Remembering George Mehdi

By Robert Drysdale

Posted November 6, 2019

Updated August 6, 2020

It is difficult to credit the impact and depth of influence of someone who did so little in regards to his self-promotion during his lifetime, and yet did so much in furthering the growth of martial-arts in Brazil in a responsible and ethical manner. George Kastriot Mehdi was the prototypical martial-arts Master whose teaching went well beyond throws and submissions. He witnessed and helped kickstart a revolution that would ultimately culminate in MMA and BJJ, yet he never wanted anything to do with any of it, let alone to take any credit for it.

George Mehdi moved to Rio de Janeiro as a teenager where he would initiate his martial-arts practice there. The late Armando Wriedt tells the story:

“Hey kid, have you got the courage? You said you’re a fighter and so on." After all, he was really a strong kid. He would dance that ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’, he could dance that pretty well, he was good! Well, one day, he accepted, saying he wasn't afraid of anyone because he was strong. So, they took him over there. Getting there, the poor kid. Soon he faced off with Carlson […] So, Carlson did what he wanted to George, and George didn’t know what to do. So, Helio asked him, ‘Kid, you said you just arrived in Brazil’ […] ‘Come stay with us’. They didn’t have a guy to take care of the clothes. Valdemar [Santana] had already left, and so they put George in charge of the clothes. And George trained. He was strong.” [1]

Helio Gracie, immediately recognizing the boy’s potential, lauded him in the press as a French Champion with a long successful fight-record overseas and that he had specifically moved to Brazil because he had heard tales of Helio’s feats from his homeland. This would all had been a normal marketing exploit typical of that era if it weren’t for one thing: Mehdi, according to himself, was a beginner and never a champion when he moved to Brazil, nor did he move there to train martial-arts.

Mehdi’s journey was an unusual one for a beginner French judoka turned Brazilian. Albeit having initiated his training in Brazil under the Gracie Academy, it wasn't long before he fell-out with Carlos and Helio and committed the infamous betrayal of becoming a champion and an icon of a dreaded rival: Judo. In fact, Mehdi’s “betrayal”, and what some would call “creontagem”, may not have bothered him at all, since he believed he had left the Gracie Academy for the right reasons.

Following Mehdi’s departure from the Gracie Academy, he went to Japan where he practiced at the Kodokan, as well as Tenri and Chuo Universities and trained alongside World and Olympic Champion Isao Okano amongst other Japanese judokas including meeting (and possibly training with) Masahiko Kimura himself. After his experience training in Japan, Mehdi brought back an enormous treasure of knowledge to Brazil that helped initiate his career as one of  Brazil’s greatest judoka at the time and go on to be one of its most successful coaches. His exploits in judo cemented his place in judo’s history having placed second at the 1963 and third in the 1967 Pan-Am Games. It was through Kano’s philosophical approach to combat that Mehdi found his life purpose.

His trip to Japan forever impacted not only his personal growth as a martial-artist, but may have impacted the technical growth of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as well at a time when the arsenal of techniques available to its practitioners was still very limited: “Was it possible that many, possibly even most of the Jiu-Jitsu techniques used by the Gracie’s and their students were introduced by guys who learned them from Mehdi? I asked Zoca. ‘Very possible’, he said”. [2]

In later years Mehdi became known as a critic of certain members of the Gracie family. But not all however. The record indicates that his relationship with Carlson Gracie and his students was always a healthy one. He taught the likes of Murilo Bustamante, Ze Mario Sperry, Wallid Ismail, Marcelo Behring and most of Carlson Gracie’s students at the time. Mehdi's issues with the Gracie family, in particular Carlos and Helio, seem to stem from what he referred to as their “penchant for brawling and lying”.[3] The problem rested in the differing approaches judo, and its off-shoot later known as BJJ, had to martial-arts.

The rapid worldwide growth of sport oriented approach to martial-arts, embodied in judo, from the 1950’s onwards not only rallied Jiu-Jitsu and Kodokan instructors teaching across the globe under its banner but also created an avenue for civilians in Brazil to practice Jigoro Kano’s method. The distancing of the Gracie family from its roots wasn’t only on the grounds of their technical and rules disagreements. It was also on their approach on how to market the two franchises.

