New Zealand

BJJ owes it's inception to Carlos Gracie, the grandson of a Scottish emigrant, who was born in Brazil in 1901. As a young man, Carlos developed a keen interest  in Boxing and professional fighting. To further enhance his prowess he began his study of Japanese Jiu Jitsu under champion, Mitsuyo Maeda, known in Brazil as Conde Koma. He was quick to modify the techniques he learned under Maeda to better suit the demands of the no-rules fight game, known in Brazil as Vale Tudo. He refined and further developed his approach through constant challenge matches, open to all-comers, regardless of weight, size or style preference; thereby planting the seed of BJJ in the fertile environment of Rio de Janeiro.

During the decades that followed, Carlos's brothers, sons, grandsons and cousins became the driving force that further developed and refined the art into the form we see today. Rio de Janeiro, with it's penchant for reality-based combative sport, became a proving-ground for no-rules fighting strategy and technique. BJJ schools blossomed everywhere, a sporting aspect was developed and the art grew tremendously in popularity. It's effectiveness was never in question, as the population had become educated as to the difference between reality and fantasy when it came down to fighting for real. It became obvious that almost all fights, when there were limited or no rules, ended up being contested on the ground. In Rio de Janeiro, real fighting meant going to ground; and the BJJ stylists were the undisputed champions of that particular arena in a relatively safe form competition. This in turn, forced the art to further evolve, and during the last thirty years of the 20th century, undergo a phase of technical development that has thrust it to the forefront of the ground-based fight arena.

All of this was taking place away from eyes of the world; until when in the 80's, some of Brazil's top BJJ instructors made their way to the United States. For a decade following the arrival of several top BJJ coaches in Los Angeles, the  scene in Brazil continued to thrive but the rest of the world, to a large degree, remained ignorant of the style and were unprepared for what was to come. 

Gradually, the grass-roots martial arts community began to hear more and more about the reality-based style; with several well renowned and respected martial artists even taking up the art themselves. As word spread about the Brazilian style, the inevitable occurred and mixed-style match-ups paved the way for the beginning of a frenzy of interest in submissionary grappling. By the middle of the 90's, televised inter-style limited-rules fights were being watched by the fight loving public and the world-wide martial arts community. And within a very short time, it became obvious to even the uninitiated, that ground fighting was the heart and soul of no-rules fighting.