As someone who is primarily a striker, with very little interesting in grappling outside of catch wrestling and sambo, I’m usually far away from the hilarious and petty politics of brazilian jiu jitsu. BJJ is an interesting martial art as while it is no doubt effective for combat sports, and proclaims to be a modern martial art – it suffers from the same clicky, cult of personality based communities that affect traditional martial arts like Karate and Kung Fu styles. No where is this more evident than with the outlandish claims of Rickson Gracie.
THE CLAIMS
Rickson Gracie talks, and he talks a lot. Professed to be the best Gracie (despite not having anything remotely similar to the impressive Record of Roger Gracie) – Rickson spoke in an interview recently claiming that his 450-0 record is ‘hard to deny’. What’s funny is that Rickson Gracie claimed to have an unbeaten 400-0 record, which his father, Helio Gracie himself, denied as being true. Helio Gracie said that Rickson counted submitting people in training as victories, and if that was the case, Helio would have wins in the thousands. That interview was in 2009, which means that since 2009 – Rickson claims to have amassed a 50 fight win streak which nobody has seen or has any record of. The existence of Rickson’s record is a bit like God, nobody can prove it doesn’t exist, but there’s no material evidence for it either.
Actually… that’s not quite true.
If Rickson did indeed have 450 fights under his belt, he would still be lying, as Rickson is objectively not undefeated. He lost to Ron Tripp in the 1993 US Sambo championships. Rickson protested saying it didn’t count, because he didn’t understand the rules of Sambo. Rickson had claimed to be a two-time pan-american champion in Sambo in the 1980s. At some point Rickson surely forgot the rules of a sport that he was good enough at to be champion. There is no evidence that he was ever a champion in sambo, outside of his claim.
THE ACTUAL FIGHTS
Rickson Gracie DID have an MMA career, a respectful but modest career, something he shares with the majority of the Gracie family, very few of whom have ever reached the top of the sport, unless you count Royce Gracie’s dominance in an age before mixed martial artists actually existed.
Rickson fought 10 times against opponents who were mostly either debuting or only two fights into their career. His two best wins came against Yuki Nakai, a genuinely good grappler, who had literally been blinded in one eye by a cheating Gerard Gordeau that very day, at the end of a tournament in which both men had fought twice before, and legitimate MMA pioneer Masakatsu Funaki, a great catch wrestler, who Rickson legitimately out grappled with no asterixis.
I’m not a fan of the term can-crusher, as it’s disrespectful to everyone who steps into the ring, but it’s fair to say that Rickson did not fight a strong level of opposition, and this was likely by design. Unlike other Gracie’s who fought to preserve the legacy of jiu jitsu, Rickson claimed to be the best, unbeatable, and a loss for Rickson would mean the very mythos he built his career around would be gone. Rickson had already been beaten before and chose to strike it from history.
For Rickson is was better to talk about how great he was, and just keep talking….
THE CALL OUTS
Rickson Gracie had a habit of insulting the abilities of numerous prominent Pride Fighters. One who particularly caught his ire, was the legendary Gracie Hunte, Kazushi Sakuraba, a fighter who beat a Gracie once in embarrassing fashion, who the Gracie’s decided to make a target of, sending man after man to fight him, only to be defeated time and time again by the Japanese wrestler, who was quite happy to collect a paycheck. Rickson repeatedly claimed that Sakuraba was a poor fighter with no real talent or ability, which makes you wonder what he thought of his brothers who kept losing to him. He often said he would easily beat Sakuraba, and yet mysteriously they never fought.
Other fighters who he insulted included: Mauricio Shogun Rua, Wanderlei Silva, Antonio Nogueira, Nrock Lesnar, Shane Carwin and most laughably, the greatest mixed martial artist of all time, Fedor Emelianenko, a man who beat every top name in his division. He claimed he would beat Fedor easily, yet once again, never fought him. In fact he never fought any of the men he called out, despite many issueing challenge to him. Wanderlei Silva, perhaps correctly said Rickson would be a fool to get in the ring with him.
Rickson was often called the best of his family, and while he is probably not as good as Roger, even in his prime, we just can’t know how he stands in any way, because he just never fought good competition, he simply chose to tell stories. Kron Gracie, Rickson’s son, has alread surpassed his father in grappling and MMA competition, yet he is still somehow in his father’s shadow. Rickson seems to hold this idea that the greatest fighter, is one who never lost, yet this is not how we view fighters in reality. The greatest jiu jitsu grappler of all time is Marcelo Garcia, who lost. Kron who has already surpassed his father, has lost. As Chael Sonnen said after losing to Anderson Silva, ‘its a two man sport, someone has to win and someone has to lose’. It’s a shame that Rickson never seemed to share those values.
