UFC welterweight Matt Brown faced a lot of adversity this past weekend in Brazil. First off he enraged the Brazilian crowds during the weigh-ins for his feature prelim bout with home favorite Demian Maia, flipping them off amid chants of ‘you’re going to die’ from the 15,000 strong crowd. Then came the night of the
UFC welterweight Matt Brown faced a lot of adversity this past weekend in Brazil. First off he enraged the Brazilian crowds during the weigh-ins for his feature prelim bout with home favorite Demian Maia, flipping them off amid chants of ‘you’re going to die’ from the 15,000 strong crowd. Then came the night of the fight, and ‘The Immortal’ was mobbed by angry fans on the way to the octagon. He was struck a number of times, finally striking back with a right hand as one fan yanked the hood of his Reebok outfit.
It’s never a good start whn you get hit before you’ve even got started fighting, whether it impacted on Brown’s performance is unknown, but he certainly got dominated by the far superior grappler. Maia controlled ‘The Immortal’ much to the delight of the 45,000 seater stadium which was packed to the gills. The partisan supporters raised the roof on the arena as Maia submitted Brown in the third round.
Here’s the video replay of the fight before the fight: So after taking some strife before the fact, then getting burnt by Maia in rather convincing fashion, it looked as though Brown’s excursion to Brazil couldn’t get much worse. That statement couldn’t be any further from the truth, as ‘The Immortal’ was jumped by an old acquaintance in the UFC 198 host hotel the morning after the event…
(“Nah dude, check out his *original* Tapout shirt. No way this guy’s a phony.”)
Well, this is coincidental.
If you haven’t read my interview with Fighting in Plain Sight director Edward Doty yet, what the hell, brah? Also, I’d recommend that you check it out, if only to learn a little more about the fascinating story of Rafiel Torre, the former MMA reporter/”fighter” turned convicted murderer. You see, back in the early aughts, Rafiel liked to pass himself off as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt and former Navy SEAL who retired with an unblemished fight record of 17-0. It wasn’t until he unretired in 2001 and put on a work at King of the Cage 7 that his history of deception began to reveal itself. Rafiel Torre wasn’t a Black Belt, he wasn’t a former Navy SEAL, hell, Rafiel Torre wasn’t even his real name (although I suppose it wouldn’t have been as easy to sell himself as a native Brazilian with a name like Ralph Bartel).
In any case, I threw the article together last night, and what pops up on the front page of the reddit MMA page this morning? Only a story about a notorious Jiu-Jitsu fraud and phony war hero being uncovered running a BJJ McDojo in Cortland, New York (a mere hour’s drive from my hometown). His name is David Lang, and his similarities to Torre don’t end at the false military and martial arts credentials. No, like Torre, Lang also claimed/claims to have been born in Brazil and moved to the US at a young age. Lang even fabricated a Brazilian cousin *named* Rafael in an attempt to add credence to his claims, for Christ’s sake.
But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let us first begin to understand how Lang was exposed as a fraud in the first place (via the Police Gazette, who uncovered his most recent scam):
(“Nah dude, check out his *original* Tapout shirt. No way this guy’s a phony.”)
Well, this is coincidental.
If you haven’t read my interview with Fighting in Plain Sight director Edward Doty yet, what the hell, brah? Also, I’d recommend that you check it out, if only to learn a little more about the fascinating story of Rafiel Torre, the former MMA reporter/”fighter” turned convicted murderer. You see, back in the early aughts, Rafiel liked to pass himself off as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt and former Navy SEAL who retired with an unblemished fight record of 17-0. It wasn’t until he unretired in 2001 and put on a work at King of the Cage 7 that his history of deception began to reveal itself. Rafiel Torre wasn’t a Black Belt, he wasn’t a former Navy SEAL, hell, Rafiel Torre wasn’t even his real name (although I suppose it wouldn’t have been as easy to sell himself as a native Brazilian with a name like Ralph Bartel).
In any case, I threw the article together last night, and what pops up on the front page of the reddit MMA page this morning? Only a story about a notorious Jiu-Jitsu fraud and phony war hero being uncovered running a BJJ McDojo in Cortland, New York (a mere hour’s drive from my hometown). His name is David Lang, and his similarities to Torre don’t end at the false military and martial arts credentials. No, like Torre, Lang also claimed/claims to have been born in Brazil and moved to the US at a young age. Lang even fabricated a Brazilian cousin *named* Rafael in an attempt to add credence to his claims, for Christ’s sake.
