i accept the idea is not realistic, nor cost effective
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Meh.
Better grappler doesnât mean better fighter.
Rickson didnât wear a gi in Vale Tudo, so thatâs one difference from Royce.
Some of those fights might had looked a little different.
I 100% believe his hands down/chin up approach would have gotten him hurt had he attempted MMA on the level of Royce and Renzo.
Not saying he wouldnât have wins⌠But at some point that would have gotten him caught.
I have my doubts that Rickson would have been able to match Royceâs initial UFC run.
Is it your opinion that Rickson would beat anyone Royce and Renzo beat?
Even if Royce and Renzo arenât better than Rickson â they are certainly more accomplished in real fights vs superior competition.
Talking about what is true⌠That is true.
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He got jammed up on the mat.
It happens.
People just have confirmation bias.
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.
Here.
Berry lands a left first that stiffens Ken, then the follow up right is a glancing blow.
These things happen.
.
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the only opponent i agree with you about is shamrock 1. that was an excessively quick finish and i imagine Rickson would have taken more time to flatten and bash him.
otherwise Rickson would have stopped them all more brutally and left them more injured. no question. he must have been spitting blood watching his weak brother struggle at times
Rickson was more skilled, more physical, more spiteful. he would have dominated Hughes IF the fight hit the mat relatively early.
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So everyone taking Rickson over Hughes, I get it, itâs really even a bad matchup style-wise for Hughes.
What about Rickson vs BJ?
I think BJ is the absolute nightmare matchup for Rickson and he KOs him fairly early.
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I think Rickson is better all around. I donât think Royce or Renzo would disagree.
I think you have to fight the fight to know for sure. Royce also had a chin up stance. Their basic philosophy was to not step back and force the fight to the ground. Which worked very well for that time.
So I think Rickson duplicates the feat that Royce accomplished in the early run. Ken Shamrock was probably the only guy who had a legit shot. Dan Severn at the time didnât know enough to stay out of the triangle. On a side note: I actually bartended the after fight party in Tulsa at the Adamâs Mark hotel. Got to meet the fighters, it was pretty cool.
Later on Yoshida was tough but Royce was better. Akebono could have been a nightmare for anyone in the wrong position. I think his big fat ass sitting on your face would have taken a lot of fighters out.
As far as Renzo goes, I think Sakuraba was the biggest challenge. But your question is people the other brotherâs beat. I think Taktarov was the toughest and maybe Frank Shamrock but I think Frank was past his prime for sure in that fight. I think for some reason Frank lost confidence in his ground game. Maybe that was due to injuries.
So I think Rickson could have beat all of those guys that Royce and Renzo beat. My comments have been more directed toward the OPâs original question regarding Hughes and Rickson on the ground, and also for whatever it is worth Renzo and Royce will both admit Rickson was better, regardless of who thinks Royce and Renzo were more accomplished. Again, itâs not even close.
To go even more off subject, Iâll throw this out there too. I donât think the Helio style of Jiu-Jitsu was intended to be for world class competition against world class competition. I think it was developed to allow the weaker opponent to survive the onslaught of a bigger opponent and catch them in a finishing hold after whethering the storm. The ground fighting made the size and weight difference more tenable.
I think the Carlson style of Jiu-Jitsu may be better suited for more equal higher caliber competition. I also think there is a sporty aspect of fighting in the UFC also.
Without the gloves people would be breaking their hands when punching to the head. The gloves make it easier to defend chokes. Takedowns where you have your head down against the fence exposes your central nervous system. They added the rules for not hitting in the back of the head for a reason. A lot of Special forces fighters would destroy a lot of wrestlers, making that kind of mistake, assuming they donât get taken down.
Strikers were put at a big disadvantage with the current rule set. In Pride you use to be able to knee a downed opponent (if the weight discrepancy wasnât too large), missed shots had a bigger consequences. You would eat knees to the head. I think wretlers were the biggest beneficiary of some of the rule changes.
With time limits too, wrestlers can out grind a lot of people especially when they weigh the same. That style of fighting might not be as good when someone out weighs you by eighty pounds.
Also, takedowns that work on the mat will break your knees on concrete. Being mounted and picking shots can work well in the UFC, fighting in the streets leaves a hand that you canât see that can pull a knife and or a gun. One of our guys was in a street fight mounted, taking his time puncing the guy in the face. The guy pulled a gun out of his pocket and shot him in the back. Sporty cross body positions have the same problem. They work great on the mat or octagon, in the streets blind hands that you canât see can be a serious problem.
I think this is where alot of Jiu-Jitsu goes wrong nowadays. I learned Jiu-Jitsu so I could survive in the streets and protect my family. This includes weapons. The sport Jiu-Jitsu was designed to give you a chance to compete and train hard so you could hone your skills.
Now, everyone wants to be a sport champion with sport techniques. There is money and fame and all that good stuff in it now, but you see how these sporty guys get slaughtered in the UFC using those techniques. In the streets it can be even worse.
