That’s why I said age is not a great barometer.
Mileage and other intangibles of the human experience are more significant than age – especially in around that decade from early 30s to early 40s.
It’s part of the reason I am so vocal when countering certain cliche arguments about certain well known fighters.
That being said, if we don’t count personal stuff that influenced decisions – at least part of that calculation has got to be – Sakuraba was better than Funaki.
But that’s a surface level take.
In reality, Rickson’s son died within like a month after Sak beat Ryan.
And whatever happened after that is not something I’ll ever criticize.
Not even close.
Whatever we wish we could have seen happen, is nothing compared to the human experience people live every day.
Same here.
A good friend of mine used to point this out.
He would say something like, we agree on 95% of this stuff – and argue endlessly over the remaining 5%.
Me saying rickson is more methodical and orthodox than royce is a hot take?!
Rickson wants to fight calm fights. That plays to his strengths as a technician. With Brawling, scrambles and chaos rickson is more apt to get thrown off. Holy shit takada exploded and threw rickson off from mount. Funaki during a scramble I think it was blasted rickson with the knee that gave him the mouse
No, but Royce handling chaos better than him is strange. It’s not like as skill increases one becomes worse at handling unorthodox attacks. Maybe for certain styles, but not Rickson’s.
I think a guy like Renzo might have been a little better at answering the the unorthodox striking attacks on the feet and in transition.
Hell, he cracked Oleg with an up-kick.
But there’s no scientific control tests to prove something like that.
So when Saku beat half of the members of his family, Rickson didn’t feel the need to step up and defend his families honor? Stand up for GJJ? Would it have taken Saku showing up at his dojo for him to fight?
It is largely Prides fault for putting Takada in twice against Rickson but I guess that was the biggest matchup they could make at the time to get the most interest from the Japanese fanbase . I have a sneaking suspicion had Pride offered Ruas or Kerr to Rickson for a much larger sum than they gave to face Takada - he would have never stepped foot in the Pride ring
Rickson’s father retired as family champion at age 42. His father did not want to retire, but he had to because it was better for the brand to let a younger and more able champion represent the family.
Rickson was trying to mentor a successor, his son Rockson. Rockson had won the Pan Ams 3 years in a row. Rockson was Rickson’s mini-me.
Rockson died after Rickson agreed to fight Sakura. If I understood how upset Rickson was, I probably couldn’t express it in words. It probably felt like being dead while you’re still alive.
So if you’re in his position, are you going to do your fight on schedule when you’re in the worst psychological spot of your life? Or are you going to avoid that until you get your head together again?
Buster Douglas’s mother died less than a month before he fought Tyson. For Douglas, that put him in a better mindset for that fight. I interacted with someone who who had his son die, and then lost friends over it, because for the rest of his life he kept grieving at random times, and people got sick of being around that.
Everyone will say that having your favorite child die after you agree to do a fight is just an excuse for pulling out of the fight. No one who says that had to burry their son.
I think it’s silly that he fought all those people for all those years in the 80s and 90s, and rolled with everyone at the open mats he did; but people who never met him or any of his students feel cheated that he didn’t do that one last fight.
Good point. To use a boxing analogy, the guy who ended Prince Naseem’s career was Marco Antonio Barrera, who fought the most orthodox of orthodox boxing matches to score his win.
Rickson was in talks to fight Ruas before UFC1. Without getting into the details and the various versions of the story, the discussion between Rickson and Ruas happened in a room where Ruas teammate Hugo Duarte was, and Rickson ended up fighting Hugo Duarte on a beach instead.
For the Gracies this was not about professional fighting as American’s understand it today. It was always about “brand integrity”.
How old are you and if you train anything when did you start? This is just a preposterous post if you know anything about the way things were back then. I fought 4 times in the late 90’s and I have no idea what my opponents records were or how many times they had fought. My first mma fight I had 3 days notice lol.
I’ve heard various rumors of Rickson being in negotiations to fight Ruas, Saku and other opponents but as far as I’m concerned, they are just that, rumors .. it’s just so difficult for me to believe he was willing to fight these strong opponents yet never actually did … not once
Gracie’s were great businessmen I agree. Very good fighters too overall..
Rickson’s gnp was pretty impressive. At the time he was fighting most were just wailing away from the top but he picked his shots. Cross arm so you only had one arm to block.
i’ve done a fair amount of jiu-jitsu in my life (nothing like you bb’s on the board, respek) and i started in the late 90’s
i started out at a pedro sauer school, which back then was pretty close to the trunk in bjj’s taxonomy. it’s not that i haven’t believed the stories people tell about rickson. one time at a seminar i overheard someone ask mario sperry if he thought rickson was really that good. his exact response was “hahaha. rickson WILL fuck you up.” high praise and i don’t think sperry had any huge interest in perpetuating a myth.
still, i think given the data we have, at the height of his prime, sakuraba would be too good a wrestler, too dynamic/unorthodox, too durable, and too capable of imposing his will standing for “prime” (circa the zulu fight?) rickson to beat in an mma fight under regular pride rules in a ring.
i think that’s probably the right hypothetical setting because any overlap their mma/nhb careers had was in the pride era and mostly in japan.
sure, with a ruleset or maybe setting (smaller cage) that specifically favors him, rickson’s theoretical chances improve.
If you were there, it’s very obvious who was there and who wasn’t.
I remember one time in the late 90s, a guy at my school was training for a fight. None of us were invited to the fight, because the fight itself was a criminal act, and the more people who were told about the crime before it was committed, the higher the chance of law enforcement stopping the fight.
There are interviews with Dan Severn where someone talks about how many MMA fights he had. Then he has to explain that he had many more MMA fights, but none of the ones that happened illegally are on the records you can look up on the Internet.
Nakai was the toughest SOB he fought. Sakuraba-like but smaller and blind by the time he got to him. Still, could not wait to get his hands on him. Gerard robbed us of a legend.