But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let us first begin to understand how Lang was exposed as a fraud in the first place (via the Police Gazette, who uncovered his most recent scam):
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.
In addition to claiming the phony credentials through Mr. Ismail, Lang was also presenting himself to students and other members of the Ithaca business public as a person who had grown up in Brazil with an American mother from Brooklyn. Lang told students he had first moved to the United States at age 19, already a BJJ brown belt, and that he had enlisted in the United States Army and served two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the 101st Infantry Division.
Every one of these claims was quickly discredited, as Lang was unable to provide any evidence to show he had done any actual BJJ training in his life, aside from watching YouTube videos and then imitating what he had seen to other people who also lacked any real BJJ training. Lang was quickly found to be an American-born citizen who had been home schooled by his Christian fundamentalist mother in McGraw, NY. It was established that he in fact had no military background whatsoever.
…
Are you ready to punch a hole in your laptop? Because we HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN TO THE STORY YET. No, after being exposed as a liar in Ithaca, NY, Lang simply relocated to Cortland, NY and began a fierce letter-writing campaign to “restore” his “credibility.” A letter-writing campaign that would eventually lead him to become prison pen-pals with Hermes fucking Franca:
Through his association with Hermes Franca, Lang brought Hermes’ nephew Lucca Franca to the United States under the promise of managing the younger Franca and getting him MMA fights in the U.S. Lang also used his new association with the Francas to make a connection with Carlos David Oliveira, another well-known Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who runs a school in Richmond, VA.
Lang used the recommendation of Lucca Franca to meet Oliveira and then approach him with a business opportunity to run an affiliate school of Oliveira’s Team Evolution in Cortland. This school was established by renting space at the Northeast Martial Arts Institute on Owego Street in Cortland. Lang even arranged to have Oliveira send one of his black belts, Paulo Izaias, to live in Cortland and teach at the school for several months to further create the appearance of authenticity for himself.
“I have known Lucca since he was a kid,” Oliveira told this writer when interviewed on the phone on January 13. “He said Lang was a great guy, was going to get him fights. Later he went home. He was mad because he said he never got any fights and it was too cold.”
In March 2013 Oliveira actually did give Lang a “courtesy” promotion to a second stripe black belt. Lang has been proudly displaying the certificate of this as a sign of his legitimacy on his various social media sites.
And to think, if Lang had spent half as much time actually training as he did attempting to add credibility to the facade he had created, he might be an actual Black Belt by now. But I suppose that’s why I’m stuck here thinking while he’s out there doing.
Oliveira has since renounced any association with Lang via a statement on his Facebook page, but as of the Gazette’s writeup, Lang is still operating under false pretenses in the Cortland area, so if you have any information on his whereabouts, feel free to pass it along to us, the Gazette, your local authorities, etc. It’s rather apparent that someone needs to stop this before Lang’s story ends in the same fashion as Torre’s, with the death of an innocent person, because like Doty told us about Torre, “…you can only manipulate the truth about your identity for so long before it starts eating away at your moral center” and it’s safe to say that Lang’s moral center has long since rotted away.
You can read the first part of the Gazette’s upcoming three part series devoted to Lang, which includes a hilarious story in which Lang attempted to email a prominent UGer from “Brazil” in Google translated-Portuguese to prove his credentials, here.
Finally, here is a video of Lang “rolling” with one of his students that was recently obtained by the Gazette. We should remind you that that the man in white is claiming to be a BJJ Black Belt.
I dunno, seems pretty legit to me. Whaddya think, Nelson?
(On the other hand, a noodling business venture with the Diaz brothers seems pretty tempting.)
Kron Gracie, son of family champ Rickson Gracie, won gold in the -77kg weight class of the 2013 ADCC tournament this past weekend. The ADCC is like the Olympics of submission grappling, with the world’s best meeting every two years to decide weight class champs as well as an open-weight champion.
Gracie won all four of his matches by submission, joining the elite ranks of former champions to have done the same like Marcelo Garcia and second cousin Roger Gracie. Kron beat UFC veteran Andy Wang in his first match, Gary Tonon in his second, J.T. Torres in his third and rival Otavio Souza in the finals.
