Gracie blames his loss to Charles Jourdain on the decision to completely overhaul his gameplan just two days before their fight in Newark, New Jersey.
Kron Gracie returned to action at UFC 288 in May 2023 with a gameplan that came straight out of November 1993. The son of Rickson Gracie brought us back to the early days of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in his fight against Charles Jourdain. The bout included a lot of pulling guard, butt scooting, and closed guard. None of which works very well any more at the highest levels of MMA.
Gracie was defeated 30-27 on all three judges’ scorecards. It was noted that he actually looked worse than he did in his last two fights, like he was regressing with his fighting. Now Kron has made a short and slightly confusing statement regarding the Jourdain loss.
“In a lifetime of fighting, it’s always been a fight to the death,” Gracie wrote in an Instagram Story. “Understand the situation and willing to limit myself. even that being said I threw no punches because of bad advice and tried to please the jiujitsu community two day before my fight.”
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Kron Gracie – Instagram
“First fight in my life I didn’t throw a punch,” he finished. “Going back to my old ways.”
This is a pretty remarkable claim: that Kron not only received ‘advice’ from some one or some ones from the jiujitsu community, and not only did they tell him to throw no punches … but he actually listened?! He adopted a classic pure jiujitsu gameplan, but it wasn’t prepared through months leading up to this battle, or the years since Kron’s last UFC fight in 2019. He decided to implement it in the last two days before his fight?
We’d say we’re shocked but this is one of the loudest voices in the combat sports Flat Earth club we’re talking about here.
The loss to Jourdain drops Kron to 5-2 MMA (1-2 UFC), but at least we have hope now that he has a more well-rounded style he can revert back to than what we witnessed at UFC 288.