Obscure and little-mentioned GOATs...

[Brandenburger Toro]

I came home tipsy last night, and found myself watching a UFC special, recounting the great fights of Royce Gracie.

It's quite hard to understate what a genius he was. Bear in mind, in the early years of that competition, there was no weight divisioning. He was almost always fighting Martial Artists with a significant size advantage. He insisted on wearing a gi, despite the general consensus that it presented a needless advantage to his opponents.

It was possible to show all his great fights in a one=hour special - edited to purposeit might have been possible to show all his fights. He just didn't take any time at all to destroy opponents. He was devilishly quick. In at least one fight, he is turned, and the opponent takes a dominant position. The crowd, sensing his defeat, go wild. Yet his opponent is already tapping out, having exposed himself ever so slightly in the attempt to exploit a seeming opening in the Gracie defenses.

A breathtaking athlete, a guy serious, serious opponents often seemed awestruck and flattered to have been beaten by. Whatever your opinion of UFC or MMA, the guy stood comparison to any sportsman.

So, who has bestrodden tiny, minority-interest worlds in similarly collossus-like fashion?

[jason voorhees]

Obscure and little-mentioned GOATs...

1) As someone who studied under Royler Gracie and Dave Adiv, I've always been all about Brasilian Jiu Jitsu (one of the best workouts around, and one that made me a better goalkeeper and the reason the doctors said that I was able to survive my car crash.) However, it's his father who deserves all the credit, as Helio Gracie was someone who is the dictionary definition of turning a lemon (his size - 5'2" 120 lbs) into lemonade (inventing an entire martial art and becoming the father of modern mixed martial art fighting.)

The Gracies single-handily invented UFC and MMA, by simply taking the Vale Tudo (anything goes fights in Brazil) and bringing it to the USA. They invented the cage, since in Brasil people would just run out of the ring when losing, and picked Royce as he was most similar to Helio (a little taller, but looking more like Olive Oyl than Popeye,) and the greatest potential advocate for BJJ.

When Royce was winning the early UFCs over much bigger and stronger fighters, it changed the view of the world. While Americans had a view of "duking it out", all of a sudden the greatest fighters could fight an entire fight on their back - and be even more dangerous when doing so. All of a sudden, instead of being "unmanly," it was what would happen "in a real streetfight."

My first sidenote, if anyone ever gets the chance to see Gracie fight Kenichi Sakuraba from PRIDE 2001, I'd give it my highest recommendation. Gracie saw Sakuraba beat two of his brothers, with controversial referee stoppages and judge decisions. His decision was to have unlimited rounds, with no ref stoppages. The fight went 1 1/2 hours, and is considered one of the greatest ever.

A funny sidenote is that the Gracies were the fight advisors for Lethal Weapon. The final head-scissors-like move that Mel Gibson uses on Gary Busey is the famous "triangle choke," in which you pull your opponent's head into his own arm, and choke him on his own shoulder.

[jason voorhees]

Obscure and little-mentioned GOATs...

Another point is he won many fights quick, because back in the day all he needed to do was shoot for the legs, but the fight you're talking about when he was on his back for 13 minutes was against Dan Severn in UFC 4.

He claimed to "slow cook" Severn. But that was in the days when wrestlers were bigger and stronger than Jiu Jitsu wrestlers, but had no submission moves (as they're illegal in real wrestling) and no punching. Randy Couture was the first to take wrestling to the next level, and is one of the greatest MMA artists of all time.

However, this and this was the match that changed MMA forever. For the first 13 UFCs, the wrestler/jiu jitsu/grappler always won over the "strikers" (Muay Thai kickboxers, boxers, sambo, etc.) This match pitted Marc Coleman (wrestler) vs Maurice Smith (kickboxer,) and was the first time that the strikers could not only escape from being taken down, but could prevent getting taken down all together and make the wrestler fight on their terms. Still my favorite UFC fight of all time.

Sorry, but other thn Olympic champs, not sure of any other GOATS. I mean, I'm all ears for team handball, fencing, that weird wrestling in India where 4 men team up on 1 man who has to break through their arms, roller derby, etc.

["Hold on, buddy!"]

Obscure and little-mentioned GOATs...

I think Royce's last fight against Matt Hughes showed just how much MMA has evolved as a sport - to see him so utterly dominated on the ground was something I never thought I'd see, even though I fully expected Hughes to win. I have friends who have little interest in the UFC beyond the old 'anything goes' days and they're uniformly in awe of Gracie and what he did and how he did it.

Speaking of Sakuraba, his match on New Year's Eve was one of the saddest matches you're likely to see. To see a man so obviously unfit to fight due to the poundings he's taken over the years is shocking and seemed even to stun the live crowd.
Incidentally, JV, as someone who's studied under one of the Gracies, I'd be interested one your take (if you have one) on the "Rickson Gracie is the greatest fighter ever" legend.
Oh, and sorry for the thread hijacking!

[jason voorhees]

Obscure and little-mentioned GOATs...

Well, Rickson was at his time. But as you said, MMA has developed to the point that it's like any professional sport; you're dealing with history vs new training techniques and nutrition. The Gracies purposely didn't use Rickson in the early UFCs, because they wanted to show a skinny geek using correct techniques could beat any musclehead (like Kimo or Severn) who outweighed them by a hundred pounds.

But it's like saying Jack Johnson was better than Muhammad Ali, there's no point. He played under different rules, and was hardly tested.

And no apologies for thread-jacking when this was around for months and no still no GOATS for Polo, Water Polo, Team Handball, Team Tennis, that weird Indian wrestling where 4 people take on 1 person, cricket (just kidding,) sumo wrestling, or dressage.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Obscure and little-mentioned GOATs...

That Indian thing is called Khabbadi or something, isn't it?

Thanks for the nil-saver, guys, some really interesting stuff...