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

WHY THIS ARTICLE

Feitósa is the anti-Vasques: the respected mestre who negotiates equality of conditions in the name of amateur ethics. His defeat, despite almost fair conditions, forces one to seek the causes elsewhere than in excuses — and a reader’s letter of 1929 had already found them.

The mestre of São Paulo

Born in Ceará, emigrated to São Paulo around 1920, having passed through the Navy before becoming a bus driver in the public service, Argemiro Feitósa was no professional fighter. But he was a recognised mestre: he “taught capoeira to many pupils in the Paulista capital,” and the sports press consulted him as an expert — before Vasques’s fight, whose man he knew well (they had served together in the Navy), then after, to analyse “the technical-tactical errors” of the loser. The day after the defeat, he challenged Omori “to wash the affront made to national capoeiragem.” He “just wants to demonstrate the superiority of the national weapon so discredited by Caetano Vasques.” And he nursed builder’s projects: an academy, and a book on capoeiragem — like Burlamaqui, the same year.

Three conditions

But not at any price. Feitósa set three demands, which are a document on the tactical and moral lucidity of the capoeiras. One: to fight outside the Circo Queirolo, “on a football ground or in an open-air space” — to rule out “any prior agreement on the outcome of the fight with the organisers,” and because “the full efficacy of capoeiragem expressed itself in a space without any hindrance,” far from the four ropes. The football ground echoed Burlamaqui’s proposals published in 1928.

Two: no kimono. The Circo answered with an argument of authority: “Géo Omori being a jiu-jitsu player, to defend himself, it will be necessary for his adversary to wear the kimono, to be able to apply the blows of this Japanese wrestling.” Feitósa’s reply, unanswerable: “Each fights in his own manner and it would not be funny for a good Brazilian capoeira to don a kimono, an all-Nippon garment, for the simple pleasure of offering the adversary an easy means of catching him.” He won his point: each in his own dress. Three: no fee for the fighters — the ethic of amateur sport, in direct response to the venality trial made of Vasques.

While the organisation was being worked out, a demonstration at the Guarda Civica, early December 1928, before the chief and instructor of the institution, sealed his reputation: “All persons present remained impressed by the skill of the patriot capoeira.” The press already saw in him “the new Cyriaco” — twenty years on, the feat of the Moleque Cyriaco against the “gigantic Japanese wrestler” still served as a national standard.

13 January 1929, São Bento ground

The fight took place two months after the challenge, in the negotiated conditions: outside the Circo, on the São Bento ground; Feitósa without a kimono, “shod in savates”; five rounds of five minutes; four preliminary fights; and a jury of five journalists named for the occasion. Everything Vasques had not had, Feitósa had obtained. He lost all the same — a “cutting defeat.”

The letter from Jacarehy

Why? Six days later, a reader, Arthur José Moraes, sent the Diario Nacional the analysis the thesis validates: “Argemiro Feitósa may be a good capoeira, but weakened by lack of exercise, for, as far as I know, he is a driver, he has no companions for the practice of exercises, losing, consequently, agility, and still more, the coolness proper to those who dedicate themselves to this sport.”

Training. “Moving away from an innatist conception of physical performance, he attributed the successive defeats of the capoeiras to a cruel lack of exercise due to the evident absence of play-partners.” Indeed, in all his interviews, Feitósa never evoked the least preparation. Facing him: three hundred professional fights, a whole life of training at the Kodokan — and a rulebook still “restrictive in matters of percussion techniques.”

The defeat of 13 January 1929 did not prove the inferiority of capoeiragem. It proved that an art, however superior, does not replace partners, hours and a structure. It was, in hollow, the whole programme of Burlamaqui — and the mestre of the never-written book had just administered its demonstration at his own expense.

SOURCES

National Library of Brazil: Diario Nacional, 21 Oct. 1928; “As lutas de capoeira. O japonez Géo Omori acceita o desafio,” 23 Oct. 1928; “Uma exhibição de capoeiragem na Guarda Civica,” 6 Dec. 1928; “A proposito da decadencia da capoeira. Uma carta de um leitor de Jacarehy,” 19 Jan. 1929. — 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.1.

IN THE CORPUS

→ 19 October 1928: Out of Reform School Five Days Before the Fight

→ The Circle or the Ring: A 1928 Rulebook’s Hidden Choice

→ “Address Yourself Directly to the Japanese”

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE

MALO, Olivier. The Man Who Refused the Ring, the Kimono and the Money. In: Black Combat Arts Institute — Articles [online]. No. 44. 2026 [accessed date]. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/articles/the-man-who-refused-the-ring-the-kimono-and-the-money. Adapted from the author's doctoral thesis, Université des Antilles, 2020.