The MMA Minute – Fighter Profile: Royce Gracie

The month of September is an unusual one in the world of MMA. We’ve got 2 weekday fights and only a single weekend PPV. To fill this void for The MMA Minute, and to help further educate you in the world of MMA, I’ve decided to bring you fighter profiles. Similar to my articles on the history of MMA, the UFC, and the other main organizations, these will be fancy reproductions of the Wikipedia pages for these fighters, as well as some of my own thoughts, and tidbits from other great websites.

We really can’t start anywhere else other than Royce Gracie. This is the man that captured all of our imaginations and really helped facilitate the sport MMA in the United States. I’ll cover his career record, bring you some highlights, and do my best to reflect what this fighter represented in the grand scheme of Mixed Martial Arts… after the jump!

Gracie became a larger than life figure in the mixed martial arts world for his domination in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He became famous for beating opponents much larger than him, and between 1993 and 1994, he was the tournament winner of UFC 1, UFC 2, UFC 4, and fought to a draw with Ken Shamrock in the championship match in the Superfight at UFC 5. He holds the most submission victories in UFC history with 11, which he earned between UFC 1and UFC 4.

Royce is a member of the Gracie family. He is the son of Hélio Gracie (Helio along with his older brother Carlos Gracie are the originators of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu—Modern Brazilian Jiu Jitsu).

Brainchild of Rorion Gracie and Art Davie, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was an eight-man single-elimination tournament with very few rules that would award $50,000 to the winner. The basic premise was to find out how different styles of martial arts would fare against each other. Art Davie placed ads in martial arts magazines and sent letters to anyone in any martial arts directory he could find to recruit competitors for the event. Among the takers were kickboxer Patrick SmithPancrase fighter Ken Shamrock, and Savate world champion Gerard Gordeau.

While Art Davie felt that Gracie’s older brother Rickson Gracie, who was stronger and more skilled than Royce, was the obvious choice as the Jiu-Jitsu representative, Rorion Gracie chose the younger Royce to represent the family style.

In his first match, Gracie defeated journeyman boxer Art Jimmerson. He tackled him to the ground using a baiana (morote-gari or double-leg) and obtained the dominant “mounted” position, also pinning Jimmerson’s left arm around the boxer’s own neck. Mounted and with only one free arm Jimmerson conceded defeat, mostly due to frustration rather than submission.

In the semi-finals, Gracie fought Ken Shamrock, who showed excellent grappling skills in his first-round submission win over Patrick Smith. Gracie immediately rushed Shamrock, who sprawled effectively and got on top of Gracie. Shamrock then grabbed Gracie’s ankle and sat back to attempt the same finishing hold he used to finish his first match, but Gracie rolled on top of him and secured a rear choke that forced Shamrock to tap the mat in submission. Shamrock later stated that Gracie used his gi suit as a tool for ligature strangulation to perform the submission, protesting the fact that he was not allowed to wear his wrestling shoes because the event organisers had stated that it could be used as a weapon, feeling that the rules for the tournament were created to favor Gracie. Royce disputed the claim and said he had used a no-gi choke, meaning that there is no need to use his gi to apply this choke.

In the finals, Gracie defeated Savate World Champion Gerard Gordeau (who broke his hand in the first round of the tournament against Teila Tuli), taking his opponent to the ground and securing a rear choke.

Over the next year, Royce Gracie continued fighting in the UFC, obtaining submission wins over fighters such as Patrick Smith, 250 pound (113 kg) European Judo Champion Remco Pardoel, and Kimo Leopoldo. His final UFC victory was in a match that lasted for 16 minutes (there were no rounds or time limits at the time), during which he was continuously pinned underneath 260 pound (118 kg) wrestler Dan Severn. To end the match, Royce locked his legs in a triangle choke for a submission victory.

Time limits were re-introduced into the sport in 1995 and Ken Shamrock would become the first fighter to survive Royce Gracie’s submission attack and earn a draw. The match lasted for 30 minutes and a 5-minute overtime. The draw sparked much debate and controversy as to who would have won the fight had judges determined the outcome, or had there been no time limits, as by the end of the fight Gracie’s right eye was swollen shut. However, the swollen eye was a result of a standing punch due to a sudden change of the rules in which both of the fighters were restarted on the feet. After this fight the Gracies left the UFC.

In the time after Royce left the UFC, Kazushi Sakuraba, a former amateur and professional wrestler who derived his foundation in submissions not from jiu jitsu but rather from catch wrestling, rose up to make a powerful argument for the potency of that particular approach to grappling in the hands of a capable fighter. He did this by embarking upon a series of wins over Brazilian jiu-jitsu blackbelts, including Marcus “Conan” SilveraVitor Belfort and Royce’s brother, Royler Gracie.

The Gracie family took great umbrage over Royler’s loss. Royce Gracie returned to the sport of mixed martial arts in 2000 and entered the 16-Man Pride Grand Prix with dominant heavyweights Mark ColemanMark Kerr, and Igor Vovchanchyn. Sakuraba also participated. A special set of rules were requested by the Gracies that would apply only to the potential Sakuraba-Royce match, including no referee stoppages and no time-limits, the fight ending only in the event of a submission or knock-out.

Royce advanced to the quarterfinals by beating Sakuraba’s stablemate Nobuhiko Takada, before finding himself matched up with Sakuraba. Gracie and Sakuraba battled for an hour and a half. Early in the fight, Sakuraba nearly ended things with a knee-bar towards the end of the first round. Later on, Gracie applied a guillotine choke at the end of round 2 which Sakuraba eventually escaped due of the bell ending the round. As the confrontation stretched on, Sakuraba’s wrestling skills and balance nullified Royce’s ability to score a takedown. After the 90 minute battle, punishing leg kicks showed their effects. Royce’s brother, with Royce’s full acknowledgement, threw in the towel during the intermission. Gracie had suffered a broken foot from accumulated damage. After the match, Gracie and Sakuraba embraced in the ring. Gracious in victory, Sakuraba pointed to Gracie as the superior ground-technician when questioned as to why he didn’t engage him on the ground more frequently. Sakuraba would go on to defeat other members of the Gracie family including Renzo Gracie and Ryan Gracie earning him the nickname “Gracie Hunter.”

Royce spent some time fighting in PRIDE and also moved on to K-1 for a short time before eventually returning to the UFC to fight UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes on May 27, 2006, at UFC 60. This was a non-title bout at a catchweight of 175 lb. under UFC/California State Athletic Commission rules. In round one, Hughes hyperextended Gracie’s arm in a straight armbar, but Gracie refused to tap and held on with a calm expression on his face. In a later interview, Hughes stated that he purposely let Gracie out of the arm lock because he knew that Gracie would not submit and would rather allow his arm to break. Hughes went on to win the fight by TKO due to strikes at 4:39 of the first round.

While Gracie does not consider himself officially retired, neither is he actively searching out matches, telling FanHouse, “I get approached all the time. I just have to say, ‘Set up a show,’ and I can fight. That’s easy. But I don’t really have that urge to fight, that anger to fight.”

You can check out Royce’s career record courtesy of Sherdog.com (via Wikipedia). You can click the link to view this breakdown as well as read up on more in depth details of Royce Gracie’s career and personal life. I hope you enjoyed our opening fighter profile. Next week, Ken Shamrock.

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One response to “The MMA Minute – Fighter Profile: Royce Gracie”

  1. […] week we detailed some of the highlights and big moments in the career of Royce Gracie. This week, we delve into the career of another one of MMA’s ‘godfathers’, Ken […]

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