The cluelessness on this thread is amazing. To go back to the Ford Motor Company and Gracie Jiu-Jitsu analogy: It’s like if I told you what Fords were being sold in the 1920s and you say: Well if it was really available then, did anyone save a screen shot from the Ford website, and what airbags did it use?
Every car has to have airbags.
Well they didn’t back then.
From 1904 to 1924, Mitsuyo Maeda fought in America, Spain, France, Cuba, Mexico, and Brazil. Do you want to try looking up the records of his opponents online?
Shit, maybe someone was uploading the results of Abe Lincoln’s sanctioned bouts from the Internet connection in the log cabin next to the sycamore tree.
The 300-0 record is not a record whether there was a jitz competition available or not. Its faith based like Bruce Lee being a world beater. Just cause he invented JKD doesn’t mean he couldn’t test himself in the ring against other styles.
The Gracies were good grapplers but outstanding businessmen. Rickson being in UFC 1 wouldn’t sell as much Gracie Jitz.
Yeah, I wonder if you trained at the same Pedro Sauer affiliate I did. The one I trained at was run by a retired special forces guy. For this guy, everything had to be just so.
Pedro Sauer was Brazilian, so when he did a seminar, he would show up super late by American standards. Way after all the Americans were there, and he’d walk through the door in no kind of hurry whatsoever.
The ex military special forces American school owner couldn’t say anything, and had to pretend not to notice how late we were going to start.
Someone on here said that Gracie schools are run like factories. One thing people today don’t realize is that almost all Brazilian schools were run the Brazilian way. It’s just that the Brazilians who adapted to the mass produced McDonalds franchise way were the ones who became successful in America.
Like even if there were websites backed by databases in 1980s Brazil, I doubt that the people there would have been as interested in them as Americans are. Hell, I doubt any of them did direct deposit either. I could tell some stories about how organized some of the Brazilians were as late as the 21st century, but I don’t think that adds anything of value here.
Sak would win no problem. MMA and BJJ are two different sports. Sak could control where the fight took place and was way more well rounded for MMA than Rickson.
Dont take me as a hater. Early UFC gave smaller folk hope. Once we saw wrestlers really adopt sub defense then we found out the guard was not an offensive position. Schultz stalemating Rickson, Shamrock stalemating Royce, Kerr pounding Gurgel, Erickson giving Bustamante hell then finally Kerr beating Sperry legit at his own game. And dont forget Igor taking a few blackbelts’ heads.
Rickson was the last Gracie untarnished. Thats a huge sell for gyms.
Things were different back then. Moves and drills that are no longer taught at sport BJJ schools were things every white belt learned. One of the first things a white belt learned about mount was that the guy on top can punch the face of the guy on bottom, but the guy on bottom can’t punch the face of the guy on top.
Modern MMA is tame a PG-13 version of Vale Tudo. Training for Vale Tudo was part of Jiu-Jitsu, just like Sport BJJ was part of Jiu-Jitsu. Back in the day, Jiu-Jitsu schools taught Vale Tudo, Sport BJJ, and the self defense curriculum. Now most only teach Sport BJJ.
Rickson was throwing strikes in fights during the 1980s
Carlson did it in the 1950s
Sakuraba was not an MMA fighter before Rickson. Rickson’s family was doing MMA before Sakuraba was born. Rickson was being trained to fight in MMA before Sakuraba was born.
I give Sakuraba credit. He had a strong wrestling base, and made amazing progress when he started training in what we now call MMA in 1993. In the late 1990s, Shoot wrestling was not considered to be MMA any more or less than Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was. Fighter’s records from organizations like Pancrase did not start getting listed on their MMA records until more than a decade later.
None of the Shoot wrestling events or promotions billed themselves as MMA. They billed themselves as wrestling: Union of Wrestling Forces International, Pancrase: Yes, We Are Hybrid Wrestlers, New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
Antonio Inoki helped train some of the these wrestlers, and none of his matches count as MMA, except the one special match where he fought a professional boxer. That counted because it actually pitted two people with vastly different training against each other.
Notice that for the Brazilian fights shown in these photos, there’s no protective equipment, no wraps, no gloves, and 12-6 elbows are not only legal but encouraged.
Great post. I remember cornering a teammate for a vale tudo match and finding out that his opponent was world jiu jitsu champion from the ring announcer. I found out from Ian Freeman that the UFC was coming to the U.K. for the first time at a local event just a few weeks before it happened. It’s hard to appreciate how little information was available unless you were there at the time.
No matter what your opinion is this is a fantastic thread. Love the knowledge and debate going on here. Threads like this are a big reason why I originally joined the UG.
After reading up on him, it appears that he was good enough to have been on the Japanese Olympic wrestling team if he wanted to go that direction. Instead, he chose to become a pro-wrestler. That seems to explain why he out-performed so many others, although the Japanese seem to treat it as being random.
Mine has a different one. Based on his attendance and performance, he should be more than one belt level ahead of where he is.
I researched the ages and belt levels of the kids at competitions, talked to his instructor about that. We’re holding him back so that he won’t always be the youngest kid at his belt level in competitions.
The stripes and belts are a big psychological motivator, and I think from ages 5-15, kids need a lot of small rewards and recognition along the way. The system becomes a problem when there’s a payment schedule built on top of it designed to drain people dry like some meat-space in-game micropayment.
