style, kicks and infernal head-butts.”

France too enters the arena

The nascent luta livre absorbs everything that passes. A match is announced under the title “French savate,” between Raymond Caseaux and Aimable de la Calmette. And the chronicler of the two Frenchmen’s duel notes this, worth its weight in gold: “Kicks, head-butts and a simulacrum of rasteira were the blows employed in the fight.” The simulacrum and the rasteira — two words from the lexicon of capoeiragem — now serve to describe two French champions. The announcement of another match sums up the mixing in one phrase: “all sorts of holds being permitted, from the capoeiragem of this land to boxing and the Japanese traps.”

Japan, Brazil, Europe, Senegal: on these boards a hybrid practice is born — and it still has a future: on 14 March 1917, a tournament announces a “free fight, with the right to use the blows of Brazilian wrestling, capoeira,” between the Frenchman “Le Marin” and the Brazilian champion “Silva.” Luta livre was not born in the 1930s. It was born in October 1909, of a Senegalese match — before a public that recognised its own capoeiragem in it.

SOURCES

National Library of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro): “Luta Romana,” Gazeta de Noticias, 1 Oct. 1909; “Luta romana,” A Imprensa, 6 Oct. 1909 (“Match senegalense”); Jornal do Brasil, 6 and 8 Oct. 1909; O Paiz, 5 Aug., 16 Sept. and 8 Oct. 1909. — Charlemont, J., La boxe française [1877]. — 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.3.

IN THE CORPUS

→ 1903–1909: Black Athletes as Equals in the Arenas of Rio — and the Luta Livre Born of It

→ The Champion Who Refused to Fight a Black Man

→ “Brothers in Race”: The Fight That Never Happened

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Night When All Blows Were Allowed. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 26. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-night-when-all-blows-were-allowed. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.