Nerd Movie Reviews

Cross-Trained Martial Artists Throughout History

A martial arts movie t shirt featuring Bruce Lee

Mixed Martial Arts exploded in popularity in the 2000s. Promotions have come and gone: UFC, Pride, Dream, StrikeForce, Elite XC, and more. There is a distinction here that you must be careful to make: the sport is mixed martial arts. UFC, and all the others, are promotions. So UFC is to MMA as the NFL is to football. Many people enjoy modern MMA, and most of us understand that it involves a mix of styles. What a lot of people don’t know, however, is that the idea of cross-training between martial arts is not new. Many of the most famous martial artists throughout history have cross-trained and learned multiple fighting styles. And hybrid styles are as old as martial arts itself. Here’s a list of several different historical figures who were famous for reasons besides fighting, but who were cross-trained in many different martial arts styles. You may not have seen them on a martial arts movie t-shirt, but they’re important figures nonetheless.

One that may surprise you is Teddy Roosevelt. Most people know of Teddy Roosevelt as the American president famous for his pince-nez glasses and his involvement with the Panama Canal. What a lot of people don’t know is that Teddy Roosevelt also had extensive experience in both jiu jitsu and boxing. He was blind in one eye as a result of an injury sustained while boxing with an Army officer. His involvement in jiu jitsu is even more fascinating: he learned from Yamashita Yoshiaki, a direct student of Jigoro Kano. Jigoro Kano, incidentally, was the founder of Judo. Judo consists of a number of ancient Japanese jiu jitsu techniques codified into a single sport, and Kano’s pupil Yamashita taught those same techniques to Teddy Roosevelt.

A less well-known, but equally interesting practitioner of cross-trained martial arts was E.W. Barton-Wright. Living in the early 20th century, Barton-Wright combined Western boxing and wrestling with jiu jitsu and staff fighting to create a unique martial art he called bartitsu. He even sent letters to Jigoro Kano asking him to send jiu jitsu teachers from Japan to teach at his new bartitsu club. The martial art of bartitsu would later come to the attention of Arthur Conan Doyle, who would incorporate the art as a plot element in his Sherlock Holmes books.One final figure that you may have heard of, but who bears mentioning anyway, is Bruce Lee. While the idea of cross-training has existed for as long as martial arts, Bruce Lee was the person who popularized the idea in modern culture. His martial art, Jeet Kun Do, aims to “use no way as way” by combining whatever styles work best. Each individual practitioner does things differently. Jeet Kun Do is not a distinct art so much as a method for constructing martial arts from scratch.