Talk about a satisfied customer.
L.A. County Sheriff Deputy Charles Cabarrubias was on the street wrestling with a powerful and belligerent suspect, an ex-con wanted in the violent assault of two officers in the city of Paramount. After several minutes of fighting, Cabarrubias unhooked his revolver and attempted to fire a shot.
The gun was jammed.
Rather than panicking, Cabarrubias began applying martial arts moves he’d picked up at the Gracie Jiu-Jistu Academy. He ensnared the suspect in a choke hold, subduing him until back-up arrived.
“My equipment failed me,” says Cabarrubias, an eight-year veteran of the force who has been training at the Torrance martial arts studio for the past three years. “Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the only thing that saved my life.”
Caburrubias isn’t the only one who is impressed.
Since opening his studio in 1990, Brazilian-born jiu-jistsu Grand Master Rorian Gracie has seen his number of students jump from about 200, mostly in the South Bay, to more than 1,000 a number of whom travel from across the country to train with at the academy. The company’s revenues have increased from $40,000 to more than $2 million over the same period.
Now, Gracie and his partners are attempting to transform their 13,000-square-foot studio into the seat of a full-fledged martial arts empire with a line of instructional videos, an interactive CD-ROM, a line of apparel, a rape-prevention program for women, a training program for law enforcement agencies even an annual jiu-jitsu cruise.
At the center of all of these ventures is the Gracie name. Although unfamiliar to most non-combatants, in the world of martial arts, it is pure gold.
Rorian (pronounced “Horian,” in the Portuguese way) moved to Southern California in 1979, where he made ends meet by cleaning houses.
As luck would have it, one of his customers was an assistant director of the TV cop show “Starsky and Hutch.” Struck by Gracie’s dark, good looks and easygoing manner, he hired Gracie as an extra. Soon, Gracie was working regularly on “Fanstasy Island” and “Hill Street Blues.”
But on evenings and weekends, he was teaching his family’s unique style of jiu-jitsu out of the garage of his tiny Hermosa Beach apartment.
Jiu-jitsu orginated in India 2,000 years ago, before traveling to Japan via China. Its primary purpose is defensive that is, to render attackers immobile. Essentially, it is a sophisticated form of on-the ground-grappling.
But if jiu-jitsu lacks the dramatic high kicks and ballet-like moves of other martial arts, it has been proven deadly where it counts on the street.
“Jiu-jitsu is the most effective form of martial arts,” boasts Gracie. “Technique will always defeat strength.”
Adds the academy’s business manager Sam Rand, a veteran New York advertising executive who joined Gracie in 1992 after coming West for a week of training: “People have this image of a stand-up fighter who is lethal with his hands and his feet, who can take on 10 guys and beat them all. That only happens in the movies.
“In real life,” he says, “most confontations end up on the ground. We focus on that component of the fight.”
Eventually, Gracie found himself doing less acting and more teaching. By 1990, he had 100 students and 90 more on a waiting list. So he brought his brother Royce out from Brazil and opened a small studio in Torrance.
His client roster began to grow. But Gracie’s business got its biggest boost in 1993, when he developed the brutal, no-holds-barred brawl known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
In Ultimate Fighting, there are no gloves, no rules and no clock just two fighters and a ring.
“Everybody knew there was karate, kung fu, judo, boxing,” says Gracie. “The question was: what was the most effective form of martial arts? The Ultimate Fighting Championship was to answer that age-old question.”
Although the event generated considerable controversy in the U.S., the no-holds-barred fight is a longstanding tradition in Brazil where it has been dominated by the Gracie family.
When the first UFC was broadcast, American fight fans were shocked to see Royce Gracie, at a mere six-feet tall, 178 pounds, dispatch the much-larger Dutch fighter Gerard Gordeau with a rapid series of take-downs and chokeholds.
Royce went on to two more UFC titles, and “Gracie” became a household name at least in homes where people like to fight.
“The Gracies proved that not only do most fights end up on the ground, but their system was the most effective in dealing with an opponent on the ground,” says Dave Cater, editor of Inside Karate magazine. “They went from being a small, obscure martial arts organization to one of the most recognized organization in the world.”
Rorian sold his stake in the UFC in 1995, in protest after promoters added a clock to the event. He took his cash and set about leveraging his newfound notoriety.
He did it by creating a set of 15 instructional videos which take students from basic through advanced levels of jiu-jitsu. Sold primarily through ads in martial arts magazines, the videos have become the academy’s biggest generator of income, bringing in amost $700,000 last year.
Gracie also has drawn on his large number of students in law enforcement, creating an officer training program GRAPLE, or Gracie Resisting Attack Procedures for Law Enforcement. Members of the Secret Service, the FBI, ATF, U.S. Customs and other state and local law enforcement agencies have traveled to Torrance for training.
The academy also has launched a line of casual clothing, Gracie Gear, and an interactive CD-ROM, “Total Defense.”
“It’s all connected to the real effectiveness that we have been preaching for 70 years,” says Gracie.
