Open minded readers only

I am not american but the one thing I admire most about your culture, is respect and admiration towards your national heroes and history. Those remarkable moments are perpetuated by monuments, film making and etc. Well I don't expect you will do the same for the Gracies as they are not american born citizens but lack of respect is also inadmissible.

Some say they are arrogant, some say they are mere capitalists. I have to say they are more than that. They have devoted their life to their art and have worked hard to spread it throughout the world. We took it for granted but if we see their history, their fights decades ago, their challenges, family tragedies, arrests we see they have walked a long and challeging way.

Some say they give excuses but I say they are respectable and honorable men. Kimura officially stated that if Helio lasted more than 3 minutes he could be declared the winner. Not only he lasted 13 minutes but Carlos threw in the towel. Helio never said a word, never gave excuses that he didn't tap or that he won based on Kimura's comment. Royler didn't talk crap either after his fight with Sakuraba. That's character and integrity. Some say they are cocky and I like them for being cocky and I hope it doesn't change. That comes form the early Gracie time, where there were no organized tournaments and it was the only way to get others martial artists to fight them. Many of the great sportsman of all time were and will have this kind of behavior (Ali, Pele etc.).

I usually do a Gracie-Matrix analogy for what happened in the Martial arts world. The Gracies gave us the red pill. Some like it some don't. Why? It made everybody lives harder and more competitive. People had to stop the bullshit and put their ass on the line. That fighter that was feared (you know that Kung Fu guy around the corner of your house, or from the gym your friend used to train...) had to prove he was any good, what in most cases, proved he was not. They took everyone out of their comfort zones. It is hard to imagine that everything you stood and believed wasn't that you quite expected.

If we look back and imagine how cool this movement was, to have fighters from all different backgrounds eager to learn a new technique, a new fight, exchange of teams, travel to other countries to leardn form other. It had never happened before. Then we had a new movement, of cross training in different arts, famous fighters training with each other, new challenges. All of that propelled by the Gracies. And they were not self-fish to keep their art just from them.

I like to hear when a fighter like Shamrock badmouths them. If the Gracies didn´t give him the red pill would he be the person he is now? Would he have won the UFC (invented by a Gracie)? The thing that made everything he is now in MMA world. Would he have the respect and the money he has now? Would he be in this profession? I wish he could imagine himself without the Gracies.

Look what we have now, multiple MMA tournaments, world jiu jitsu championships, ADCC, this very own and other sites, people dedicated to MMA and... even PS2 and XBOX games.

No one is obligated to like them and many people do not. I doubt the Gracies care about that either. They have had enemies and people who dislike them since the 1920´s and I actually think they like it.

And these bastards are so visionaries and open minded that they are looking further to the future of sport but they are so many years ahead many people can figure out what they are thinking. Rickson for instance, took MMA to another level when he created Pride, making it a Boxing style event with a 50 thousand crowded Japanese gymnasium and a national covered broadcast. They want to leverage MMA to a new level, to make it a worldwide phenomenon, to make it the sport of the new century. And we, MMA lovers, now that this sport can brings adrenaline, excitement and fun like no other.

Well put!

i disagree, the gracies have been welcomed and embraced in this country and they have thrived.

yes there are some haters, but how many hundred million people live in the US?

jacktripper

I am telling they were not. I am just saying some people are disrespecful.

well said

but

royler pitched a big fit about the sakuraba fight

rickson did not create pride

and most people in america think royce is the shiat.


Pride mastermind is indeed Rickson. He proposed this project to japanese promoters and stated he would only fought under those conditions. He later tried to do the same with Colosseum.

I respect the Gracies a great deal, the problem is that they don't respect anybody else. The Gracies didn't invent Jiu Jitsu nor Shootfighting. Most of them still can't shoot a respectable takedown or fight standing up. That's just a lack of respect for the total game.

Bart Vale and Ken Shamrock were shootfighting in Japan BEFORE there was a UFC. I do give Rorion and Royce credit for introducing it to the US. But be honest, they hand picked participants for the first 4 tournaments and as soon as they sold the organization, Royce didn't make another appearance in it.

Rickson was a great fighter, no doubt, but he didn't fight the best in Pride. He fought Japanese pro wrestlers and kickboxers like Bud Smith (who'd never even seen a takedown). I get tired of the whole, "Gracies invented submissions". That's flat out not true. What they did was devise competition rules that favor Jiu Jitsu over striking arts (legal to wear Gis, soft mats, a chainlink fence, bare knuckles, etc.)

And they weren't trying to grow MMA, they were trying to sell BJJ to America. Which they did. But long before the UFC, I'd learned how to armbar and lapel choke from Judo and Sambo players. I respect the Gracies as much as any Brazilian fighters, but the rest of their countrymen don't claim to have invented the arts they practice.

Renzo is the best Gracie. He's active, fights hard, conducts himself with class win or lose and doesn't make excuses.

It's not a blue pill you swolled dude, it's a big dose of Gracie propoganda. These techniques were given to the Brazilians from the Japanese, who got them from the Chinese, who got them from India a couple thousand years ago. Pankration was an origional olympic game in ancient Greece, that would've been a few thousand years before the rise of Rome. Long before the Portugese colonized Brazil.

Personally I'd watch wrestling over sport JJ any day of the week. Sport JJ is still heavily tainted with nationalistic politics and shady oficiating. At least in wrestling the better athelete actually wins the match 99% of the time (Karelin v. Garder is the exception).

vale do you think america has been terrible to the gracies and treated them with no respect?

and, are you a gracie?

Thanks bro. Vale any comments?

arent a lot the the gracies americans anyway? i think royce is at least...

ttt

Name Caller is so correct that this thread is over. There's no need to discuss anything else.

Case closed. Move along people.