Bartitsu?

[Michael Romano]

Bar-Tits-u... its what all bouncers in strip clubs have to master.

[Louis Ho]

Romano is a meathead.

[Ben]

Really? Though he did provide a gym that contained various martial arts styles (albeit at an insanely inaccessible price) there was never truly a unified style between them. Yes, Barton-Wright was familiar with all of those styles but he was not a master at any of them. I think he only studied Judo at the Kodokan for 3 years or less. His greatest achievement was in bringing all of these skilled fighters together under one roof where there was a collusion of techniques between them.

Baritsu itself was just his incomplete theoretical cherry picking iteration of his own shallow martial arts knowledge.

The thing that brought his gym acclaim where his two Judokas that tore through the entire region's challenge wrestlers at the local music halls.

I don't know, I respect what Barton tried to do but I always feel like he gets more attention for his fictional tie with Sherlock Holmes when Yukio Tani and Sadakazu Uyenishi did far more for Jujitsu/Judo and MMA than Barton ever did.

He preached the concept of learning one art well enough to use them against the others. And isn't bringing in the best coaches of an art under one roof to teach the entire concept of an MMA team? However, I like his concept of fusing arts for realistic self defense purposes more so than what he did for MMA. So yes, he may not be the guy that started teaching the arts themselves, but he had the idea that was needed: Learn them all, take what works, and learn to defeat the other styles with them.
It was the over pricing that was his down fall (he died poor and was buried in an unmarked grave).

[AJ Camacho]

Like I said, his intention was ideal and notable but he did not achieve more than those who worked for him. Those coaches were the heart of his gym and it was their open minded nature, and willingness to share their knowledge with their peers that pushed things forward. In terms of cause and effect, the greatest thing to come out of Barton's efforts was bringing Judo and Jujitsu to Europe, giving it a permanent home that is still strong to this day.

Unfortunately, Barton's Bartitsu lacked any real vetting process and in many ways was the antithesis of MMA. In MMA, everything must be proven in the cage. If it doesn't work in the cage, then it doesn't work. That reality is the mark by which all theoretical techniques were judged. In Barton's time, his proving ground were the Music Hall challenge matches. There's a reason why Bartitsu never took off and why his Jiujitsu coaches had such success.

I think this whole Bartitsu revival thing is just marketing hype of a dead martial art designed to sell some seminar tickets on the heels of the Sherlock Holmes movie. Meanwhile the pertinent aspects of martial arts history gets pushed to the wayside. Barton is an interesting sidenote in MMA history, nothing more.

[Michael Romano]

Lois is a cripple

[Ben]

Like I said, his intention was ideal and notable but he did not achieve more than those who worked for him. Those coaches were the heart of his gym and it was their open minded nature, and willingness to share their knowledge with their peers that pushed things forward. In terms of cause and effect, the greatest thing to come out of Barton's efforts was bringing Judo and Jujitsu to Europe, giving it a permanent home that is still strong to this day.

Unfortunately, Barton's Bartitsu lacked any real vetting process and in many ways was the antithesis of MMA. In MMA, everything must be proven in the cage. If it doesn't work in the cage, then it doesn't work. That reality is the mark by which all theoretical techniques were judged. In Barton's time, his proving ground were the Music Hall challenge matches. There's a reason why Bartitsu never took off and why his Jiujitsu coaches had such success.

I think this whole Bartitsu revival thing is just marketing hype of a dead martial art designed to sell some seminar tickets on the heels of the Sherlock Holmes movie. Meanwhile the pertinent aspects of martial arts history gets pushed to the wayside. Barton is an interesting sidenote in MMA history, nothing more.

I hardly consider him an important note in MMA history as much as I do realistic self-defense. He was the guy calling bull shit before most people were. That all being said, I COMPLETELY agree that this art has no business being brought back. It was a style designed for a certain era, and that era is over. You'd be better off learning how to fight with your car keys then with a wooden cane (unless you're a pimp, in which case this art may be what you've been looking for).

I still have TONS of respect for the guy and what he did. It's the bringing together of styles and opening a forum for them to compete and be taught together that we should focus on, not that he didn't take it a step further like we did today, or that he was a shitty businessman.

[TonyW]

Like I said, his intention was ideal and notable but he did not achieve more than those who worked for him. Those coaches were the heart of his gym and it was their open minded nature, and willingness to share their knowledge with their peers that pushed things forward. In terms of cause and effect, the greatest thing to come out of Barton's efforts was bringing Judo and Jujitsu to Europe, giving it a permanent home that is still strong to this day.

I agree with the latter point, but note that it was actually B-W's open-mindedness that gathered Tani, Uyenishi, Vigny and Cherpillod in London and encouraged them to co-operate. Also, as has been mentioned, B-W always promoted Bartitsu as a gentlemanly art of self defence against hooligans; competition was just a sideline.

Unfortunately, Barton's Bartitsu lacked any real vetting process and in many ways was the antithesis of MMA. In MMA, everything must be proven in the cage. If it doesn't work in the cage, then it doesn't work. That reality is the mark by which all theoretical techniques were judged. In Barton's time, his proving ground were the Music Hall challenge matches. There's a reason why Bartitsu never took off and why his Jiujitsu coaches had such success.

