Rickson Gracie.

L

Littledragon

Guest
Rickson Gracie is one of my idols I look up to in the martial arts world. I am very excited that I will be training with him in his California dojo in the 3rd week of July. He is currently training to compete again in Japan, (Bushido, Pride, Vale-Tudo I don't know yet.) Anyway I feel that Rickson Gracie is right now the best of the Gracie family who is alive right now. Rickson & Rolls are the family champions winning every single fight handed out to the them, defeating the Luta-Livre clans as well as other Karate dojo's and masters. I personally feel that Rickson Gracie is one of the greatest grapplers alive and I feel that he is the best Mixed Martial Arts fighter who is alive today. Rickson is a true martial artist. If any of you has seen the documentary dvd CHOKE it shows you that what he does is not just sport but true martial arts. Rickson's skill in grappling is as Michael Jordan's skill in basketball. Rorian decided not to let Rickson fight in the UFC because Rorian said that it would be no fun seeing Rickson defeat every challenger. Royce claims that Rickson is 10x better than he is. Rickson Gracie in my opinion is the best grappler alive. Teaching the very famous Machado's or should I say being a peer of them as well, Rickson has never backed out of any challenge and is always there to prove his Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is the most effective weither it is in the ring or in the street. He has beat the toughest street fighters in Brazil such as his famous fight agains Zulu whome was originally supposed to fight Rolls but was too scared to fight him and challenged Rickson instead. Rickson has challenged boxing champion Mike Tyson and with confidence said, "I have no doubt in my mind that I can beat Mike Tyson." Rickson is a real champion and a real martial artist. Everything from Rickson is 100%. What makes Rickson such a legend in the Grappling and MMA circuit is because his heart is as no others. He never hides behind his blackbelt and preaches about how good his style could be, he proves it.

What are your feelings on Rickson Gracie who has had over 450 fights and never lost one even since his amateur career?
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Idolatry in any form is a setup for disappointment; no one is perfect always. Rickson would be among the first to encourage you to blaze your own trail, before following his. I trained with him while he was still in Torrance, then for a spell in LA, then again in a studio in south Orange County set up by a couple of his students. My thoughts on him? He is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet...a trait that seems to run constant in masters and champions who don't have chips on their shoulders, and know they know what they know. He trains and competes with intensity, which many have mistaken for attitude. On the contrary, he'll be the first to help you up (after he's choked you out).

Enjoy your training, and listen for the details. One thing that makes Rickson better than many is his grasp of BJJ as an art, and not just a constellation of grappling techniques. Rolling with him, one really gets the feel of the artistry, and not the wrestle. (Read: "This guy owns my butt, and looks good doing it"). They all know the techniques, but they are not all artists.

Dave
 
I think that Rickson's jiu-jitsu is off the map. I don't believe everything I hear though. Here is a post from the abu dhabi forum about Rickson.


After a long two weeks..i just finished this last night...


Warning, it's very very long.

>>>>>>>>

For three years now I have heard relentless bantering back and forth discussing the greatness of Rickson Gracie. Many of times I have found myself scratching my head over the loyalty of his followers. Worshipping of this nature is usually only reserved for super stars such as American Idol’s Clay Aiken or Christianity’s Jesus Christ. In the beginning, being the typical ignorant American, I first asked myself, ‘how many Super Bowl rings has Rickson won?, as football is the only sport that matters. None, as I soon realized from reading people’s quotes. This Rickson character is a bjj ‘artist’, the best ever and also pound for the pound the world’s greatest fighter of ALL TIME. Wow. “that’s really impressive” I thought.