Before competing at Metamoris II this past summer, Gracie told CagePotato that he has been training MMA with the Diaz brothers for some time and plans to make the transition to MMA in the near future. Gracie is supposed to have a super match at the World Jiu Jitsu Expo next month but it will be interesting to see what he decides to do in 2014.
Will Gracie decide to leverage his now champion status in the submission grappling world or walk away and make a name for himself in MMA? How much of a sense of urgency does he feel to focus all of his attention on developing a well-rounded MMA game?
Only time will tell but we’ll certainly bring you updates as they occur. For the time being, enjoy Kron’s 2013 ADCC matches against Tonon and Souza after the jump.
(On the other hand, a noodling business venture with the Diaz brothers seems pretty tempting.)
Kron Gracie, son of family champ Rickson Gracie, won gold in the -77kg weight class of the 2013 ADCC tournament this past weekend. The ADCC is like the Olympics of submission grappling, with the world’s best meeting every two years to decide weight class champs as well as an open-weight champion.
Gracie won all four of his matches by submission, joining the elite ranks of former champions to have done the same like Marcelo Garcia and second cousin Roger Gracie. Kron beat UFC veteran Andy Wang in his first match, Gary Tonon in his second, J.T. Torres in his third and rival Otavio Souza in the finals.
Before competing at Metamoris II this past summer, Gracie told CagePotato that he has been training MMA with the Diaz brothers for some time and plans to make the transition to MMA in the near future. Gracie is supposed to have a super match at the World Jiu Jitsu Expo next month but it will be interesting to see what he decides to do in 2014.
Will Gracie decide to leverage his now champion status in the submission grappling world or walk away and make a name for himself in MMA? How much of a sense of urgency does he feel to focus all of his attention on developing a well-rounded MMA game?
Only time will tell but we’ll certainly bring you updates as they occur. For the time being, enjoy Kron’s 2013 ADCC matches against Tonon and Souza after the jump.
On Monday I wrote about practitioners of “real” Jiu Jitsu. That is, those who have a background in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and who test those skills in real fights.
Kron Gracie looks to be the next such high-profile example as he sets his sights on a 2014 MMA debut. Royce Gracie is, of course, the first that most of us ever heard of.
Gracie entered the original UFC tournaments as the lightest fighter in open weight contests where the only rules were no biting, eye gouging or fish-hooking, and submitted three and four men in single-night tournaments with the Jiu Jitsu skills that his family developed. As such, Royce’s place in history is more than secure.
As younger family members of his try to carve out their own space in MMA, however, Royce is offering not support but rather rough criticism. Many have criticized fighters like Roger and Rolles Gracie for not being as well-rounded as a few of their best opponents, and take the occasions of their losses to pile on.
Surprisingly, Royce is the latest critic to add some fertilizer onto that pile. Unlike many others, however, Royce says that the reason for his family members’ recent losses is because they are trying to be too well-rounded.
“Jiu-jitsu is enough,” Royce Gracie recently told MMAFighting.com. “I’ve trained boxing in the past to learn the distance, trained wrestling to understand how he would take me down, but I won’t get there to fight my opponent’s game. The [new] guys [from the Gracie] family want to complement their game, like if Jiu-Jitsu was incomplete. I guess they forgot a little about history.
“I do jiu-jitsu my whole life, so why would I try to stand and bang with Mike Tyson?” he went on. “I’m going to learn boxing in six months because my opponent is good in boxing? That makes no sense.”
On Monday I wrote about practitioners of “real” Jiu Jitsu. That is, those who have a background in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and who test those skills in real fights.
Kron Gracie looks to be the next such high-profile example as he sets his sights on a 2014 MMA debut. Royce Gracie is, of course, the first that most of us ever heard of.
Gracie entered the original UFC tournaments as the lightest fighter in open weight contests where the only rules were no biting, eye gouging or fish-hooking, and submitted three and four men in single-night tournaments with the Jiu Jitsu skills that his family developed. As such, Royce’s place in history is more than secure.
As younger family members of his try to carve out their own space in MMA, however, Royce is offering not support but rather rough criticism. Many have criticized fighters like Roger and Rolles Gracie for not being as well-rounded as a few of their best opponents, and take the occasions of their losses to pile on.
