The Fight Everyone Cites and No One Has Read

WHY THIS ARTICLE

The Archive section of the corpus rests on one principle: one document, one story. This is the discipline’s foundational document — the primary source of the 1 May 1909 scene. To read it line by line is to see what the second-hand accounts lost.

A rulebook made for the Japanese

Before the first second of the fight, everything was already written — against Cyriaco. Both men wear the kimono: the theatre management imposes it, “so as to allow the Japanese to throw, immobilise or strangle his adversary more easily.” The match is set for a single round. Almost all techniques are permitted: kicks, throws, joint locks, chokes — the full jiu-jitsu repertoire. A coffee porter of thirty-eight or thirty-nine, dressed in his adversary’s garb, under his adversary’s rules, facing a professional of twenty-eight who has taught for twelve years. And one detail the source preserves: “Cyriaco was barefoot.”

“Either he leapt like a cat”

Here is the scene, as O Paiz describes it on 2 May — the primary source from which all we know derives: “Cyriaco […] developed his attack: either he leapt like a cat, or crouched so low that he seemed to be seated. The Japanese awaited the moment of the attack; however, Cyriaco, making a rapid flexion, sent him a violent kick — a rabo de arraia in capoeiragem slang […] which caused the immediate fall of the Japanese. Cyriaco was barefoot. It was a delirium of applause. The Japanese master lay still for a few seconds, and his adversary ready for defence or attack. Sada Miako rose, finally, disposed to continue the fight. Cyriaco renewed the blow, which nearly killed the Japanese again […]. So, Sada Miako gave himself up for beaten and abandoned the arena.”

The original text specifies what translations omit: the blow strikes “de encontro ao parietal direito” — against the right parietal bone. The rabo de arraia — to balance on the hands and strike with both feet at the face or body — reaches the professor’s skull.

Why Myako never saw it coming

The source allows a technical analysis the myth never makes. The Japanese, the thesis notes, “was without doubt disconcerted, taken by surprise. He was unable to detect, in his adversary’s movements, the least clue to his offensive intentions.” A punch to the face, a kick to the body — those a jiu-jitsu professor knows how to anticipate. But a man who leaps like a cat, all but sits down, then tips onto his hands to strike with both feet: nothing, in the grammar of jiu-jitsu, prepares one to read those signals. Cyriaco’s victory is no miracle. It is the effect of a gestural language illegible to the adversary — the first public demonstration of what the thesis would name, a century later, the internal logic of the game.

The loser’s honour

The document also preserves what the patriotic account erased: Myako’s combativeness. First rabo de arraia: immediate fall, a few seconds of stillness — then the professor rises, “disposed to continue the fight.” Still groggy, “determined to reverse the balance of force.” It takes a second blow, which “nearly killed the Japanese again,” for him to admit defeat and leave the arena. Two rabos de arraia to the skull. An adversary who rises between them. The 1 May 1909 was not an execution: it was a fight — and the loser showed a courage the source records without reserve.

The rabo de arraia becomes the game’s emblem

The consequences fit in two lines of the thesis. After 1 May 1909, “the rabo de arraia became the emblematic blow of the national struggle in place of the sweep (rasteira) and the head-butt (cabeçada). Capoeira was becoming, from then on, an aerial, spectacular and acrobatic discipline.” And this spectacularisation had an unexpected repercussion: movements so difficult to execute are not learned alone. “Young men from good families wishing to obtain the same dexterity as the national hero Cyriaco necessarily had to take lessons.” The feat of a barefoot coffee porter created, in one evening, the social need for the capoeira teacher.

One evening in May 1909. Two blows struck to a professor’s skull. And the technical trajectory of an entire discipline — reoriented.

SOURCES

“Os matchs do International. Jiu-Jitsu versus capoeiragem. Victoria do sport nacional,” O Paiz, Rio de Janeiro, 2 May 1909, p. 2 (original Portuguese cited in the thesis); “Jiu-jitsu vencido pela capoeiragem,” Gazeta de Noticias, 2 May 1909, p. 6 — National Library of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). — 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.

IN THE CORPUS

→ The Champion Who Refused to Fight a Black Man

→ Winning by Falling, Touching Without Touching

→ The Other Japanese Master — the One History Forgot

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Fight Everyone Cites and No One Has Read. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 24. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-fight-everyone-cites-and-no-one-has-read. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.