“I Am Still Not Convinced”: The Colonel’s Reply

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The history of the vanquished is rarely told in their words. The Colonel’s, preserved in full, formulate as early as 1931 the analysis research would validate: without common equitable rules, no fight proves the supremacy of a method.

The man who refused his defeat

On 3 July 1931, the Colonel did not lose his fight: it was George Gracie who was disqualified for a blow to the face. But in the ambient account, the whole evening counted as a rout of the capoeiras. On 20 November, he obtains the front page of the Diario de Noticias — headline: “The resurrection of capoeiragem” — and re-establishes the terms: “I want to fight George Gracie again. I am still not convinced of the supremacy of Japanese wrestling over Brazilian wrestling.”

The analysis of the “cunning contracts”

There follows the heart of the argument — which no theorist of sport could have formulated better: “It is necessary that the Brazilian press analyse the situation of the fighters who fight against the Gracies. They make so many restrictions that, in the end, their adversaries can do only one thing: wait for them to apply their blows against them […] Each system of wrestling possesses its particular blows, its characteristic manner of dominating and imposing itself. However, since the principal blows of this or that one are annulled by a cunning contract, it is impossible to affirm that there is supremacy of one over the other.”

The cunning contract: the expression deserves to remain. It designates exactly the mechanism of 3 July — to neutralise in writing the adversary’s weapons before meeting him. And his own disqualification? “I was disqualified in my fight against George only because I applied a ‘chulipa,’ although there was in the signed contract nothing that forbade the use of this blow, which has only the function of a feint.” Disqualified for a feint, by a rulebook that did not mention it: the cunning contract down to its application.

Renegotiating the space, refusing the kimono

The Colonel does not merely contest: he sets his conditions for the rematch, and each is a treatise on the game’s specificity. The space: “Capoeiragem is a wrestling very different from boxing, from Greco-Roman wrestling, from free wrestling and from jiu-jitsu. It cannot be practised with efficacy on a common ring. The fights must be done on grass, in a good large space, or else on a ring of 10 by 10 metres.” The six-metre ring of 3 July strangled the fighting at a distance — Feitósa had said it in São Paulo, Burlamaqui had written it in 1928 with his football ground.

The kimono: “The Gracie brothers have the custom of demanding that their adversaries appear on the ring in a kimono, alleging that jiu-jitsu was created for attack and defence in the street, where we all walk clothed. This resembles childishness. Capoeira too is not practised between naked men. So my fight with George must be quite clear on this point: I shall appear with shirt, trousers and common shoes.” The street argument, turned around in one phrase: if the fight simulates the street, then each comes to it dressed as in the street — not costumed for the holds of the other.

A lucidity without posterity

From Cyriaco demanding his guarantee in 1909, to Feitósa setting his three conditions in 1928, to the Colonel of November 1931: three generations of capoeiras formulated, with growing precision, the critique of the devices that made them lose. Nothing was lacking — neither the analysis of the rulebook, nor that of the space, nor that of the dress, nor the epistemological conclusion: such fights prove nothing. This lucidity had no posterity: history retained the defeats, not the analyses. To make them public, ninety-five years later, is not to rehabilitate losers. It is to restore to these men what they also were: the first critical theorists of the fight-spectacle.

SOURCES

Colonel (Eduardo José de Sant’Anna), in “A resurreição da capoeiragem,” Diario de Noticias, Rio de Janeiro, 20 November 1931 (full quotations) — National Library of Brazil. — 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

→ The Man Who Refused the Ring, the Kimono and the Money

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

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. “I Am Still Not Convinced”: The Colonel’s Reply. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 48. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/i-am-still-not-convinced-the-colonels-reply. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.