Why it's called the kimura

On 23 October 1951, at the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, in front of around twenty thousand people, Hélio Gracie faces Masahiko Kimura. The rules are what we would now call pure grappling: three ten-minute rounds, every hold allowed, won only by submission or by the corner stepping in.

In the second round Kimura closes a shoulder lock. Hélio does not tap. The hold tightens, the arm gives way, and it is Carlos Gracie — his brother, from the edge of the mat — who throws in the towel. About thirteen minutes have passed in all.

The technique already existed. The name did not

Kimura invented nothing that evening. In judo the hold is called ude garami, “arm entanglement”, and has been on the syllabus forever; in American catch wrestling the same thing is called a double wristlock. Kimura arrived at the Maracanã with a technique every judoka knew.

What he left behind is not the technique: it is the name. And in Brazil, the name was given to him by other people.

When the name actually appeared

The version you hear in the gym says the Brazilians rechristened it “kimura” that same evening, on the back of the fight. The most detailed archive account says something else: that the term — at first kimuriana — appeared in the Brazilian sports press during Kimura's second trip to Brazil, in 1959. Eight years later.

What we do not know

• What the two men weighed. It was never officially recorded. A difference of ten to fifteen kilos in Kimura's favour is the figure usually quoted, but it is a handed-down estimate, not a measurement.
• How many times the arm gave way. The traditional account says twice; the footage of the match does not allow that to be stated.
• Who, exactly, used the name first. No source says.

Why this story survived

Defeats are usually forgotten. Not this one — and not because somebody used it against the Gracies: because they were the ones telling it, and telling it for decades. Hélio left the Maracanã with a broken arm and his reputation intact, for having gone all the way against an opponent bigger and stronger than him.

That is why the name stayed attached to the hold instead of disappearing. In jiu-jitsu the way you lose weighs as much as the way you win, and that evening at the Maracanã is the most quoted demonstration of it. Every time somebody finishes a kimura in the gym, they are remembering it without knowing.

The other words you will hear at the gym, explained one by one: BJJ glossary.