I am done ranting, and none of this is really on point. I think Rickson is better on the ground than Matt Hughes. Matt was great fighter, butt ugly strong, and one of the best fighters of all time. I think Rickson was a better grappler.
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Iâd pick BJ, Rickson looks like kron on the feet and has 1 way to win
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I just donât really agree with this.
Being stronger than Royce would not have mattered vs guys like Ken, Severn, Kimo.
Iâm not saying Rickson wouldnât win â maybe he would and maybe he wouldnât â but those fights look different IMO â and the lack of a gi contributes to that.
I do tend to think Rickson catches Ken in UFC 1, mainly because Kenâs gameplan was going to be the same for every fight. Get the takedown and drop back for a leg. He just didnât believe anyone had anything for him in that aspect â almost like he thought he had the cheat code.
Later on though, when Ken had a better understanding of what the Gracieâs wanted to do â I think Ken with the right gameplan could beat Rickson.
That doesnât mean he would. There are a lot of intangibles there, on both sides.
But he definitely could.
Beyond that â lol at Rickson âbashingâ Ken on the ground.
Rickson might have caught Ken with a rear choke or armbar.
But he certainly would not have the ability to beat Ken up on the ground.
I can argue that Ken Shamrock never really got his ass kicked until the first Tito fight. Nobody was âbashingâ a 90âs Ken on the ground. And if they did it would be someone like Coleman â but certainly not Rickson.
This IMO is part of the Rickson myth â that he was like a man among boys on the ground.
Rickson fought lesser opponents than Ken,
without really âbashingâ them on the ground.
But I digressâŚ
There is another reason I donât think Rickson would have duplicated Royceâs run â and itâs not just about the matchups.
I think Rickson was very much legacy driven.
I think he would have won 1, maybe 2 tournaments â declared GJJ superior, himself the best â and âretiredâ.
I do not see Rickson testing himself on the level that Royce did, both in the early UFCs, and later when Royce fought Sakuraba, Yoshida, and Hughes.
The reality is:
Not only do Royce and Renzo have better âVale Tudoâ resumes than Rickson â a bunch of the guys they fought (win or lose) have better âVale Tudoâ resumes than Rickson.
If Ricksonâs âMMAâ career had occured in the late 80âs/early 90âs â as kind of an origin story to Royce in the UFC â it would have made a better story.
In reality:
Royce âshook up the worldâ, made history, and influenced a martial arts movement.
Rickson played around in the B Leagues â after the fact â and we got to hear how much âbetterâ he wasâŚ
Playing around with a half blind Yuki Nakai, and
TWO fights with Takada â after Royce was tangling with the likes of Ken, Severn, and Kimo.
YeahâŚI get it.
Those inside the Gracie family have a different perspective.
Thatâs fine.
But thereâs dojo legends, and thereâs actual accomplishment.
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This is an excellent post.
Iâm not going to bother nitpicking it, because I agree with most of it.
In the areas I might disagree, itâs not by much.
I appreciate the detailed response.
Really, thanks.
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I think the more interesting question is Jake Paul vs. Matt Hughes standing up.
I can agree they have beat better fighters but I still think Rickson was better but thatâs just my opinion
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Perfect example of a fixed fight. Ken literally did nothing the entire fight not one flush punch .Then took a dive which was very obvious on video u posted.Just like he dove against Franklin This was even more obvious Post the Kimbo one And this is why Im not a fan of him
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It was their opinion too.
I donât even understand why this is a debate. Royler didnât do anything different than Rickson.
You could make a case that Renzo was different because Carlsonâs side had better striking, but Renzo always has said Rickson was better than him at fighting.
They put it on the line more. Theyâre also all 6 or 7 years younger than Rickson. He was already 34 at the time of UFC 1, and riddled with injuries in the pre trt era.
He was closer to 40 than 30 when ADCC started, so shit Renzo and Royler did better than him there.
Vale Tudo Japan 1994 was a better tournament than UFC 1, and only 7 months after UFC 1. To say Royce is a better fighter because he fought in the UFC is dumb, and only through the lens of history where the best fighters now are in the UFC.
Thereâs another thread going on right now where people are saying Rickson would get destroyed by Karelian, but people forget that there was a US Olympian who almost beat Karelian in Greco in VTJ 95. Along with Gordeu, one of Royceâs signature wins. They both lost to Nakai and didnât even make it fight Rickson.
As more and more people have opinions who have never trained with anyone who has trained with Rickson, this silly sentiment that he wasnât actually good will get more pervasive.
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I was there for this one. Grapplers Quest in the early 2000s were great events.
I took second in my division. Good times.
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Ken was just too old to be fighting there. You can see his reaction time was off on every punch that was thrown at him. He shouldâve been in retired.
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Talking about Rickson compared to Royce made me think of 2011 when Reagan Penn was starting to fight & the brothers (maybe just BJ?)were saying he was better than BJ. That didnât pan out.
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Itâs hard to believe Pittmanâs account of that match with no video. He claims he scored a point on Karelin, but Karelin was famous for having no points scored against him in international competition.
No