Issue 105
September 2013
Two years on from our last secret stories installment, we raid Brazil’s fight history archives one more time
THE CARLSON GRACIE ACADEMY WAR ROOM
The old adage ‘iron sharpens iron’ is a philosophy which has been used in mixed marital arts throughout the years. The idea of world class fighters training with other world class fighters so they can better their skills is a common practice now, but 20 years ago the only team who really had an all-star group of fighters training under one man who went on to achieve great success was the Carlson Gracie Academy.
“Carlson inspired so many of us to do what we’re doing today, including me,” said Ricardo Liborio. “Guys like Andre Pederneiras and Murilo Bustamante came from Carlson. They all came from this lineage. It wasn’t just jiu-jitsu guys who came from there, there were plenty of MMA guys too.
“You’d have all these great mixed martial artists sparring against each other and they’d be having these epic battles within the gym. If people had had the chance they’d have paid money to see the likes of the Nogueira brothers, Ricardo Arona and Mario Sperry all training against each other. There were plenty of tough guys there, so you had to stand out. You had to be in shape, on top of your game and have your technique down to a tee to really push forward at the gym.”
One of the more memorable things about the legendary Carlson Gracie Academy was the fact they used two separate gyms for training. One was for those who trained only casually, while the other room was for the professional fight team.
“There were two rooms at the Carlson Gracie Academy: one where he would have the regular training sessions, which was on the left hand side, and then you had the room on the right hand side which is where the ‘casca-grossa’, which means tough guys, would train,” Liborio explains.
“If you were one of those guys, if you were tough and you were a competitor then you would keep going to the right side, and it didn’t really matter what belt you were, you had to be the kind of competitor who could handle the demands of training on the right side otherwise you wouldn’t be invited. I remember Paulo Filho was a yellow belt at the time, a little kid, and he wanted to come and train over on the right hand side, but we wouldn’t allow him to go there. He was so p**sed off, he’d be screaming, ‘I want to train there, I want to train right now.’ He was 13 years old or something like that and he wanted to train with the older guys, but there were so many high level people training together.”
RUAS VS. GRACIE: THE FIGHT THAT NEVER HAPPENED
One of the key figures in the world of luta livre, Marco Ruas, gained fame within the MMA world when he defeated Larry Cureton, Remco Pardoel and Paul Varelans to win the UFC 7 tournament.
His ability to mix strikes, takedowns and submissions is now seen as the prototype for the modern day mixed martial artist. However, long before he ever traveled to Buffalo, New York to fight in the UFC, Ruas had already developed a reputation on the streets of Rio.
He explains: “In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, every neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro had its gangs and their leaders. I was well respected in Flamengo from being in street fights and from being challenged by martial artists who would come to my dojo. To be respected in my neighborhood and as a leader of the dojo, I had to beat the people up who would come to challenge me.”
One of the early battles Ruas took part in was the war between jiu-jitsu and luta livre. His need to prove himself as the best fighter in the world and prove the luta livre style was the more dominant one eventually meant he would face off with the famous Gracie clan, an opportunity he’d wanted then and still wants to this day.
“Brazilian jiu-jitsu was very popular. It was controlled by the mainstream media, magazines, and popular to the high-class people. The Gracies were well-known in Rio de Janeiro and in the Flamengo neighborhood, but after my 1984 vale tudo fight with Pinduka, who was a Gracie black-belt, I became very well-known.
“I was considered the first to face the Gracies. I had an invitation to fight Rickson Gracie and I agreed. I wanted to fight Rickson because he had a good name and he was a good fighter. There were rumors that he had proposed to fight me and that I had rejected, but the rumors were not true.
“When I heard the rumors, I went to request a fight but he refused and asked for an absurd amount of money for the fight to happen. Helio Gracie then came to the gym while I was teaching to tell me that his son Rickson Gracie was the best in the world and he would need a good sponsor to pay him well for this fight. He would only fight me for $1 million. So the fight never happened.”
He adds: “If I could fight anyone today, I would choose Rickson Gracie because it was a fight that many people wanted to watch but it never happened.”
THE OSCAR OF JIU-JITSU
American Top Team coach Ricardo Liborio recounts a tale relating to Wallid Ismail, now an MMA manager and promoter, and forever one of jiu-jitsu’s most colorful characters.
Liborio tells FO: “Wallid Ismail was one of the funniest guys ever and the back and forth between him and Carlson Gracie was hilarious. One day, Carlson put a poster of a competition on the wall and it was called ‘The Oscar of Jiu-jitsu’.
“Wallid gets in the gym, furious at this poster, he starts shouting ‘who the heck is this guy? Who is this guy to have a tournament named after him? Who the f**k is Oscar? What has this guy done for jiu-jitsu?’
“Carlson looks at him and says ‘It’s the Oscars of jiu-jitsu’ (laughs). It was so funny.”