Surprisingly, Royce is the latest critic to add some fertilizer onto that pile. Unlike many others, however, Royce says that the reason for his family members’ recent losses is because they are trying to be too well-rounded.
“Jiu-jitsu is enough,” Royce Gracie recently told MMAFighting.com. “I’ve trained boxing in the past to learn the distance, trained wrestling to understand how he would take me down, but I won’t get there to fight my opponent’s game. The [new] guys [from the Gracie] family want to complement their game, like if Jiu-Jitsu was incomplete. I guess they forgot a little about history.
“I do jiu-jitsu my whole life, so why would I try to stand and bang with Mike Tyson?” he went on. ”I’m going to learn boxing in six months because my opponent is good in boxing? That makes no sense.”
I suppose the “history” Royce speaks of is his own, where he was able to dominate many opponents because they had never trained Jiu Jitsu before. Once they did, competition started to level-off and he and everyone else started having more trouble with one another in the ring and cage.
Why Royce is choosing to make self-aggrandizing criticisms of family members who are still physically sore from recent losses is beyond my understanding. It is safe to assume, however, that Royce has no real first-hand knowledge of the type of training and development of cousins like Roger and Rolles, who have trained under the leadership of perhaps the most MMA-accomplished Gracie, Renzo.
That aside, let’s focus on the thrust of what Royce seems to be saying. He’s assuming that his cousins are distracted by the training of too many other things other than “pure” Jiu Jitsu. Things like wrestling (ie. getting the fight to the ground) and striking (ie. not getting knocked out on the feet while you’re there).
To me, Jiu Jitsu has always been more of a philosophy than any particular set of moves or even focus of a portion of fighting (ie. grappling or submissions or ground fighting). That is to say, what makes Brazilian Jiu Jitsu unique is that it always recognized that anything – strikes, clinching, take downs, submissions, ground work – can and usually does happen in a fight. With that understanding, a true Jiu Jitsu practitioner proceeds along a path that he or she believes will best prepare them for anything.
They will ignore no possibility of danger and so will prepare for everything. As Bruce Lee was fond of saying, real fighting is about honestly assessing – through fighting – what works and what doesn’t. If something works, use it. If it doesn’t, don’t.
Something that works well for a great BJJ practitioner is being able to get on top of their opponent where they can better control and finish them. Royce knows this. He did it plenty of times.
When he could, he took down his opponents. When he could not, he worked off of his own back.
That doesn’t seem very different at all than what we have seen guys like Roger and Rolles do in their fights, mostly successfully but sometimes not. But we’ve also seen examples of Jiu Jitsu guys having lapses of judgment in fights and paying for it. Think of Demian Maia trying to throw a high kick against Nate Marquardt, or Vitor Belfort letting Randy Couture walk him backwards into the cage and initiate the grappling. I can’t remember any Gracies making similar mistakes.
So, if we see Gracies try to fight conservatively and to their strengths in competition as Royce always did, what exactly is Royce’s beef? The fact that Roger and Rolles spend time working on their weaknesses in training, evidently. This is where Royce is just flat out wrong.
Back when no one else in MMA trained the indispensable style of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu except for Royce and his family, he could get away with the basic strike-blocking and poor take downs to go along with his excellent durability and Jiu Jitsu skills. Jiu Jitsu fighters these days are faced with an entirely different world – one where everyone trains high-level Jiu Jitsu and uses it along with their own wrestling or striking bases.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu provided the first martial arts style to recognize that grappling and striking could occur along with ground fighting, but that doesn’t mean that BJJ takedowns or strikes are the most effective when facing a good wrestler or striker, all other things being equal. And that’s a big part of it – the submission grappling part of fights is very often equal, even between Gracies and non-Gracie opponents.
The Gracie name isn’t magic. If you train Jiu Jitsu with a real instructor for years, you will get good at it, no matter what your name is. Rolles and Roger fight guys who are very good at Jiu Jitsu, as well as other things, like wrestling and striking.
