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It may seem strange to start a story about my encounter with Anthony Bourdain with an anecdote about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but if it weren’t for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu — BJJ for short — I don’t think I’d ever have appreciated him in the way I do. Because of BJJ I met the man first, then discovered his art, and really the only way to make sense of this is to start from the beginning.
In late 2014 I joined a BJJ gym in Los Angeles under the Renzo Gracie banner. It was opened a few years earlier by one of Renzo Gracie’s first American black belts, Shawn Williams. I had dabbled in martial arts all my life, doing some karate as a kid, aikido, kung fu, boxing and old school jiu jitsu, and I was fully cognizant of my lack of skill, having never completed anything beyond orange belt. Years ago, like in 2000, I attended a BJJ school in Queens for about five months with some of the toughest dudes I can remember. I’d only gone on a whim since a roommate of mine was also going. Having always had an affinity for martial arts, and a totally delusional sense of my own fighting prowess, I thought I’d be able to handle myself with ease. Until I got my ass handed to me by some genuine baddasses. In a class comprised of cops, construction workers, a former gang banger and various other characters from the hard walks of life, I was the lightweight. The middle-class kid whose biggest obstacles in life had been of the existential kind. For five months straight I was smothered and strangled by some strong mofos who also harbored a supreme and mysterious technique.
I didn’t even know what BJJ was at the time. I never watched the UFC, and never wrestled in high school, and had such a schizophrenic relationship with the martial arts, that the name Gracie meant nothing to me like it does now. The Gracie lineage, for those of you unfamiliar with modern jiu jitsu, is responsible for the art we have today. Hailing from Brazil, it has transformed the martial art and is largely responsible for revolutionizing the sport of mixed martial arts. Just look at the very first UFC event, when a skinny Brazilian guy named Royce Gracie dominated all-comers in a one-night tournament, using his jiu jitsu technique.
When I moved to LA about fifteen years after that five-month stint in the Queens academy, top of my mind was to find a BJJ school to train at, since in the last few…
