Over the past few years, certain members of the Jiu-Jitsu community have wanted to re-invent the wheel and start to differentiate themselves from the rest of Jiu-Jitsu by renaming Jiu-Jitsu to their own style: 10th planet Jiu-Jitsu of Eddie Bravo comes to mind:
Is 10th Planet BJJ Considered a Separate Branch of BJJ?
Keenan Cornelius has renamed his style “American Jiu-Jitsu”, although technically Jake Shields had used that term before him.
Keenan took it further by actually renaming his academy and style ‘American Jiu-Jitsu’.
In a recent video, Cornelius claims that his Jiu-Jitsu Academy is the most reviewed gym in the world because he has replaced the ‘Brazilian’ in Jiu-Jitsu with American:
Yeah, we know what you’re thinking… “American Jiu-Jitsu”, really? But yeah, really, that’s a real expression – that Keenan Cornelius has “proved” that it’s been in use since the early 20th century.
But how come that Cornelius is saying that American Jiu-Jitsu is older than Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? How does that even make sense?
Well, he shared his research on social media.
Here is what he had to say, as he shows the results of his research:
Super quick history lesson… Let’s just hop on the Library Of Congress and do a quick search through all American newspapers for the word “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu”…
There’s zero results.But if we search for “American Jiu-Jitsu”, we see this right here [shows multiple word search results pop up]… That’s 1926.
Let’s see if there is anything earlier. Okay here’s one: “American Jiu-Jitsu” – 1914!
Cornelius continues:
But wait a second. Helio Gracie was born in 1913.
And he didn’t start training Jiu-Jitsu from the Japanese ambassadors until he was 16 years old.That means American Jiu-Jitsu pre-dates Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu by at least 15 years.
He then shows an image of a man called Len Lanius, who is mentioned in one of the newspapers as the “originator of American Jiu-Jitsu”.
Also, he then shows multiple old manuals and magazines that talk about “American Jiu-Jitsu”.
Watch it all on the video below:
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His statements provoked a mix of reactions from various BJJ practitioners worldwide. Some supported and agreed with him while others ridiculed his statements.
The vast majority of Brazilians, reacted very emotionally.
In the past, BJJ legend Vinicius Draculino stated:
“I’ve been holding my tongue for quite a while but people have to stop buying into the BULLSH**T that certain professors, athletes and segments of the Jiu-Jitsu and Grappling media are spreading into our community. In order to implement their own agenda and to capitalize on this.
There is no American, Brazilian, Japanese, Russian, Planet or any other name. THERE IS ONLY JIU JITSU! If this people don’t know, until the art exploded in the US, BRAZIL, Europe, Japan and other places the art was called Ju Jitsu or Jiu-Jitsu. It was in HERE, im the US, that people started to brand it that way. Back in BRAZIL, we never said we practice JIU-JITSU BRASILEIRO. It was Jiu-Jitsu. Period. And now they say the American version is the best since it incorporated wrestling, Judo and got more technical. WRONG! Wrestling was blended into JJ thanks to ROLLS GRACIE, who competed extensively in the sport and actually brought Bob Anderson, a great wrestler, to learn more ( but Bob never got involved or taught JJ in America. The Gracies did). Judo and JJ are pretty much the same art with different rules and philosophies and since the 50’s, several high level athletes or fighters from each discipline cross train and compete in both scenarios like Kimura, Royler Gracie, Flavio Canto, Amauri Bitteti, Megaton, Yuki Nakai and several others. This is not something that happened in America only.”
Keenan’s former teammate at Atos, BJJ world champion Gustavo Batista personally attacked Keenan:
BJJ Top Team black belt Fabiano Silva said:
“Not sure that is a good thing ! That means Americans has been losing longer 😂”