The fact that they train like professional fighters and not mid-twentieth century part-time martial arts instructors is not something to be criticized. Royce saying that Gracies can neutralize modern striking and wrestling without training striking and wrestling is just about as absurd as the Akido or Tae Kwon Do instructor who says that you don’t need to train grappling because their kicks and punches and footwork will prevent anyone from ever grabbing them.
Yeah, right.
Working on weaknesses is a hallmark of champions. Royce knows this. Maybe it is just hard to admit in public.
If he had better striking, perhaps he would not have gotten beaten up for an hour and a half by Kazushi Sakuraba’s leg kicks before having to throw in the towel. Chances are, however, that Rolles Gracies would not have avoided getting knocked out last Saturday night if he had spent less time working on his boxing in training.
“I believe in pure jiu-jitsu. That’s what I’ve done in the past. You have to go back to your roots and train Gracie jiu-jitsu,” Royce went on to say in his interview.
I couldn’t agree more. The thing is, to me Gracie Jiu Jitsu is about never staying stagnant, constantly evolving and constantly improving to be able to meet new fight challenges.
Royce met the challenges of his day bravely. It would be great if he didn’t now try to sully the efforts of his younger family members who are trying to meet the challenges of their day with bravery, but also with a bit more technique.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in mixed martial arts has been on my mind a bit more than usual lately. A few weeks ago Benson Henderson walked to the ring wearing a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gi with his brand new black belt tied around it at the waist.
Minutes later he walked out, his black belt still in tow but without his UFC lightweight title belt after getting submitted by an arm bar from inside the full guard of Anthony Pettis. At the time, Pettis was ranked as a blue belt — the belt just above white in BJJ.
Rolles got hit, the punch put him out on his feet and he spun around slowly before falling to the ground. It looked like the slapstick “Flair Flop” move that pro wrestler Ric Flair used to pull off after getting hit to put over his opponent. Three and a half years ago, of course, Rolles humiliated himself against Joey Beltran in his lone UFC fight after appearing to exhaust himself almost immediately.
Both recent Gracie losses brought about public questions of whether or not the Gracie family and Jiu Jitsu itself have become outdated in modern MMA. Henderson’s submission loss to Pettis could have been seen as a triumph of Jiu Jitsu technique but instead, some critics chose to question the validity and use of BJJ belt ranks.
What did Henderson’s black belt mean, exactly, if he could go out and get submitted by someone with a lower BJJ rank, who was more known for high-flying kicks than anything, and with such a basic move? The notions that Gracies losing fights and Henderson getting submitted somehow reflect negatively on Jiu Jitsu itself are, of course, silly.
MMA isn’t about magical styles and secrets solely in the possession of those with certain-colored pieces of clothing or particular surnames. It never has been.
(The Gracies proved that BJJ is indispensable — not that it’s invincible. / Photo via Getty)
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in mixed martial arts has been on my mind a bit more than usual lately. A few weeks ago Benson Henderson walked to the ring wearing a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gi with his brand new black belt tied around it at the waist.
Minutes later he walked out, his black belt still in tow but without his UFC lightweight title belt after getting submitted by an arm bar from inside the full guard of Anthony Pettis. At the time, Pettis was ranked as a blue belt — the belt just above white in BJJ.
Rolles got hit, the punch put him out on his feet and he spun around slowly before falling to the ground. It looked like the slapstick “Flair Flop” move that pro wrestler Ric Flair used to pull off after getting hit to put over his opponent. Three and a half years ago, of course, Rolles humiliated himself against Joey Beltran in his lone UFC fight after appearing to exhaust himself almost immediately.
Both recent Gracie losses brought about public questions of whether or not the Gracie family and Jiu Jitsu itself have become outdated in modern MMA. Henderson’s submission loss to Pettis could have been seen as a triumph of Jiu Jitsu technique but instead, some critics chose to question the validity and use of BJJ belt ranks.
What did Henderson’s black belt mean, exactly, if he could go out and get submitted by someone with a lower BJJ rank, who was more known for high-flying kicks than anything, and with such a basic move? The notions that Gracies losing fights and Henderson getting submitted somehow reflect negatively on Jiu Jitsu itself are, of course, silly.
MMA isn’t about magical styles and secrets solely in the possession of those with certain-colored pieces of clothing or particular surnames. It never has been.
