JUJITSU'S TROLLING JARGONS : SPORTS HONOURS

A rift is growing in a sport that depending on whom you ask, is either a bone crushing, tendon ripping martial art or just a bunch of people in weird costumes rolling around on the floor.

Jujitsu cuts across divides of class,  race and creed. Mark Zuckerberg does it, but so do doctors, HVAC technicians and street kids in favelas in Rio de Janeiro.

My own training partners over the past six years have included an agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, a glass blower and a doorman at a brothel.

For us, the gym is a romper room, a place to exercise our brains, work up a sweat and forget the world.

This used to be easy, because no one took jujitsu seriously. Storied matches unfolded before audiences smaller than those in high school play.

Lately, though, a new faction has appeared : modern gladiators, flat-earthers and vaccine skeptics, guys who thrill at the mantra '' I am a shark, the ground is my ocean, and most people don't even know how to swim.''

Their hero is Gordon Ryan, maybe the best athlete the sport has ever seen, who marries supreme control on the mats with alarming levels of vulnerable narcissism and hard-right politics.

In his prolific Internet posting, obnoxiousness is the point ; Not only has he taunted his rivals, he has also encouraged one of them to commit suicide; he has belittled the homeless and, on YouTube, has driven his truck to the southernborder of the United States with a rifle to joke about '' picking off illegals.''

The World Students Society thanks Adrian Nathan West.