Carlos and Helio were at an enormous disadvantage in marketing reach compared to judo with its worldwide social-political acceptance as well as its prestige given its Olympic status. Their approach to countering this wasn’t always commendable and often leaned on the dishonest and thuggish in order to keep their brand of judo alive. An example of their differences is illustrated by an event that took place during a seminar in Brazil’s northeast where Mehdi allegedly claimed to have defeated Gracie Academy champion Pedro Hemeterio. Whether Mehdi actually said such a thing is unclear. Helio’s reaction to what he considered or wanted to believe was a provocation is recorded.

Subsequent this event, Helio brought Hemeterio and two other fighters to challenge Mehdi in his own gym in order to “disprove your lie and show that any Jiu-Jitsu fighter is superior to judo”, to which Mehdi replied that “I don’t want to fight Hemeterio, because a judoka isn’t in a condition of equality with a Jiu-Jitsu fighter. One is a sport and one is a fight without rules”[4], making clear their leaning at the time towards a more “martial” approach to martial-arts than their counterparts.

Mehdi embodied Kano’s teachings who, in his turn, was a man heavily influenced by Western philosophers and particularly by Herbert Spencer. According to Pedreira, for Spencer, “education should do more than instill knowledge. It must also produce good citizens and it must build healthy bodies to house healthy brains and spirits”.[5] And so, Kano envisioned his new Jiu-Jitsu school as a step into modernity and education while maintaining certain aspects of Japan’s past. Whether Mehdi embodied this philosophy due to his own character or upbringing, is unknown. What is certain is that he was at odds with Carlos and Helio’s marketing approach at the time. In his own words: “‘I’m not here to certify bullies. I’m here to bring up people with healthy minds’ Mehdi did not mention the Gracies by name but it is difficult to believe that he did not have them in mind. Helio Gracie seemed to think so anyway”[6]. Mehdi was a Kodokan man all the way.

In a recent trip to Brazil for the filming of the documentary “Closed-Guard: The Origins of Jiu-Jitsu in Brazil” our crew had the opportunity to interview many Grand-Masters. Among them was Flavio Behring. Knowing of Mehdi’s reputation for not liking to be interviewed or filmed, I asked Grand-Master Behring to call Mehdi on the behalf of our production in order to request an interview. After a few minutes of friendly conversation with his old friend, I could overhear him on the phone: “But why do they want to talk to me? I’m no one.” [7]

History tends to record the wretched and to remember the vain. Men like George Mehdi, seldom have their legacies recorded. His distaste for self-promotion and for giving interviews certainly playing a role here. On November 6, 2018, it wasn’t only judo that lost one of its icons. But a man that could be credited as being a central column in the development of BJJ away from its Kodokan roots, at the very least in regards to its takedowns. Mehdi also deserves credit for being ground zero for the legitimate historical study of BJJ history, despite wanting no credit for it.[8]

It is ironic that the man who was such a rival of the Gracie Brothers and such a stout supporter of sport judo would have had such an impact in the growth of the art, particularly in Rio de Janeiro. According to Mehdi, it was “all judo” and BJJ’s distancing from its roots a perversion of Kano’s teachings. Differences aside, it is unquestionable that he played a crucial role in the formation of BJJ. For these and many other reasons, George Kastriot Mehdi deserves to be remembered in the Pantheon of BJJ’s greats, not because he would have expected it, but because he belongs there.

(c) 2019, Robert Drysdale. All rights reserved.

Updated August 06, 2020.

More articles by Robert Drysdale:

^{Reflections on the Evolution of BJJ}

^{Who Taught Oscar Gracie?}

^{I was Skeptical}

^{Selling Self-Defense}

^{Rickson Gracie is Wrong}

^{Rev. of book by João Alberto Barreto}

^{Maeda Promotes Five Brazilians}

^{Science and Sanity in BJJ}

^{Jiu-Jitsu in Cuba}

Is Oswaldo Fada Jiu-Jitsu a Non-Gracie Lineage?