Royce Gracie won the early UFC’s because of his Jiu Jitsu style, true. His style, Gracie Jiu Jitsu, or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu won him his bouts, but not because it was mystical. Quite the opposite, actually.
Jiu Jitsu succeeded simply because it a) calls for real, hard sparring with resistance every day, b) because it was the only style to at least recognize that anything can happen in a fight, and c) because Gracie was the only guy who was practicing Jiu Jitsu in the UFC at the time.
Gracie may have been the smallest and weakest guy in the early UFC tournaments but he was the only one who trained each day against resisting opponents and was ready for people to punch, kick, grab, head butt, and pull hair. So, the most prepared guy won those early UFC’s.
In modern MMA, it’s largely the same thing. The most prepared, well-rounded and conditioned man or woman usually wins.
In that way, not as much has changed since those early days of MMA. The conventional wisdom about what the early UFC’s proved about Gracie Jiu Jitsu is wrong.
Royce Gracie and UFC’s 1-4 did not prove that Jiu Jitsu is dominant but rather that it is indispensable. You could have ancient secrets from Chinese monasteries and do one-finger push ups but you’d better be experienced in real combat.
You could be a game, hard-hitting boxer with great sense of distance and timing but you’d better be ready for someone to grab you and no ref there to save you by breaking up the clinch. You could be an outrageously strong and conditioned wrestler, used to working on the mat and man-handling opponents, but you’d better recognize that in the real world it isn’t illegal for your opponent to choke you or twist on that shoulder lock until you say uncle.
Many fight-styles and disciplines existed for ages but the introduction of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to the world is what made Mixed Martial Arts. Royce Gracie showed that you needed to train BJJ to be successful in real fighting.
That’s still true to this day. Every amateur and professional MMA fighter trains Brazilian Jiu Jitsu whether they call it that or catch fighting or submission grappling or what have you.
Proving BJJ necessary in real fighting is the long-ago established success of the Gracie family, much more so than any particular win by Royce or anyone else in their clan.
As for Henderson losing to Pettis, one guy was better that night than the other. That’s it.
Henderson, black belt or not, decided to let his arm hang out in a dangerous position in Pettis’ guard for no apparent reason other than his supreme confidence in his own slipperiness, and he paid for it.
Fighters make mistakes and, sometimes, their opponents make them pay for it.
No one questions whether a boxer who has spent his entire life training is a “real” boxer or whether or not boxing is useful for fighting when he gets hit with a straight right – a “basic” punch. More often than not, it is only the basics – executed with impeccable timing, that work in real fights.
And, only real fights show who is, in fact, better and should be ranked higher. A Jiu Jitsu belt, given to a hard working and accomplished student from a reputable and credible instructor can be a very meaningful and representative thing. But, in the words of Royce, the only thing a belt will do for you when push comes to shove is hold your pants up.
Getting submitted in and of itself doesn’t mean that Henderson shouldn’t feel proud of his black belt. However, submitting Henderson should definitely make Pettis damn proud of his blue belt.
As for Roger and Rolles, they also just lost to better fighters. That’s it.
Roger is no disappointment. In Tim Kennedy, he came up against a better, far more experienced and well-rounded fighter who, like all MMA fighters, has been studying Gracie’s family style for years. Overall, Roger has a solid 6-2 record in three weight classes, and has beaten former world champs and UFC and Pride veterans like Kevin Randleman, Yuki Kondo, Trevor Prangley and Keith Jardine.
Rolles is 8-2 in his MMA career in a number of different international organizations and all of his wins were by submission. Of course, Rolles and Roger face increased scrutiny because of their last names and because they are so accomplished in submission grappling competition.
Both Roger and Rolles are wizards in Jiu Jitsu competitions but probably will never become champions in MMA. “See?” one can hear sour critics of Jiu Jitsu taunt. “Winning world titles in submission grappling doesn’t make you the best fighter in the world anymore.”
Of course it doesn’t. The thing is, winning submission grappling world titles doesn’t make them the best BJJ practitioners or representatives, either. These guys are not the best BJJ practitioners any more than great boxers or kick boxers are the best strikers.
The best striker is a fighter who can land those same punches and kicks against people who are not just trying to hit them but also take them down, choke them, etc.
As such, the best grapplers, then, are the ones who do it effectively in MMA – not just win gold at Jiu Jitsu tournaments. There are plenty of examples of that in MMA.
