Issue 079

September 2011

Royce Gracie may be missing from the Octagon at UFC 134, but he maintains the key to being the champion is one of strategy, not strength

Royce Gracie remains one of the most readily identifiable figures in MMA, anywhere in the world, an icon in the sport. But he is unlikely to be stepping into the Octagon at UFC Rio, when the Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to what is considered its spiritual – if not physical – birthplace. So, would Royce, the tournament winner of UFC 1, 2 and 4, like to be involved again? “I should be there,” he says emphatically. “Inside or outside the ring. Rio is the birth of MMA, and my father created this whole thing.”

Does he mean in the Octagon, competing or fighting…? He laughs. A loud laugh. The last time he fought in the UFC was in 2006, against Matt Hughes, and only his second defeat. He is still laughing when he finally drums up an answer. “You’ve got to know when to stop, but that doesn’t mean stop everything. You can always be involved somehow.”

Does he ever watch MMA today and think it is evolving too quickly… and, who are the fighters he enjoys watching today? “I like the guys who use strategy… like Georges St Pierre, who really uses strategy. You don’t know if he’s going to shoot in, or stay away from you, or use boxing and stay away from you. You don’t know if he’s going to throw kicks, or if he’s going to play defensive. I like the guys who are able to take their opponents out of their games. 

“BJ Penn is pretty good at that, too. Anderson Silva is good at it. They make their opponents look easy. They are not. Because everybody is good, and everybody is tough at this level. But those guys make it look easy. I think time will tell just how good Jon Jones will be. You can’t judge him on one or even a couple of performances. You can’t say that Matt Hughes is not good, because BJ Penn knocked him out in a few seconds. Or that Ricardo Almeida is no good because Hughes choked Almeida out in seconds. Everyone has their good days and their bad days.”

He adds: “They said they had found the solution to beat Anderson Silva when Chael Sonnen took him down and controlled him. Look, I have never seen Anderson Silva fight that way before as he did against Sonnen. It was a totally different Anderson Silva. He took a beating, he still won, but you could see that something wasn’t right. So you can’t base how you judge a guy on one fight. You have to base it on a career. 

“Like Michael Jordan, or Muhammad Ali. Ali is called ‘The Greatest,’ the greatest of all time. He didn’t win his last couple of fights. Michael Jordan did not win his last seasons… but he’s the best basketball player of all time. So you have to look on a career. Not one season, or one fight.”    

Gracie has a happy berth wherever he travels to clinics. “I would be surprised if I wasn’t liked.” I take that as an opportunity to joke with him. “But you’re a mean, nasty cage fighter, really, aren’t you?” I ask. “No, I’ve never had a fight in the street. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. My job is to teach, and once in a while I get in the ring and fight. It surprises me when people don’t like me.”

So what’s the Gracie secret? He says there isn’t one. “It’s a strategy game. It’s as simple as that. I can’t think, ‘I’m going in there, I’m going to hit him a few times, take him down, choke him, and submit him.’ Is that a strategy? No. It’s a wish. Strategy is when you figure out what your opponent is going to do, then you set up your gameplan, either defensive, or offensive, or both.

“You have to figure out your opponent’s game, so you can take him out of his game. Most likely, the strategy is constructed before, but can also be when you are in there. There’s Plan A, Plan B and sometimes you have to pull out Plan C during the fight.”

Nothing happens overnight, and Gracie would change nothing from his own career. The Gracie philosophy never dims. “Three thousand people came to the first UFC event in Denver, Colorado. Look where we are now? We had 55,000 in Toronto, but look how long it took: 18 years. I fought in front of 94,000 at the Tokyo Dome.” So would he like to be involved today, coming through the ranks aged 25? “Would I like to go back and change anything? No. I would not want to change a thing, not even my losses.”

Royce Gracie must be in Rio. He is simply a part of the history himself.