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Sports Title: The Gracie Family Jiu Jitsu and the MMA Gracies Versus Everybody Many years later, as he stood amid a haze of dry ice in a half-full arena in Portland, Oregon, Roger Gracie imagined the afternoon on the Amazon River when his grandfather Carlos Gracie was introduced to Mitsuyo Maeda, a Japanese judo master who would instruct Carlos and his brothers in the art of throwing a man to the ground, then using leverage to render him helpless and senseless. Roger had heard the story dozens, if not hundreds, of times, told over and over by members of his formidable bloodline: In that encounter, which took place shortly before World War I in the Brazilian rubber boomtown of Belém, the most powerful and influential fighting style in the world was born. Gracie jiu-jitsu, as their version of Maeda’s teachings came to be known, was at once so technically precise and capable of such rapid evolution that it gave rise to the greatest family dynasty in the history of the martial arts. In the century that followed, three generations of Gracies took on champions of the arts of karate, boxing, kickboxing, Greco-Roman wrestling, and other styles of hand-to-hand combat on the biggest stages they could find, and they consistently emerged victorious. In 1993, Rórion Gracie founded the Ultimate Fighting Championship as a way to spread Gracie jiu-jitsu to North America, inspiring the rise of mixed martial arts. The question of whether the beauty and power of the family’s art was worth the tremendous cost it has extracted from the Gracies haunted Roger’s childhood, as it haunted the childhood of his mother, Reila. Like generations of Gracie black belts before him, the only way Roger knows how to answer that question is in the ring. As the grandson of Carlos Gracie, the grandnephew of Hélio Gracie, and the nephew of Rickson Gracie — who is widely considered to be the greatest champion of any style of martial arts in the past 50 years — Roger carries the burden of his family history with him wherever he goes, even if his aquiline features and soulful brown eyes seem more appropriate for a Byronic poet or an underwear model than a modern-day cage fighter. Gracie jiu-jitsu can be understood as a physically brutal form of psychoanalysis. Weaker positions offer powerful leverage, dominant positions are revealed to be traps, and the price of clinging to one’s illusions is relentlessly exposed. The global popularity of MMA, which has carried the DNA of Gracie jiu-jitsu to every corner of the planet, has also increased the burden on the family champions to live up to their habitual claims of technical and moral superiority. The last Gracie to demonstrate his preeminence in the ring was Rickson, who did so before a packed house at the Tokyo Dome on May 26, 2000, in a lavish spectacle meant to suggest the evolution of Japan’s martial arts past into the science-fiction-like future of global combat. Rickson’s opponent, a catch wrestler named Funaki, entered the packed arena through a brace of lit torches, dressed like a samurai and carrying a sheathed sword toward a silver structure that resembled a Funkadelic spaceship. Rickson followed Funaki into the ring, his face draped in a white executioner’s hood. GETTY_107723811 Rickson fights Masakatsu Funaki in Tokyo on May 26, 2000, to defend the Gracie jiu-jitsu legacy. Photo: Getty Images Perhaps because he was feeling overconfident, Rickson left himself open early in the bout and fell victim to a guillotine choke. Realizing he had made a terrible mistake, the Brazilian grabbed Funaki’s wrist and pulled down, keeping his opponent from completing the maneuver. Funaki then straightened his back, twisted Rickson’s neck, and threw him to the ground. Lying on the mat, the stunned champion failed to bring his hands up to protect his face, and Funaki stood over him, landing hard punches to both of his eyes. The blow to Rickson’s right eye broke his orbital bone. The Japanese fighter began to kick his prone opponent like a schoolyard bully, while the crowd roared in appreciation of the local hero’s dominance over the Gracies. Funaki’s kicks were humiliating and painful, but they also gave Rickson time to recover. Blocking the kicks with his feet, and kicking back to keep the Japanese fighter at a distance, Rickson waited until his vision began to return. Gathering his strength, he tensed his body and leaped backward, landed on his feet, blinked twice, and then rushed at Funaki. Rickson fought back with a Homeric rage that made him appear to move with irresistible strength and speed through his opponent’s defenses. Flipping Funaki onto his back in the center of the ring, Rickson sat on top of him, caught his breath, and started striking him in the kidneys. He then grabbed the Japanese fighter’s arm, pulled it around Funaki’s neck, and began to choke him with it. As his opponent weakened, Rickson embraced Funaki from behind and wrapped his legs around his torso. Trapping Funaki’s neck in the crook of his arm, Rickson squeezed his forearm and biceps together. Funaki’s eyes widened, he thrashed for a moment, and then he passed out. In postfight interviews, Rickson offered an unusually frank description of his approach to the art that his family invented, and which he practiced on a higher level than any fighter before or since. Professing his respect for the Japanese samurai philosopher Musashi, Rickson observed: “He lived a detached life, where his only aims in life were for the sake of fighting, the sake of winning, or for the sake of escaping death.” But Rickson made it clear that he rejected Musashi’s self-abnegating philosophy. Rather, he drew his strength from an ethic of absolute self-centeredness, which allowed him to feel and perceive every moment of his own existence with the greatest intensity and clarity. “If the center of the universe is not you,” he explained, “then you can’t say it is your life that you are living.” Poster Comment: This is just an excerpt from a very long article go to the link to read it in it's entirety. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
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