- SaTaN -
26th May 2006, 08:33 AM
By UFC.com ( Thomas Gerbasi )
Maybe it was a stupid question, but that didn’t prevent me from asking it, and it didn’t stop the gracious Royce Gracie from answering it. Days before a big fight, like Gracie has this Saturday night against Matt Hughes at UFC 60 in Los Angeles’ STAPLES Center, are there ever any nerves?
“Nah, heart rate’s 60,” smiled Gracie. “Even an hour before the fight.”
In so many ways, it’s the answer you would expect from perhaps the most unflappable fighter in the history of mixed martial arts. With a poker face Joe Louis would have envied, Gracie has stood in competition against bigger, stronger, faster, and more intimidating fighters time and time again, and with rare exception has always emerged with the victory. It’s just what he does.
“Everything is done in your training camp,” said Gracie. “Once the fight day comes, its just execution. You’ve got to trust in what you’re doing and have confidence in your skills.”
As the standard bearer for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu since his UFC debut in 1993, the Rio De Janeiro native has had to have the confidence to step into competition and the skills to succeed. Maybe even more importantly, he had to have broad enough shoulders to carry the Gracie name into each fight, knowing that a loss could cripple the mystique of fighting’s first family. He doesn’t see it as an issue thougjh.
“There’s no pressure if you believe in what you’re doing, and you grow up in an environment that’s been competitive for the last 80 years,” he said. “If I put you in the middle of the war in Iraq, you’re gonna freak out. But if you spent ten years in there, you’d be like, ‘okay, the grenade just blew up, it’s not a problem.’ So this has been in my family for 80 years and we grew up with that, so there’s pressure to be a Gracie every day, not just to walk into a fight. You do seminars and everybody wants to challenge you, so it’s not a problem.”
Was it something that was required of each son of Helio Gracie though?
“My father never forced me to do anything,” said Gracie of his father, who will be in attendance on Saturday. “He just said, ‘learn it, and if you want to use it, use it, and if you don’t, don’t.’ When the time came, I stepped into the Octagon and that’s what I chose to do. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and it’s just a part of my life, its part of my family, and it’s just what I do.”
But on that November night in 1993, few in the United States knew who the Gracies were, and when the skinny kid of the clan, Royce, was chosen to represent the family in the first UFC, many shielded their eyes, fearing for his safety against his more visually imposing opposition.
“It was just the right time,” said Gracie when asked why he was chosen to be the family’s rep in the UFC. “I was the right size. I wasn’t bulked up and big and I didn’t look very scary, so to speak. It was just the right timing for me.”
And the wrong timing for everyone else he faced. Art Jimmerson, future UFC hall of famer Ken Shamrock, and Gerard Gordeau all went down to defeat that night, and even though fighters from the first UFC are now seen as crude compared to today’s Octagon athletes, the fact is that Gracie was on the short end of the stick up and down the tale of the tape in everything but technique and smarts, and he used those to pull out the victories. Add in that Gracie was forced to prepare for an entire tournament’s worth of styles, and his accomplishments back then are even more impressive.
“It was very different from the way it is now,” said Gracie. “You draw the fighter right before the fight and your strategy is done right there on the spot. You train for everybody. When you’re in training camp you train for a big guy, little guy, fast guy, slow guy, heavy guy, strong guy, everybody. So when you get an opponent, you say, ‘okay, that’s the guy – here’s the strategy for him. He’s a boxer, so I’m gonna shoot.’ It was a lot more on the fly. You have to be prepared for everybody. Now, you get an opponent, you know who he is, you have the footage, and you train for him. It’s different.”
In more ways that one. After an 11-0-1 stretch in the UFC from 1993 to 1995, Gracie disappeared from the fight game for close to five years before returning to the ring in Japan for three Pride fights in 2000 which included his first loss after a 90 minute epic with Kazushi Sakuraba. Two more bouts in Japan followed, most recently a draw in a K-1 bout against Hideo Tokoro last December. So he’s been active - but when the announcement was made that Gracie would be returning to the UFC to face Hughes, it was a shocker to many. Why was this the right time to come back?
“It’s not the matter of it being the right time,” said Gracie. “There’s a business aspect of fighting as well and the UFC has been working with my management for four years now to bring me back to the UFC and they made a deal. I’m a fighter – I’ll fight wherever. I don’t care. They made a deal, so it’s on.”
