Royce Gracie

In his first match, Gracie defeated journeyman boxer Art Jimmerson. He tackled him to the ground using a baiana (morote-gari or double-leg) and obtained the dominant "mounted" position, also pinning Jimmerson's left arm around the boxer's own neck. Mounted and with only one free arm, Jimmerson conceded defeat.

In the semi-finals, Gracie defeated Ken Shamrock and went on to defeat a Karate and Savate practitioner Gerard Gordeau, taking his opponent to the ground and securing a rear choke.

In the next tournament, Gracie began his defense of the title by submitting Japanese fighter Minoki Ichihara - a second degree black belt in Karatedo Daido Juku and Kyokushin karate, who was billed by the UFC at the time as a "living legend" in Tokyo who had won over 60 full-contact fights. The fight had gone 5:08, which was longer than Royce's 3 bouts in the first event (totaling 4:59). Advancing into the quarterfinals, Royce Gracie defeated future Pancrase veteran Jason DeLucia, submitting him via armbar just over a minute into the bout. Gracie then submitted 250-lb Judo and Taekwondo black belt Remco Pardoel[8] with a lapel choke, and won the final bout against Patrick Smith, when his opponent submitted to punches from the top position.

At UFC 3, Royce was matched up in the first round against Kimo Leopoldo and won via submission after 4 minutes and 40 seconds. However, he withdrew from his next fight with Harold Howard before it began due to exhaustion and dehydration.[9] Royce entered into the ring and threw in the towel.[10] This was the first event which Gracie did not win.

Gracie submitted 51-year-old Ron van Clief in the opening round with a rear-naked choke, and then submitted Keith Hackney in the semi-finals. Gracie's final UFC victory was in a match that lasted for 16 minutes (there were no rounds or time limits at the time), during which he was continuously pinned underneath 260 pound (118 kg) wrestler Dan Severn. To end the match, Royce locked his legs in a triangle choke for a submission victory. The match extended beyond the pay-per-view time slot and viewers, who missed the end of the fight, demanded their money back.

Time limits were re-introduced into the sport in 1995 and Ken Shamrock would become the first fighter to survive Royce Gracie's submission attack and earn a draw. The match lasted for 30 minutes and a 6-minute overtime. The draw sparked much debate and controversy as to who would have won the fight had judges determined the outcome, or had there been no time limits, as by the end of the fight Gracie's right eye was swollen shut. However, the swollen eye was a result of a standing punch due to a sudden change of the rules in which both of the fighters were restarted on their feet.[11] After this fight Gracie left the UFC.

At UFC 45 in November 2003, at the ten-year anniversary of the UFC, Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie became the first inductees into the UFC Hall of Fame. UFC President Dana White said;[12]

We feel that no two individuals are more deserving than Royce and Ken to be the charter members. Their contributions to our sport, both inside and outside the Octagon, may never be equaled.

Throughout his UFC days, Royce frequently challenged well-known fighters—though usually to no avail—to "fight to the finish, any place and any time." Many big-name sportspeople, including Mike Tyson (who was serving the prison term at the time) received the note several times in an open letter fashion, usually published by the Black Belt Magazine at The Ultimate Fighter column.[13][14]

Gracie was originally going to debut in PRIDE Fighting Championships in their 1998 PRIDE 2 event, where he would be pitted against fellow UFC champion Mark Kerr. The Gracie side demanded special rules without time limit or referee stoppage, which were accepted.[15] However, Royce pulled out due to a back injury after the fight had been advertised.[16] Royce's spot against Kerr was then offered to his brother Rickson, but he rejected it as well, believing he would not have enough time to prepare for the match.[17]

Kazushi Sakuraba, a professional wrestler who derived his foundation in submissions not from jiu jitsu but rather from catch wrestling and shoot wrestling, rose up in the year's stablemate and master Nobuhiko Takada, before finding himself matched up with Gracie. The two battled for an hour and a half. Early in the fight, Sakuraba nearly ended things with a kneebar towards the end of the first round. Later on, Royce returned the favor with a guillotine choke. Indeed, the Gracie's own no time-limit rules began to work against Royce when Sakuraba, displaying much better conditioning, kept punishing Royce instead of going for submissions, prolonging the match.

As the fight wore on, however, Sakuraba's wrestling skills and balance nullified Royce's ability to score a takedown and, in some instances, even pull guard. Royce's ever-present jiu-jitsu gi became a weapon for the wrestler to use against him as Sakuraba used it to help him control Gracie. However, with Sakuraba's control of the takedown, these instances of ground warfare became increasingly sporadic. After the 90 minute battle of punishing low kicks, Royce's brother threw in the towel. Gracie could no longer stand and suffered a broken femur from accumulated damage. Sakuraba went on to defeat other members of the Gracie family, including Renzo Gracie and Ryan Gracie, earning him the nickname "Gracie Hunter."

