UFC Unleashed yesterday - Royce Gracie (Gracie vs Hughes coming soon)

[dc_publius]

[ QUOTE ]
gus,

I'm quite interested in learning about UFC/Pride fighting, from a spectator's point of view, but I'm having a hard time finding any sort of intelligent discussion on the subject. Sherdog seems to have a bunch of fanbois who love to fight over which organization is better; is there a better board out there?

yasher

[/ QUOTE ]

The way that I learned what's going on is listening to Pride commentators. They provide decent insight as to what is going on and what each fighter is trying to do most of the time...

I have definately grown to appreciate things like submission attempts and escapes once I was able to follow what is happening.

[PussEsirVEYer]

Check out mmaweekly.com

[Performify]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You have to be able to strike these days and Royce was never any kind of striker. He was dominant back in the old days when nobody else knew BJJ but now he has no edge.

[/ QUOTE ]

The reason he was dominating in the early days was because his cousin organized the UFC and didn't invite any top fighters to come participate. The whole tournament was set up for him to win.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is WAY WAY more to this than people credit. The rise of BJJ as the definitive martial art form was a brilliant maneuver on the part of the Gracies. That they could be considered to have chosen the toughest opponents out there is pretty funny, but it's what passes for truth these days.

[/ QUOTE ]

This story has a couple bits of truth, but implies a malicious intent or an intent to stack the deck in some way. Ultimate Fighting Championship was certainly founded by the Gracies, but in no way were the first few UFC's rigged, or stacked in any way.

The Gracies started what they called the Gracie challenge back in the 1920's by Carlos Gracie (father of Carlson, co-founder of BJJ along with his three brothers primarily Helio). This was an open challenge to any fighter, to fight whatever Gracie that the family put forward in a Vale Tudo (Portuguese for "anything goes") fight. It was a great marketing tool and development tool for the burgeoning art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The Gracies won a whole lot more of these challenge fights than they lost. One of the premiere Gracie losses was to Masahiko Kimura - considered by many to be the greatest judo practicioner of all time - in 1951 (in which Helio had his arm broken to end the fight, by the shoulder lock which has come to be known in modern MMA terms as a Kimura). In this, Helio Gracie



In the early eighties, Rorion Gracie - one of the few 9th Degree Red & Black Belts in BJJ - formally took the Gracies BJJ to America to promote the style. Rorion updated the Gracie Challenge - openly offering to pay fighters $100,000 if they would beat the Gracie family's challenger (in this case, himself). When Royce turned 18, he joined Rorion in the states and began teaching alongside him.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship grew directly out of this Gracie Family Challenge. It was Rorion's idea, to start with, but several people were involved including Art Davie and producer Robert Meyrowitz.

The first UFC was started essentially as a more formal version of the Gracie Challenge as an open tournament. A significant amount of the $50k prize money was put forward by the Rorion and Art Davie (guaranteed, of course, the gate and the PPV revenues were used to recoupe that).

Absolutely anyone could apply, and there was not a lot of early interest. Anyone could already walk up and accept the Gracie Challenge and fight Rorion with $100k on the line. Invites and magazine articles went out to fill the UFC 1 roster, recruiting as many people as possible to help fill the eight spots. Saying that top martial artists weren't chosen is just crazy talk - Contenders eventually included shootfighting standout Ken Shamrock, kickboxing standout Patrick Smith, and Savate (French Boxing) world champion Gerard Gordeau.

Art Davie originally felt Rickson Gracie, Rorion's older brother and generally regarded as the best of the Gracie fighters, would be the one entered. However, the Gracies collecetively decided to enter their smallest fighter, Royce. They thought, correctly, that the less physically impressive Royce would make even more of an impact demonstrating BJJ to the world.

When UFC 1 (1993) and 2 (1994) hit PPV they caused pretty big sensations and larger than expected draws. The producers of the show, including Rorion, knew they had a hit on their hands, and what was originally envisioned as a stand alone tournament became a recurring event. the UFC evolved significantly between UFC 3-5 (judges, most fights with time limits) and very signifcantly by UFC 8 (combination strikers/wrestlers now ruling the land) and then took off from there.

[BCPVP]

[ QUOTE ]
The last fight of UFC 1, he choked out the guy and kept the choke on because it took a while for the ref to see him.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have a vid with Royce explaining what happened in each of those UFC fights. He said Gordeau bit his ear while Royce was taking him down and that's why he held the choke on longer. I believe him because the Gracies are the kind of people who do that [censored].

[ QUOTE ]
UFC 2, the fight you're thiking of is Jason DeLucia. Jason tried to stand up, but Royce got the arm bar on, hanging from Jason while Jason was tapping. The ref didn't see, so Royce kept it on.

[/ QUOTE ]
Royce said he held it a little longer, I guess for punishment/"remembering him", since he fought DeLucia before.

