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.
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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