Over time though, doubts started creeping into my head. Rickson, curiously enough, had a fight record of 400-0, that was thrown around more often than a dirty pair of socks. Being a somewhat numbers obsessed guy, I quickly busted out my hp financial calculator and did some match. He’s 45. He fought nine ‘recorded’ matches from 1994 to 2004. Fair enough as 1993 was the birth of modern day MMA. So that means from Rickson’s age of 18 (1975) to 1993, 18 years, he must have then squeezed in roughly 391 recorded fights. “GOD DAMN” I shouted and scratched my head, amazed at his level of activity. That’s almost 22 fights a year! One fight every 16 days, consistently, over the time span of 18 years. That’s unmatched and to think he never missed a beat due to sickness, injury, being married, or funerals. The man just kept fighting and fighting and fighting. He must have actually snuck in a fight or two while on his honeymoon to boot. “hey honey, no sex tonight, I have to keep my fight streak intact. Will be back in three hours after I put beat down on kids in bar” <translated from Portuguese>

Now really twisting my head trying to comprehend this, a few weeks ago more doubts came to the surface. Just as Jesus Christ had Mathew, Mark, Luke and John (nice jewish names to note) Rickson also had followers…JeffP, Compridough, and Rickson4life, the last person consigning his entire personality to that of another mans name. Interesting. What caused these doubts? A thread on the ADCC forum. This thread discussed legendary achievements by athletes. Wrestling’s John Smith came up, how he won an Olympic Gold medal and four World Gold medals. Alexander Karelin’s name come up next; multiple Olympic Gold Medals and decades worth of World Championship Gold’s. Surprisingly enough, the ‘fellowship of rickson’s nuts’, jeffp, compridough and rickson4life swarmed in to comment.

Rickson first chimed in with this;

“I am not a huge fan of gable or smith, both asholes in my book, But I respect their acheivements even if gable was using roids during the 72 games………..there is proof that Rickson is great. he beat Funaki, ya know the guy that beat frank sham, bas, kondo and a few other mellons that are legends of this forum and Rickson was undefeated and won the absolute in every bjj tourney he competed in from black belt on, by sub”

Hmmm..i scratched my head. He then followed up with this comment…

“Rickson has more documented titles of bjj then the wrestlers do in wrestling and bjj IMO is harder from doing both”

Wow…I was shocked as I didn’t know that. I suppose I learned something new that day. Little did I know that more was on the way. The second apostle of Rickson’s nuts, JeffP, immediately countered with more facts to back the Rickson story…

“Now if Rickson counted every guy he ever really tapped into his record, he would be about 4 million and something, not 400-0. Rickson and Felix Heredia tapped 200 guys in Japan in one day back in the early 90's. I'm also sure Gokor has tapped more guys than he can count with an adding machine”

I felt stupid. Here I was, shortchanging Rickson for the past few years, thinking his record was only 400 ‘documented’ wins, when in actuality, I was failing to consider all the practice room victories he had secured. I felt foolish for disagreeing with JeffP. Utilizing my calculater again, I crunched the numbers. From age 16 to age 44…that’s 28 years of fighting. 4 million divided by 28 equals …<crunching> GASP!!! 391 confirmed victories every single DAY, over the span of 28 years. Was that possible? That’s 16 beat downs every hour, 24 hours a day, over 28 years. Rickson must be tapping people in his sleep, while he takes dumps on the toilet, while he eats. This is incredible, I thought. But catching my breath and trying to relax, I soon realized that I was played for a fool, the above is simply not possible. I posted the above thought trying to rationally reason with these followers. I asked, where can this humble man known only as ‘the wrestler’ find such facts you are now sharing. I too would like to nutride some day and if so, there cannot be a greater set of nuts to suck than the man who taps people while eating and shittting.

Nonetheless, the man known only as ‘rickson4life’ politely informed me next that:

“hey there jerknutz, I neva promised you nuthin, but I did at one time have those facts and another source that had at least 127 matches listed

Rejected. I was quite despondent.

Therein lies the beginning of my story. The 7 day pilgramidge to the holy land of ‘rickson’ to search for the truth. To attempt to find the holy covenants that lie out there, also known as ‘Rickson’s fight record’ Over this time span, I would actually send one of my employees to go to California, try to ask Rickson himself for the ‘supposed records’ Others in my office would also help as we scoured the internet three times over, pouring over every record and fact available. This is what we would find.

