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| MMA History - Gracies are 'alpha males trying to impress the old man' |
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In the early 1990s, Art Davie was an advertising executive who wanted to stage a tournament aimed at answering the age-old question of which martial art was most dominant. Davie’s idea led him to Rorion Gracie, who’d been selling VHS tapes that chronicled the results of his family’s long-running challenge to practitioners of other martial arts. The two partnered to create an event that would forever change the way people looked at hand-to-hand combat – the Ultimate Fighting Championship. While the concept for the event was taken from Davie’s early experiences as a martial artist and several one-off mixed fighting exhibitions, the soul of the event would ultimately belong to the Gracies. The performance of Royce Gracie in the UFC’s first event would spawn a movement that made MMA a sport and the promotion a household name. As Davie recounts in his new book, “Is This Legal,” a tell-all about the UFC’s early history, the Gracie family’s relationship to the UFC was a complicated one, fueled by internal dissent, ego and greed as much as by the iconic bond seen in the promotion’s early days. While family members walked to the octagon in a train, with hands on each other’s shoulders, there were always politics at play when it came to the ambassadorship of Gracie jiu-jitsu. “A lot of it was due to the Gracie family dynamics,” Davie told MMAjunkie Radio. “I never could keep track of all the drama. They’re a complicated group of alpha males, and every one of them, ultimately, was trying to impress the old man.” The old man, of course, was Helio Gracie, a pioneer of Gracie jiu-jitsu whose no-holds-barred fights in 1950s Brazil were a precursor to MMA. The drive to honor the man’s name and cement his legacy shaped some of the decisions made in the UFC, according to Davie. When it came time to decide which Gracie would represent the family in the “octagon,” a structure conceived by Hollywood director John Milius, Davie assumed it would be Rickson Gracie, whose fighting reputation was already well-established. But that selection ran contrary to the idea of the family’s art, which favored leverage over brute strength. The best representative to illustrate that idea, as it turned out, wasn’t the most physically imposing specimen. Instead of Rickson, it was the taller but physically slighter Royce Gracie, who had fought in Gracie Challenge tapes but was far from a professional competitor. In Davie’s words: “All along, I’m thinking Rickson is the family champ. He looked like a cross between Marlon Brando and Mike Tyson. He was a stud; he was a jaguar. “I once took a morning exercise class with him; (now famous MMA referee) John McCarthy was in that class. It was about an hour-and-a-half long. After 45 minutes, me and every other cop from the Torrance (Calif.) police department that was in that class, we dropped out. One-legged squats? I couldn’t handle it. “Rickson was the stud. He had done professional fights. And at one point, Rorian says to me, ‘It’s going to be Royce.’ I said, ‘Royce? He’s the guy who babysits your kids. He lives in a little apartment above the garage with a piranha in a hexagonal fish tank. He ain’t got no checking account, no car.’ I’m not even sure he had a girlfriend. Royce? He said, ‘It’s going to be Royce.’ “He used to call me Arturo. He said, ‘Arturo, the cool thing about Royce is, he don’t weigh but 176 pounds soaking wet, and my father used to weigh 140, taking down guys bigger than him. People, when they watch him do this, they’re going to be amazed. Rickson, when he stares at you, you’re going to fall apart.’ So it was brilliant on Rorion’s part in some ways.” Of course, there was another very practical reason why Rickson Gracie didn’t compete in the first UFC: money. The now-retired jiu-jitsu master met with Davie and Rorion Gracie in the early stages of mounting the event and demanded a princely sum to fight in the octagon. “Rickson wanted a million dollars,” Davie said. “He said, ‘You and Rorion are making the big bucks. I want a million dollars.’ I said, ‘We ain’t making that kind of money, and we ain’t paying that kind of money.’” And so the dominant Gracie would sit on the sidelines when his half-brother famously submitted three straight opponents in one night to win the inaugural UFC. But according to Davie, it was Rickson who was responsible for convincing Royce to even get in the cage for the dangerous competition. “Rickson had really prepped Royce, so whatever the problems they had that I wasn’t aware of had been put under the carpet,” Davie said. “In a very real sense, Rickson had put his spine into Royce’s back. At the show, I heard later on from Todd Hester, the publisher and editor of Gladiator Magazine, that Royce had lost it in the rehearsal. He was down on his knees crying, and Rickson was cradling him like a father. He said Rickson was holding him, like a dad holds his son, and comforting him.” Still, despite that support, Davie believes Rickson may have had some second thoughts about his decision not to fight at UFC 1. That night, a legend was born, and another was relegated to the background. “The three most unhappy guys at the Monster’s Ball on Saturday night (after the event were) Pat Smith, who’d gotten caught in an ankle lock by Ken Shamrock, and Ken Shamrock, who couldn’t believe that a 175-pound guy in a gi had made him tap out,” Davie said. “And the third guy was Rickson Gracie.” |
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