Hi Pellius. Who did you train under? Do you have an clips from your tournaments?
I started in 1991 when Rorion open up his academy in Torrance, CA. Back then it was Rorion, Royce, Royler and Rickson. My first lesson was with Royce and I would train with him once a week and Royler once a week and then the group class. Private lessons were only $20 a session back in those days. When Royler went back to Brasil and Rickson left to start his own school in West LA on Pico Bl. I moved over to Rickson's school as I didn't really like Royce at the time (that changed over the years as he matured). There I would take an hour private with Rickson once a week and the group class the rest of the week.
When Rickson started competing more in Japan and becoming more in demand for seminars and private lessons he didn't teach as much. I was living in Redondo Beach at the time and just about a half mile away their cousins, the Machado's, had a school. It was Rigan, Carlos, Jean-Jacques, Roger and John. All of them were top level Black Belts whereas at Rickson's school there was only Luis Heredia (Limao) who was still a Brown Belt. When Chuck Norris got that show in Texas he took Carlos with him as Chuck loved Jiu-Jitsu wanted to keep training and helped Carlos set up an academy in Texas.
I got tired of training with the gi because so many of the techniques are pretty sophisticated and required a lot of time drilling and about 85% of it was useless in a fight unless your opponent and you happen to be wearing a gi. I moved to rAw later renamed the R1 Training Center in El Segundo, CA. It was more of an MMA gym so you didn't wear a gi and it was run by Frank Trigg and Rico Chiapparelli.
The early days, before the sport took off, were the best times of my life. Just a little obscure sub-culture doing something out of sheer love of the sport. Those were the days of the underground, closed door bare knuckle fights.
Rickson is everything that people say he is and more. But it is Renzo that's the warrior of the family. It pains me to say that. If Rickson took the fight with Sakuraba when Saku was in his prime and the first to start tooling the Gracie's he would have been a legend. But he didn't. Something I'll never understand. Helio would have stepped up. That's for sure. That's for damn sure.