Using our trusted allies ‘google.com’ and ‘booble.com’, we got to searching. The first two web sites were of no use in terms of actual accomplishments. Instead, much of those Rickson sites spent all their time discussing Rickson’s looks. The actual words we found…

“The blankness of the supremely confident. Rickson is 29, as muscular as a bodybuilder, with a Marine's crewcut, the high cheekbones of an Inca Indian and a square jaw”

and

“If Rorion is amiably handsome, Rickson is devastatingly handsome. Noted photographer Bruce Weber”

“Was he a bjj guy or a gay film star?” Carol, my secretary asked. Looking at his beach pictures, Rickson, to the untrained eye looking at his sites, looked like a romo We decided to press on with our search, moving on down the list of google’s rickson sites.

The next site we found the mystical source of the 400-0 record. Our eyes were ablaze. There it was, a bio on Rickson.

“Rickson is a 7th Degree Black Belt Open Class Champion of the Gracie Family, whose technique is considered to be the finest expression of Jiu-Jitsu in the world. His innate talent and early mastery of the sport have resulted in an impeccable undefeated record in more than 400 fights, Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, free-style wrestling, Sambo, open weight free-style competitions, and no holds barred challenge matches. Rickson is a two time Brazilian Champion in free-style wrestling, a Gold Medal Winner of Sambo, and for the last sixteen years he has been the middle-heavyweight and no weight division World Jiu-Jitsu Champion. Most recently, he conquered Japan's elite fighting in a tournament, the Japan Open Vale Tudo, winning both in 1994 and 1995. At this time, Rickson was acknowledged by the Japanese for possessing the Samurai Spirit.”


This was something to sink our hooks in on. Moving fast now, we found three more sites that referenced Rickson’s MMA career records. Ah ha!!!…but unfortunately, they all just linked right back to Sherdog.com, where Rickson’s nine fight career is noted. A far cry from the fabled 400-0. Looking at the nine fight career, Russ, an associate of mine at work, mumbled…”who are all these Japanese no-names he beat, these guys are all lame, there ‘combined’ career MMA record is only 18-27-2 and not a single one was ever ranked in the top 30, at ANY time. What the hell is up with that? David Levicki? Yuki Noiki? Bud Smith? Yoshihisa Yamamoto? There all ‘cans’” I chuckled out loud, at the sound of a man who has watched one MMA event in his life recognizing a tomato can when he saw one. Nonetheless, we were all frustrated. 9-0 versus eight ‘cans was not that impressive, surely there was more.

YES!” We shouted, as we found a good link.

http://bjj.org/tournaments/outcomes.html

This page read as follows…

”This page attempts to record some of the more significant matches fought by legitimate professional BJJ lutadors against other styles, in the seventy year history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu”

Since Rickson is THE most significant bjj fighter of all times, surely we would find numerous transcripts and results of his fights. This site would hold the answers we seek. Unfortunately, of Rickson’s 400 documented wins, these two 'WINS' would be the only one the site listed:

1. Sometime in the 80’s, Rickson apparently beat up Brazilian fighting legend Hugo Duarte on some beach somewhere, location was not specified as I suppose a beach is just a beach. Could this be the same Hugo Duarte that used his face to bruise Tank Abbot’s hand back in UFC-Brazil? Then added insult to injury by bleeding all over Tanks arm?

2. Sometime in 1980 and then again 1985, Rickson beat down a monster known only by the name of ‘Zulu’ Ahhhhhhhh…we had heard of this man. This is the first sighting of a ‘significant’ Rickson Gracie victory. YES. From what we had heard, Zulu was Brazil’s version of ‘Paul Bunyan’, a giant amongst men, 450lbs of raw muscle who shot flames out of his ****. A present day ‘Bob Sapp’ Unfortunately, backchecking Zulu’s record, very little could be found. His weight was listed at only around 220lbs and his discipline was listed as ‘no formal training’ Hmmm. Who was Zulu? After hours of searching, the best and only documented ‘anything’ on this man was that he was from the town of São Luis and his real name was ‘Rei Zulu’. To sum up a lot of nonsense, Zulu was basically the local ‘toughman’, a bully who beat up locals. His record of 140-0 was puffed up on fat, drunk American tourists and neighborhood kids. We were perplexed as to why Rickson would define his career on this man?

