2 great warriors. Remembering that Royce lost, but he was the most honored Gracie that ever existed. He put his face in the UFC and fought with everyone without denying any fight, even facing the scary monsters of the UFC who weighed almost twice his weight… There is a lot of talk about Rickson Gracie because he never lost a fight in his life, however, He denied a lot of fights where he knew it would be a problem, like Sakuraba. Not putting Rickson down, but like Royce, there hasn’t been another Gracie. 100% fearless samurai, accepted a fight without looking at his opponent
i met ismail one time and he was a super nice but very intense guy. he also spoke very little english and would have his girlfriend (assistant?) translate pretty complicated explanations of stuff lol. he could tell she was trying to summarize but then he’d butt in and force her to elaborate further. i was cracking up.
i had an antique bmw at the time and he actually stopped me to talk about it. i couldn’t believe the randomness of the encounter.
Does anyone else remember when BJJ fraud David Lang was claiming a black belt under Wallid? lol. Wallid made a video about it but it seems to be private now.
" Lang originally came to widespread attention in December 2010, when he became the subject of investigation in a thread on the UnderGround Forum at MixedMartialArts.com. At the time, Lang was presenting himself to students as a black belt under Wallid Ismail. Mr. Ismail is a truly legendary figure in the sports of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and vale tudo fighting. And although he was an unfamiliar name to Lang’s students in Ithaca, NY, when word began to leak out on the internet that somebody was claiming a black belt through Ismail in a remote, upstate New York college town, people in the know got immediately suspicious.
As the thread developed, a member of the MMA UnderGround in Rio de Janeiro quickly tracked down Mr. Ismail. The clearly fuming Mr. Ismail issued a prompt video statement denouncing Lang as a fraud who he had never met in his entire life, let alone trained and promoted up to black belt."
The Japanese guy held the fence the whole time. Tried to play with Wallid’s buttcrack. Tried to pull his cup out. Wore shoes and kicked a downed oppoenent, which was illegal if you chose to wear shoes. And then tried to call time out during the middle of the match.
The Japanese guy, who outweighed Ismail by 15 to 20 lbs, was afraid of Ismail.
Ismail was basically a walking corpse by the end of the fight and just kept walking forward while the Japanese guy just danced around trying to get his decision victory.
Wallid is a nice guy but he’s legit not right in the head.