But can Gracie compete successfully a) in an Octagon for the first time since 1995, b) with the unified rules that were not in existence when he last fought in the UFC, and most importantly c) against a fighter at the top of his game like Hughes?
Of course Gracie believes he can, but he’s not giving out much more information than that.
“Every fight presents difficulties,” he admits. “It’s up to my camp to sit down and figure out his game and see if he has any holes for me to capitalize on.”
So he obviously sees something in Hughes?
“Everybody has something to capitalize on,” he said. “If not, then nobody would win the fight.”
Fair enough, yet are there any concerns at all going into the bout?
“I prefer to fight without judges personally because I don’t want to put the decision down to some people on how they view the fight,” Gracie admits. “And there have been a lot of inconsistencies in judging. A fighter’s on the bottom and he wins the fight; the next fighter’s on the bottom and he loses the fight. It’s very inconsistent and there’s the same concern with the refereeing. Some guys get stood up five seconds into the ground, some guys can lay there forever. It’s up to the referee and the judges’ discretion and a lot of times it becomes a problem. Sometimes it favors one fighter, the next fight it favors another fighter and it’s very inconsistent. Those are the only concerns I have. I prefer to fight where two guys walk in, leave us alone and let us finish. If both fighters come to fight, it shouldn’t be a boring match.”
Whatever the outcome on Saturday, the atmosphere alone should be electric with the leader of the old guard facing the leader of the new generation. In a lot of ways, it’s a homecoming of sorts for Gracie, who is coming full circle in a pioneering career that has seen this sport go from an outlaw spectacle to a legitimate sport that has worked its way into the mainstream’s consciousness. But even in the dark days, Gracie always knew the sport would take off.
“It’s a very exciting sport, very competitive, and with fighting or any other kind of combative sport that’s been around for thousands of years, it’s just a matter of time until it catches on,” he said. “Actually, it was a pretty big success in the very beginning, but then it ran into some problems with commissions banning it and it went into hiding. Then the Zuffa guys brought it back up, but I always thought it would become big.”
And a lot of thanks go to Royce Gracie for that.
Maybe it was a stupid question, but that didn’t prevent me from asking it, and it didn’t stop the gracious Royce Gracie from answering it. Days before a big fight, like Gracie has this Saturday night against Matt Hughes at UFC 60 in Los Angeles’ STAPLES Center, are there ever any nerves?
“Nah, heart rate’s 60,” smiled Gracie. “Even an hour before the fight.”
In so many ways, it’s the answer you would expect from perhaps the most unflappable fighter in the history of mixed martial arts. With a poker face Joe Louis would have envied, Gracie has stood in competition against bigger, stronger, faster, and more intimidating fighters time and time again, and with rare exception has always emerged with the victory. It’s just what he does.
“Everything is done in your training camp,” said Gracie. “Once the fight day comes, its just execution. You’ve got to trust in what you’re doing and have confidence in your skills.”
As the standard bearer for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu since his UFC debut in 1993, the Rio De Janeiro native has had to have the confidence to step into competition and the skills to succeed. Maybe even more importantly, he had to have broad enough shoulders to carry the Gracie name into each fight, knowing that a loss could cripple the mystique of fighting’s first family. He doesn’t see it as an issue thougjh.
“There’s no pressure if you believe in what you’re doing, and you grow up in an environment that’s been competitive for the last 80 years,” he said. “If I put you in the middle of the war in Iraq, you’re gonna freak out. But if you spent ten years in there, you’d be like, ‘okay, the grenade just blew up, it’s not a problem.’ So this has been in my family for 80 years and we grew up with that, so there’s pressure to be a Gracie every day, not just to walk into a fight. You do seminars and everybody wants to challenge you, so it’s not a problem.”
Was it something that was required of each son of Helio Gracie though?
“My father never forced me to do anything,” said Gracie of his father, who will be in attendance on Saturday. “He just said, ‘learn it, and if you want to use it, use it, and if you don’t, don’t.’ When the time came, I stepped into the Octagon and that’s what I chose to do. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and it’s just a part of my life, its part of my family, and it’s just what I do.”