Yeah, I think Royce doesn't have much of a chance. I said a couple months back that I thought his only chance would be to stay really active in his guard to keep Matt from just pounding him into oblivion and hoping for Matt to screw up.

[Blarg]

Kimo was not a top fighter. Nobody had even heard of the rest of the fighters in the first UFC. But the Gracie family has never done anything but oversell the qualifications of the people they've gone up against.

As you note, there was not a lot of application for the first UFC. But in discussion and publicity about it, you'd think Gracie had fought the best in the world. Modesty or perspective, or even not being a good bit cheesy, have never been Gracie strong suits.

[PartyGirlUK]

Why isnt this in the sports forum? UFC != WWE, right?

[Performify]

[ QUOTE ]
Kimo was not a top fighter. Nobody had even heard of the rest of the fighters in the first UFC. But the Gracie family has never done anything but oversell the qualifications of the people they've gone up against.

As you note, there was not a lot of application for the first UFC. But in discussion and publicity about it, you'd think Gracie had fought the best in the world. Modesty or perspective, or even not being a good bit cheesy, have never been Gracie strong suits.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah i agree on all counts. On a postive note, you could say that marketing is a Gracie strong suit. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Shamrock was clearly the second best fighter in the early UFC days, as a king of pancration. Depardue was also pretty well regarded in Canada, as was Patrick Smith in the kickboxing / muy thai world. But yeah, those were really the only standouts.

I no means would I say that Gracie defeated the best in the world. But I would say that he defeated everyone who showed up.

The Gracie / Hughes fight will be the real test, in my opinion. We'll see if Royce took the fight just for the payday and it will be low action, just a lot of Hughes in the guard and Royce defending - or if Gracie has really actively prepared for someone of Hughes' strength and conditioning and wrestling ability.

[gusmahler]

Great summary, just a quick correction.

[ QUOTE ]
the UFC evolved significantly between UFC 3-5 (judges, most fights with time limits) and very signifcantly by UFC 8 (combination strikers/wrestlers now ruling the land) and then took off from there.

[/ QUOTE ]
IIRC, UFC 1 had time limits also. I remember one fighter being interviewed saying that he doesn't expect any fight to hit the time limit. UFC 2-4 didn't have time limits at all. UFC 5 did have the time limit. But, I don't think they had judges (Shamrock/Gracie was a draw, after all).

Also, I don't think combination strikers/strikers could be said to be "ruling" by UFC 8. The next star after Royce left was Don Frye. While he was billed as a wrestler, he was mediocre at best on the ground. He was more of a striker. The wrestlers really took over by UFC 10, when Mark Coleman came on board, ushering the GnP era, followed quickly by Mark Kerr and Randy Couture. The first real combination stiker/grappler was Vitor Belfort, who didn't really use his grappling skills in his first run at UFC.

[Performify]

Good clarifications all.

I wasn't really sure on the exact timing beyond 4, but I'd recently re-re-re-re-re-watched UFC 1-4 on the recently released UFC Classics dvds, so that was fresh in my mind. I'm pretty sure that there were judges as soon as UFC 5, but I can't recall for sure.

When I said combination strikers/wrestlers you're exactly right - it started with the pure strikers in Frye, Maurice Smith, etc. Then went to wrestlers with Coleman / Kerr / Couture, then combination striker / grapplers leading in to today's modern well-rounded MMA athlete who studies it all (Liddell, Hughes, Penn, Ortiz, GSP, etc).

[Dallara]

A couple comments:
- UFC 1 had ten minute rounds. I think the Rozier/Frasier fight might have lasted until round 2. None of the others did.
- Royce was probably the second best brother at the time of UFC 1. Rickson was clearly the best. Rorian and Relson were a little too old. Royler was probably better pound for pound than Royce, but much smaller so not as good to fight an open weight tourney. Rolker was, frankly, not that good. I think they planned to keep Rickson in the background in case someone beat Royce. Then they could have Rickson come in and beat that guy. As it turned out, no one beat Royce until Sakaraba ran through Royler, Renzo and Royce years later. By that time Rickson had pretty much retired from fighting.
- Regarding the Gracies picking fighters for the early UFCs, I think the Gracies really thought they could beat anyone and would have fought anybody. They were smart enough to know who would be tough fights (big wrestlers or big judo guys), but it wasn't until modern cross-trained fighters got skilled that there was really anyone who could beat them. A well rounded fighter like Fedor or Sakaraba or Vanderlai Silva just didn't exist until after the first couple UFCs (because nobody besides the Gracies were training that way).

Edited to add - as much as I like Royce, I don't think his chances are great against Hughes. Although Hughes has shown a weakness against good submission guys (Charuto almost subbed him, Hallman tapped him twice, Newton did sub him but lost), I think he'll be more careful against Royce and Royce's subs aren't as slick as those other guys.