Frustrated immensely, we searched over 45 more sites but more of the same. One site intereviewed Rickson, asking him his greatest fighting achievement. He listed his Pride 1 victory over Japan’s greatest fighter of all time, Nobuhiko Takada, who sported a lofty lifetime record of 2-6-2.

http://w3.blackbeltmag.com/bbkids/yourage/gracie/gracie.asp

Another site that had Rickson apparently had a movie review of a movie he was in.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/p/RicksonGracie-1128279/

That was interesting until we noticed the site was ‘rottentomatoes.com’. LOL at the irony of his jump into movies getting the same review as the opponents that he has taken on.

“hey, not fair’ cried my associate Russ. We should use Rickson’s greatest movie, “choke” as a more unbiased review of his opponents. Surely an actual documentary on his fighting career will show who he beat and give footage of at least some of his 400 wins. Russ was right and I moved onto the next site....

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/choke.php

Unfortunately again, the site had nothing good to say about the video. The actual words in the review…

“My biggest complaint about Choke isn't the violence, however, but the lack of competition that Gracie faces at this event. Maybe it's that Gracie is just that good instead of these other competitors being wussies, but he wins in complete squashes. That does not make for great drama”

Note. The video apparently showcased Rickson beating down Todd Hayes who is a ‘famous’ kickboxer from Texas, who apparently won Steak and Shake's Beerfest toughman contest in 1990 and Koichiro Kimura, the Japanese heavyweight shootfighting champion. Sherdog’s fight finder said Todd had a career record of 1-0. Kimura was 1-2, but wait, this was the fight that was already listed on Sherdog. Nonetheless, Todd Hayes became documented win number 10. Moving on.

The next 47 links all just linked up with either forum boards or video reviews of his video ‘Choke’ This type of search was going absolutely no where. Using Google as a reference, it just looked like Rickson was a good looking gay gay from the beach who made videos and beat up a black beach bum bully in 1985.

We decide to focus our search on the original source of documents. It stated Rickson was a gold medal winner in Sambo. Onward we searched at this link.

http://bjj.org/interviews/rickson-1998-04.html

Apparently Rickson had competed in Sambo tournaments and this interview showed he got beat by United States sambo rookie, Ron Tripp. The interview:

“FF In our last interview, you claim that you did not know the rules when you fought in a Sambo tournament in the U.S. against Ron Tripp, therefore it should not be considered a loss, but I see on your record that you had competed in other Sambo events prior to this.

RG You must understand that each tournament was not the same. Not every Sambo tournament has the exact same rules. If I had known that getting thrown on your back was a loss, this would not have happened. If Mr. Tripp would like to fight NHB, I'm sure the promoters could set this up.

Hmmm..upon further review, that tournament was not fair to Rickson. Even though he was a lifelong Sambo competitor, in this particular tournament, Rickson WANTED Tripp to toss him and slam him on his back, so that loss was not actually a ‘loss’ The 400-0 is now 400-0-1*

Nonetheless, another person documented this mess quite accurately..

“He(rickson) claims the rules to Sambo can vary with the tournament, and that if he had known falling on his back was a loss it wouldn't have happened. I find that a little suspect. No major sambo tournament refuses give big points [or an outright win] for a powerful hip throw that lands the opponent flat on their back. Further, there is almost always a rules review session for competitors before a competition of this size.

It was a sambo event, in EVERY sambo event there is "total victory", an auto win if you throw a person who then land with their head at your feet while you remain standing. Ron Tripp threw Rickson with Uchimata in under a minute and Rickson landed flat on his back at Ron's feet. Supposedly the owner of century martial arts co has video of it? What does it mean? It means that Ron Tripp is a serious grappler with great skills. It means that Rickson lost to Ron Tripp under the rules of Sambo and knew the rules before hand having already done sambo many times before so no excuse.

