Look no further than the success of Brazil’s Gracie family. The Gracies originated the techniques in the early 20th century and quickly proved them successful by beating fighters using boxing and Capoeira, the then dominant fighting styles in Brazil. Through demonstrations and victories in actual street fights, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu became Brazil’s favored real-life combat fighting technique.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Gracies came to the United States and began teaching their brand of self-defense. Most notably, Carley, Rorion, Rickson and Royce established academies in California. In the late 1980’s, Rorion came up with the idea of a competition similar to Brazil’s vale tudo (Portuguese for “no-holds-barred” or “anything goes”). The idea was to pit representatives from various martial art forms against each other to discover which was the most effective in real-life, street-fight situations.

It is said that Rickson Gracie, thought to be the best of the Gracie fighters, was originally supposed to represent BJJ. Unfortunately, Rickson was a physically imposing, fierce-looking man. To better showcase the effectiveness of BJJ, Royce, a skinny 175-pounder, was chosen. In one night, Royce single-handedly conquered the best competitors from boxing, kung-fu, karate, judo and wrestling. The success of BJJ fighters in no-holds-barred competition led to a worldwide explosion of interest in BJJ.