B-W was adamant that the music hall challenge matches were held in order to display jiujitsu, which comprised the close-quarters aspect of Bartitsu, as a self defence art. There were many objections from the wrestling establishment of the day, because submission wrestling was a total novelty; critics said that wrestling for subs rather than falls or pins was "un-English", "absolutely foul", etc.

Bartitsu as a combination of JJ, (kick)boxing and stick fighting could not legally have been tested in competition; it would have been deemed as "brawling in a public place" under Edwardian English law.

I think this whole Bartitsu revival thing is just marketing hype of a dead martial art designed to sell some seminar tickets on the heels of the Sherlock Holmes movie. Meanwhile the pertinent aspects of martial arts history gets pushed to the wayside. Barton is an interesting sidenote in MMA history, nothing more.

The revival began in the year 2001, virtually as soon as B-W's original articles were re-published online via the EJMAS website. It started with a major international effort to locate other works by Barton-Wright, his associates etc., then from about 2005 onwards has balanced academic and historical research with practical revival (seminars and, more recently, regular classes). The recent movie was a huge boost for Bartitsu but it was basically a nice surprise; before that, we'd all assumed that it would never be more than a tiny, oddball fringe interest. Now, it's an oddball fringe interest with an unexpected fan base

[TonyW]

I hardly consider him an important note in MMA history as much as I do realistic self-defense. He was the guy calling bull shit before most people were. That all being said, I COMPLETELY agree that this art has no business being brought back. It was a style designed for a certain era, and that era is over. You'd be better off learning how to fight with your car keys then with a wooden cane (unless you're a pimp, in which case this art may be what you've been looking for).

The revival is generally considered to be picking up where B-W and his colleagues left off. Bartitsu was an ahead-of-its-time idea that was more or less abandoned in early 1902, although it's arguable that other early 20th century instructors - Georges Dubois, Jean Joseph Renaud, Percy Longhurst et al - did continue in the Bartitsu tradition by fusing Japanese and European fighting styles.

Bartitsu per se was left as a work in progress, and the modern revival is designed to continue (not necessarily complete) that work, drawing from the original model and supplemented with other c1900 resources to "fill in the blanks". It's more usually taught as a recreational MA with a historical twist than as self defence or competition, though it can be tweaked in those directions.

Another note about the revival is that it's considered to be "open source"; there's no top-down hierarchy or even politics.

[AJ Camacho]

I can definitely respect the forethought and mindset of Wright. And though Bartitsu is only presenting itself as a historical or recreational interest who are the practitioners behind this progression? From many of the small snippets I have seen these practitioners seem to generally come from a traditional martial arts or stunt background ironically not the same background which inspired wright's discoveries. How will that effect the modern iteration of Bartitsu? Or are there any high level submission grapplers or judokas who are taking the reigns on this development?

Great response by the way, very informative. Are you associated with any Bartitsu programs? My superficial understanding of Bartitsu only stems from my admittedly biased interest on Yukio Tani.

[TonyW]

I can definitely respect the forethought and mindset of Wright. And though Bartitsu is only presenting itself as a historical or recreational interest who are the practitioners behind this progression? From many of the small snippets I have seen these practitioners seem to generally come from a traditional martial arts or stunt background ironically not the same background which inspired wright's discoveries. How will that effect the modern iteration of Bartitsu? Or are there any high level submission grapplers or judokas who are taking the reigns on this development?

Excellent questions, thanks.

The MA backgrounds of the most serious revivalists (and we're only talking about a small number of people at present) range all over the map; traditional styles, combat sports, RBSD, police combatives etc. The average experience level would probably be fifteen years in various styles.

I doubt that we'll ever attract many high level sub-grapplers or competitive judoka in that so much of the Bartitsu curriculum is irrelevant to modern competitive combat sport. Having said that, we do have some senior people in those areas (especially Kodokan judo) who are supporting the revival from the academic perspective.

Re. our training backgrounds impacting the modern iterations of Bartitsu; Barton-Wright's articles offer a concrete curriculum of about 40 self defence-oriented sequences (paired jiujitsu kata and walking stick defence "set plays", equivalent to two-man kata). These are pretty straightforward and are easy enough to reconstruct. They serve as our bridge back to B-W's original art, but they're obviously incomplete - there was much more going on at the Bartitsu Academy than he detailed in his articles. There are several key areas in which all we have to go on are cryptic hints and clues.

From the POV of continuing Barton-Wright's experiments in MA cross-training, modern Bartitsu revivalists base from the original art but are free to add their own points of emphasis, training methods, etc. My own approach tends to "springboard" off the classical Bartitsu sequences into various freestyle drills, still drawing from the repertoires of circa 1900 boxing, the Vigny stick method and "British jiujitsu".

To answer the last question, yes, I've been very deeply involved in the revival from the outset. I edit the EJMAS journal that brought B-W's articles to light back in 2001 and also both volumes of the Bartitsu Compendium (2005 and 2008). I've written numerous articles on the subject and regularly teach Bartitsu seminars at MA conferences; I'm also currently co-producing a feature-length documentary on Bartitsu.