Hmmm. Why is Rickson lying like that? Regardless, we did find something useful from this site. The first official ‘sighting’ of a documented Rickson factual title. Apparently, back in 1977, Rickson won an actual gold medal in Sambo at the Pan Am games, at the age of 19. Unfortunately, a problem arose. There were no ‘Pan Am Games’ in 1977. They were in 1975 and 1979 and worse yet, the official site for the Pan Am games does NOT list ‘Sambo’ as an event. Freestyle, Greco and Judo are listed, but no ‘Sambo’ Very strange that Rickson would tout himself as a gold medallist at the Pan Am games when the official site of the Games does not even list his event. The link:

http://ourworld.cs.com/eblibrarian/myhomepage/sports.html

Our frustrating search continued. Rickson claimed to be a two time Brazilian National Freestyle wrestling champion but that was a lost cause search. A database of Olympic and World championship qualifying teams quickly showed that he NEVER represented Brazil in either a the World Championships or the Olympics. No links could be found to verify Rickson’s claim. Perhaps the two times he won, those were the two odd years that Brazil didn’t send competitors out to compete versus the world. Convenient.

His last claim, that he was a sixteen year middle-heavyweight and no weight division World Jiu-Jitsu Champion. Maybe this would be the holy grail. Every other search for verfiable evidence came up short, but maybe this one would be different, as jj was his specialty. There is also such as thing as the ‘Brazilian Jui-Jitsu Worlds’ too. Unfortunately, Rickson would again make things difficult. He never mentions anywhere on any of his sites the actual year he won the event. While he endlessly touts a victory against a local bully Rei Zulu, he shortchanges everyone on what might be a legitimate title he holds in JJ by not providing a single source of evidence as to what year he did this.

Looking over this hopeless cause, reality set in. Rickson had little to nothing to verify or document any of his ‘JJ world title’ accomplishments. ‘If’ he had actually won a world JJ title, being he had nothing else on his resume, surely he would have touted and boasted of the victories. Since he was not listing the years or dates, we were left to assume that those titles were similar to the others, a figment of his imagination.

Standing over a wasted two weeks of work, our office behind on our regular jobs, we sadly looked at each other with astonishment. How could this “muscular bodybuilder, with a Marine's crewcut, the high cheekbones of an Inca Indian and a square jaw” fool so many people for so long. How could someone with such a loyal and massive following go year after year ‘claiming Pan Am games medals, Freestyle wrestling titles, World JJ titles and an incredulous record of 400-0, without a single peep from anyone asking him to verify it? His followers recite the 400 and ‘oh’ mantra without any asking ‘where’s the win’s? Documented records from the last 10 years of his life turn up only 10 victories. The sad truth is that there is no verifiable proof of anything with this man. Time has come and gone and most records are now conveniently lost, never to be proven. Those that can be attempted to be proven, some backchecking proves the claims to be lies. Where there is one lie, others are most likely to follow. The saying, “where there is smoke, there is fire’ is appropriate here. All we can go by now is second hand heresay talk of ‘behind closed doors’ victories. Practice room beatdowns. Secret societies and endless rumormongering. Debating Rickson’s accomplishments alongside other MMA goofballs like Matt Furey. I’m tired and after the above two week search, not much more can be said on Rickson. The links and facts are all up there to see. Please feel free to correct or build upon what is written. At this point, after exhausting review, my opinion is that his ‘nuts’ are not worthy of being sucked.
 
Kinda goes with the old adage, "Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you read."

Brazilians count challanges matches in their wins. Ricksons had more than his fair share. Titles in Worlds and Pan-Ams? Don't know anything about them, but was there the night a pan-am 2x champ came in to challenge Royce in Torrance...and got soundly beat. After Royce's UFC bout with Kimo, the old man brought Rickson back to Torrance (presumably against Rorions will) to train Royce, because the towel-toss in the following fight was unacceptable. From the privates room, grunts, screams, and curses in Portugese could be heard...followed by Royce stomping out for desperate sips of water.

My training partner decided to cross train with a former Olympic wrestling guy...some dude by the last name of gables. Seems the Gracie family paid to have him come to the compound in the distant past to teach transitions and shoots while Rorion was still rather young. "Say hello to little Rorion for me."

