"I have some knowledge of baritsu, or Japanese wrestling." - Sherlock Holmes

This is just awesome stuff. Sherlock Holmes + mixed martial arts. If there was a Batman component, my life would be complete.

"A mini-documentary on Bartitsu, a martial art and self defence system founded by E. W. Barton-Wright in the year 1899."


Bartitsu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"...Bartitsu might have been completely forgotten if not for a chance mention by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in one of his Sherlock Holmes mystery stories.

...As Holmes himself explained his apparently miraculous survival:

When I reached the end I stood at bay. He drew no weapon, but he rushed at me and threw his long arms around me. He knew that his own game was up, and was only anxious to revenge himself upon me. We tottered together upon the brink of the fall. I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me. I slipped through his grip, and he with a horrible scream kicked madly for a few seconds and clawed the air with both his hands. But for all his efforts he could not get his balance, and over he went. With my face over the brink I saw him fall for a long way. Then he struck a rock, bounced off, and splashed into the water.

In fact, "baritsu" did not exist outside the pages of the English editions of The Adventure of the Empty House. It is uncertain why Conan Doyle had Holmes refer to baritsu, rather than Bartitsu. It is possible that Conan Doyle, who, like E.W. Barton-Wright, was writing for Pearson’s Magazine during the late 1890s, was vaguely aware of Bartitsu and simply mis-remembered or misheard the term; it may even have been a typographical error or a concern about copyright. It should also be noted that a newspaper report on a Bartitsu demonstration in London, published in 1900, had likewise misspelled the name as baritsu..."