Issue 029

September 2007

Fourteen years after kick-starting a revolution in the world of combat sports, Royce Gracie is now at the centre of a storm of controversy. A positive test for performance enhancing steroid Nandrolone has made the 40-year-old front page news once again.

Interview and photographs by Hywel Teague

Fourteen years after kick-starting a revolution in the world of combat sports, Royce Gracie is now at the centre of a storm of controversy. A positive test for performance enhancing steroid Nandrolone has made the 40-year old front page news once again. Fighters Only was the first and only publication in the world to meet Royce and hear his reaction to the claims that he cheated in his fight with Kazushi Sakuraba.  

The tall Brazilian is at times animated, at times reflective when he speaks of his current situation. His recent high profile MMA fight against Kazushi Sakuraba (June 2^nd, just over a month before this interview) didn’t end at the final bell as he hoped. Though Gracie won a convincing unanimous decision, a post-fight urine test showed exceptionally high levels of a banned performance enhancing substance. 

What was as perplexing as finding out that Gracie, long seen as the original blue print for a fighter who uses technique over strength and strategy over aggression, wasn’t contesting the $2500 fine or the 12-month suspension levied against him. There wasn’t even an official reaction, until now. 

“Do I look like I’m on steroids?” Gracie asks me. I hope it is a rhetorical question. “Something’s not right man. Nah, no comment. Look at me. I walk around at 184 / 185lbs. Everybody try to lose weight, I try to gain weight for my fights. Something’s not right.” 

It’s true that something wasn’t right. Though Gracie faced his old foe with vigour and dominated the unorthodox Japanese submission fighter, the levels of illegal performance-enhancing substance Nandrolone Metabolite in his urine were so high they could not be recorded. Gracie isn’t convinced though. “They couldn’t even test for it! Holy shit, I’m impressed with that, wow.” 

“Do you think I take steroids? OK! That’s what you think. There is nothing I can do to change your mind. ‘Well, the test says that you took steroids’. I know. I sleep well at night man.” 

The test did say that Gracie tested positive, and right now, the 40-year old legend of MMA doesn’t seem too bothered about it, but the comments from his cousin Renzo Gracie definitely hurt more than he lets on. 

Renzo stated on an internet radio show that Royce had let the family down by testing positive, saying “If he did that it's gonna be a shame. He should be ashamed of himself, 'cause he's actually cheating. For sure I can see someone, the people that are around him convinced him to go to steroids. To go ‘this is your way to win’.” 

“I saw that,” said Royce. “People shouldn’t jump guns man. I’m not a chemist. Where they got that I have no idea. That I am a disgrace to the family? That’s what he thinks, there is nothing I can do to change his mind. I’m not worried about that. That’s his opinion. He is still my hero after he thought three guys in less than six months, and tough opponents too.” 

“All my guys are telling me, ‘Royce, we know you man, we know you’. So I’m not bothered. As you see, it hasn’t changed a thing on my seminars, I’m booked until next year, it hasn’t changed a thing. People who believed in me still believe in me. People who never believed in me, it’s not gonna change their minds. We just need an excuse to throw stones, let them throw stones.” 

A fighter of Gracie’s standing testing positive for banned substances has left many fans disappointed, and has potentially placed a black mark on an otherwise exemplary reputation, but the first ever UFC champion is philosophical about it all. 

“What I did in the past doesn’t change a thing. People say ‘you lost to Matt Hughes’, well I lost to Sakuraba before too. I never said that I was inhuman, I never said that I was unbeatable. It happens if you get in the ring, you do what I do for a living, you pick the fights that I pick. I’m not worried about a thing man, I know I didn’t do anything wrong.”