Brazilian event records and organization are nototious for being about as organized as the Itialian Post Office (who got 9 years behind on delivery, so they just burned all the back mail and started from null). Rickson competed in the days before the internet, and certainly in the days prior to MMA craze as we know it.

Is it right to list choked out drunks as part of a 400 fight record? In my bouncing, I've been in over 350 altercations, with only a couple dozen times where a guy and his buddies got the better of me. Does that mean I'm 350 and +/-12? I don't view it that way. But many Brazilians would. Almost every night he taught here in CA for a couple years, some guy would show up for a challenge match. I remember the night in Laguna Hills where he put a "kenpo champion" in a crucifix, taking his time & slapping him lightly in the process to make a point and lower the champ's arrogance in the lesson. Do those count? I'm quite sure there were more than 400 of those.

Still, I agree...if the 400 number is supposed to represent competition victories, they should be made available to the public in some type of resume/cirriculm vitae format. Like I said...all forms of idolatry are setups for disappointment.

Train hard, and set your own records.

D.
 
I was at Rickson's Academy in March of 2004. I trained with one of Rickson's top students Henry Atkin. Rickson also made the time to come out and meet me personally at my private class. He was very Kind, and down to earth, he greeted me with a hug, and introduced me to his wife. We then sat and talked about bjj, and training. It was a great day to meet a legend.......

Troy Ostapiw/Central Canada
 
"What are your feelings on Rickson Gracie who has had over 450 fights and never lost one even since his amateur career?"

Rickson Gracie's professional fight record is a perfect 10 - 0, with wins in Japan Vale Tudo 94, Japan Vale Tudo 95, Pride 1, Pride 2 (?), Colisseum 2000 and 1 documented fight against Zulu in the early eighties.

Best BJJ player ever? Probably, as a lot of top BJJ players today will confirm.

Best grappler ever? Impossible to tell as there is too much formats of grappling in existence today and a lot of great champions in each.

Best MMA fighter ever? Certainly not. Best of his time maybe.

He is primarily the reason why Kakutougi (MMA - Vale Tudo) is bigger and ,ore popular than boxing and K1 in Japan right now.
 
A side note. In order for someone to find these types of results on the net. Someone would of had to upload the info in the first place. A half the info on the is suspect. A better seach method may have been more appropriate.
 
I am glad to see a martial arts talk forum where one can critique Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, or find problems with it, with out being immediately banned from the site.
 
Jack, you were NOT banned from BudoSeek!. Your account was closed AT YOUR REQUEST. Your subsequent signups after your account was closed, first as Keelhaulhim and then Patrick Skerry only shows that you have no integrity. Those accounts were banned because you continue to violate the rules, this time by holding multiple accounts and not disclosing your real identity as required by our rules. However, it was YOU that requested that you account be closed. I would be happy to forward the actual PM to each of the moderators here if you like. Meanwhile, why do you and everyone else read the text as copied from your PM to me.

The test of your PM to me.
---------------------------

08-18-2004, 12:15
Jack Stay

Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Boston, MA.
Age: 47
Posts: 339

New England Judo Guild

--------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Robert,

Please close my account.

Thanx!
------------
John 'Jack' Stay

Doesn't exactly sound like you were banned for opposing Gracie JJ does it now?
 
listen and learn what you can from him...don't build people up into myths...that just leads to disappointments
 
The best Gracie grappler right now is Roger. Just check the ADCC 2005 results, the man is a beast.
 
Rickson is a legend.

He was the best of his generation and was apparently smart enough to stop while he was ahead. I seriously doubt we will ever see him in a ring again.

That will leave the legend in tact. Truthfully I don't think he is the best anymore, even in his prime I bet there are guys now that are better then he was.

Rickson by all accounts was the very top of that game, folded other top guys into paper cranes with ease. He was also smart enough to get out at the exact right time. Going out undefeated with as many followers as he has will elevate his near super human skill to an even higher level in reputation.
 
Like any other legend in any other sport/competition. As time goes by he will become more unbeatable.
 
The poster you are ranting about posted this 4.5 YEARS ago, and is no longer is a member of this site. May I suggest you save some of that energy for more productive ends? Like training?
 
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