But on that November night in 1993, few in the United States knew who the Gracies were, and when the skinny kid of the clan, Royce, was chosen to represent the family in the first UFC, many shielded their eyes, fearing for his safety against his more visually imposing opposition.
“It was just the right time,” said Gracie when asked why he was chosen to be the family’s rep in the UFC. “I was the right size. I wasn’t bulked up and big and I didn’t look very scary, so to speak. It was just the right timing for me.”
And the wrong timing for everyone else he faced. Art Jimmerson, future UFC hall of famer Ken Shamrock, and Gerard Gordeau all went down to defeat that night, and even though fighters from the first UFC are now seen as crude compared to today’s Octagon athletes, the fact is that Gracie was on the short end of the stick up and down the tale of the tape in everything but technique and smarts, and he used those to pull out the victories. Add in that Gracie was forced to prepare for an entire tournament’s worth of styles, and his accomplishments back then are even more impressive.
“It was very different from the way it is now,” said Gracie. “You draw the fighter right before the fight and your strategy is done right there on the spot. You train for everybody. When you’re in training camp you train for a big guy, little guy, fast guy, slow guy, heavy guy, strong guy, everybody. So when you get an opponent, you say, ‘okay, that’s the guy – here’s the strategy for him. He’s a boxer, so I’m gonna shoot.’ It was a lot more on the fly. You have to be prepared for everybody. Now, you get an opponent, you know who he is, you have the footage, and you train for him. It’s different.”
In more ways that one. After an 11-0-1 stretch in the UFC from 1993 to 1995, Gracie disappeared from the fight game for close to five years before returning to the ring in Japan for three Pride fights in 2000 which included his first loss after a 90 minute epic with Kazushi Sakuraba. Two more bouts in Japan followed, most recently a draw in a K-1 bout against Hideo Tokoro last December. So he’s been active - but when the announcement was made that Gracie would be returning to the UFC to face Hughes, it was a shocker to many. Why was this the right time to come back?
“It’s not the matter of it being the right time,” said Gracie. “There’s a business aspect of fighting as well and the UFC has been working with my management for four years now to bring me back to the UFC and they made a deal. I’m a fighter – I’ll fight wherever. I don’t care. They made a deal, so it’s on.”
But can Gracie compete successfully a) in an Octagon for the first time since 1995, b) with the unified rules that were not in existence when he last fought in the UFC, and most importantly c) against a fighter at the top of his game like Hughes?
Of course Gracie believes he can, but he’s not giving out much more information than that.
“Every fight presents difficulties,” he admits. “It’s up to my camp to sit down and figure out his game and see if he has any holes for me to capitalize on.”
So he obviously sees something in Hughes?
“Everybody has something to capitalize on,” he said. “If not, then nobody would win the fight.”
Fair enough, yet are there any concerns at all going into the bout?
“I prefer to fight without judges personally because I don’t want to put the decision down to some people on how they view the fight,” Gracie admits. “And there have been a lot of inconsistencies in judging. A fighter’s on the bottom and he wins the fight; the next fighter’s on the bottom and he loses the fight. It’s very inconsistent and there’s the same concern with the refereeing. Some guys get stood up five seconds into the ground, some guys can lay there forever. It’s up to the referee and the judges’ discretion and a lot of times it becomes a problem. Sometimes it favors one fighter, the next fight it favors another fighter and it’s very inconsistent. Those are the only concerns I have. I prefer to fight where two guys walk in, leave us alone and let us finish. If both fighters come to fight, it shouldn’t be a boring match.”
Whatever the outcome on Saturday, the atmosphere alone should be electric with the leader of the old guard facing the leader of the new generation. In a lot of ways, it’s a homecoming of sorts for Gracie, who is coming full circle in a pioneering career that has seen this sport go from an outlaw spectacle to a legitimate sport that has worked its way into the mainstream’s consciousness. But even in the dark days, Gracie always knew the sport would take off.
“It’s a very exciting sport, very competitive, and with fighting or any other kind of combative sport that’s been around for thousands of years, it’s just a matter of time until it catches on,” he said. “Actually, it was a pretty big success in the very beginning, but then it ran into some problems with commissions banning it and it went into hiding. Then the Zuffa guys brought it back up, but I always thought it would become big.”
And a lot of thanks go to Royce Gracie for that.