What has Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to do with the Ancient Greeks? A lot, according to Joshua Kulseth and David Larmour, investigating the connections between the Greek pankration and contemporary BJJ and MMA. They argue that today's Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gyms, training, and competitions offer the closest modern analogy to Ancient Greek wrestlers and pankratiasts and to the ideals of Greek agonism embodied in the Olympic Games.
Their book,
Agony: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the Greeks
combines Kulseth's first-person narrative of experience in combat sports with Larmour's expertise in ancient Greek athletics, literature and mythology, and is illustrated by original artwork by Jeremy Smith.
When we struggle today for self-improvement or victory in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts, the ancient Greeks walk among us-not only the ordinary citizens of Athens or Sparta doing their daily training in the local palaestra, but also famous athletes like Milo and Arrichion, heroes of myth like Odysseus and Heracles, poets like Pindar and Sophocles, and even gods like Zeus and Prometheus.