Rolles and Roger have grappled since they were children and accomplished much in the submission grappling world. They don’t deserve derision for not being perfect in MMA, they deserve some respect for being brave enough to fight guys who have been fighting in the sport for much longer.
That said, the current and next generation of MMA champions are all fighters who have trained Jiu Jitsu and just about everything else since they were kids and haven’t wasted too much of their youth and abilities in contests where strikes, slams, etc. are not allowed. On that note, the son of perhaps Jiu Jitsu’s best practitioner ever recently announced plans to make his MMA debut within the year.
Kron Gracie, the youngest son of Rickson Gracie, told Tatame magazine that he’ll fight MMA in 2014. The twenty five year-old has medaled at the ADCC submission grappling world championships but has yet to win a world title since becoming a black belt.
Kron does have an attitude and approach to Jiu Jitsu that should suit him well for MMA. He’s also young enough to make the transition, and has been doing MMA sparring with some of the best fighters in the world for some time now.
Kron is close with Nate and Nick Diaz and has worked with them extensively, as well as their teammates Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez. When I spoke with Kron last May as he prepared to compete in the submission grappling event Metamoris II, his mind was already on MMA.
He was with Nate as he spoke to me about “real” Jiu Jitsu. “Jiu Jitsu is about what works in fighting,” he told me as he explained why, even in submission grappling matches, he never goes for the types of fancy, esoteric moves that so many other Jiu Jitsu competitors favor these days.
Kron told Tatame about fighting in MMA, “It’s a truer fight, there’s no guard… It’s you and another man going to war. It’s truer than jiu-jitsu.”
Here’s what separates guys like Kron, or BJ Penn or Demian Maia from other Jiu Jitsu-based athletes. Since BJJ began to be a big-money pursuit, medal stands have become stacked with great athletes who have dozens of world titles but have never thrown or taken a punch.
They claim that submission grappling tournaments showcase more elegant, technical displays than the stuff we see work in MMA fights. That BJJ matches are somehow more pure demonstrations of Jiu Jitsu.
They’ve got it all wrong. Before there were a million different grappling organizations — all with their claim to being “world championships,” and each with their own volumes of rules and all the moves that are not allowed — Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was developed and used in the real world, in real fights.
Kron Gracie, Penn, Maia and the like all went the submission grappling international tournament route for a time, sure. They’re fun, you can make some money if you’re good, and it’s excellent training.
Ultimately, however, they craved something more. They craved what Jiu Jitsu was developed for – the fight.
Submission grapplers are often referred to as Jiu Jitsu “players,” as if they played basketball or baseball or some other entertaining but ultimately useless sport. Before there were ever Jiu Jitsu players, however, there were only Jiu Jitsu fighters.
Some of them remain. Some, like Kron and his father and grandfather before him, know that if they train Jiu Jitsu, their destiny is to fight in the sport that Jiu Jitsu created.
At the age of 47, BJJ legend (and retired MMA fighter) Royler Gracie is preparing to return to competition later this year at Metamoris 3 (date/venue TBA), in a grappling rematch with Eddie Bravo. In this interview following the match announcement at Metamoris 2 earlier this month, CagePotato reporter Elias Cepeda recaps the first meeting between Royler and Eddie back in 2003 — which made Eddie Bravo’s name overnight and legitimized his forward-thinking approach to jiu-jitsu — and gets Royler’s take on their second meeting ten years later. As Royler puts it, “I’m not trying to make history, I’m already part of history.”
At the age of 47, BJJ legend (and retired MMA fighter) Royler Gracie is preparing to return to competition later this year at Metamoris 3 (date/venue TBA), in a grappling rematch with Eddie Bravo. In this interview following the match announcement at Metamoris 2 earlier this month, CagePotato reporter Elias Cepeda recaps the first meeting between Royler and Eddie back in 2003 — which made Eddie Bravo’s name overnight and legitimized his forward-thinking approach to jiu-jitsu — and gets Royler’s take on their second meeting ten years later. As Royler puts it, “I’m not trying to make history, I’m already part of history.”
![Demian-Maia-vs.-Matt-Brown[1]](http://cdn.lowkickmma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Demian-Maia-vs.-Matt-Brown1.jpg)