Gracie returned to PRIDE in 2002 to fight Japanese gold-medalist judoka Hidehiko Yoshida in a special "Judo vs. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu" limited rules MMA match. Royce started the fight pulling guard and attempting a heel hook and an armbar, with Hidehiko blocking them and coming back with a gi choke and an ankle lock attempt. Gracie pulled guard again, but Yoshida turned it into a daki age and sought the Kimura lock; then, when the Brazilian blocked the technique, Yoshida passed his guard and performed a mounted sode guruma jime. After a moment of inactivity, the referee Daisuke Noguchi stopped the match in the belief Royce was unconscious and gave victory to Yoshida.[18]

Gracie immediately protested, claiming he had not passed out and that the referee had no authority to stop the match. Footage of the fight was reviewed, and it was found that while Royce did get up right after the stoppage, his visible arm during the execution of the choke was limp and motionless.[18] Later backstage, the Gracies demanded it be turned into a no contest, and an immediate rematch be booked (with different rules for the next time). If not, the Gracie family would pull themselves from PRIDE FC, and never fight for them again.[19] PRIDE, wanting to keep the Gracie family with them, accepted their demands.

Afterward, Royce took Rickson's advice and started fighting without a gi so that his opponents could not stall by holding onto the gi. The grudge match between Yoshida and Gracie had rules more like the standard PRIDE MMA rules. This match took place at PRIDE's Shockwave 2003 event on December 31, 2003. Gracie dominated Yoshida by sweeping him and hitting ground and pound on a turtled up Hidehiko.[20] However, as the match had no judge per Gracie's request, the official decision was a draw after two 10-minute rounds.

In September 2004 Pride had a disagreement with Gracie about his participation in the 2005 Pride Middleweight Grand Prix. Gracie had issues with the proposed opponents and rules (Grand Prix fights must have a winner and cannot end in a draw). He jumped to Fighting and Entertainment Group's K-1 organization. Pride sued Gracie for breaching his contract with them. The case was settled in December 2005, with Gracie issuing a public apology, blaming his actions on a misinterpretation of the contract by his manager.

On December 31, 2004, Gracie entered the K-1 scene at the "Dynamite!" card inside the Osaka Dome, facing off against former sumo wrestler and MMA newcomer Akebono Tarō aka. Chad Rowan under special MMA rules (Two 10-minute rounds; the match would end as a draw if there was no winner after the two rounds). Gracie made quick work of his heavy opponent, forcing Akebono to submit to a shoulder lock at 2:13 of the first round. The match was refereed by MMA ref John McCarthy.

Exactly one year later, on the "Dynamite!" card of December 31, 2005, Gracie fought Japan's Hideo Tokoro, a 143-pound fighter, in a fight ending in a draw after 20 minutes. Gracie's original opponent was scheduled to be the tall Korean fighter Choi Hong-man, another MMA newcomer.

On January 16, 2006, UFC President Dana White announced that Royce Gracie would return to the UFC to fight UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes on May 27, 2006, at UFC 60. This was a non-title bout at a catchweight of 175 lb. under UFC/California State Athletic Commission rules. To prepare, Gracie cross-trained in Muay Thai and was frequently shown in publicity materials from Fairtex.[21] In round one, Hughes hyperextended Gracie's arm in a straight armbar, but Gracie refused to tap[22] and held on with a calm expression on his face.

Hughes has stated, in past interviews, that Gracie would have let his arm break rather than submit.[23] Hughes went on to win the fight by TKO due to strikes at 4:39 of the first round.

Royce said later after the fight with Hughes that he wanted a rematch and that he was not surprised by Hughes's performance: "No, we knew what he was planning to do. We worked out his gameplan before the fight, and he did exactly what we expected. I over-trained for the fight. That was all. I started training too much, too hard, for too long. He did exactly what we expected."[24]

On May 8, 2007, EliteXC announced that Gracie's opponent for the June 2 K-1 Dynamite!! USA event in Los Angeles, California, would be Japanese fighter Kazushi Sakuraba.

Gracie defeated Sakuraba by a unanimous decision. However, a post-fight drug screen revealed that Royce had traces of Nandrolone in his system. "Use of steroids is simply cheating," said Armando Garcia, California State Athletic Commission executive director. "It won't be tolerated in this state."[25]

On June 14, 2007, the California State Athletic Commission declared that Gracie had tested positive for Nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, after his fight with Sakuraba.[25] According to the California State Athletic Commission, the average person could produce about 2 ng/ml of Nandrolone, while an athlete following "rigorous physical exercise" could have a level of around 6 ng/ml. Both "A" and "B" test samples provided by Gracie "had a level of over 50 ng/ml and we were informed that the level itself was so elevated that it would not register on the laboratory's calibrator," said the CSAC.[26] Gracie was fined $2,500 (the maximum penalty the Commission can impose) and suspended for the remainder of his license, which ended on May 30, 2008. Gracie paid the fine.[27] The California State Athletic Commission's Bill Douglas told MMAWeekly, "Currently, our rules do not support overturning a decision based on the drug test results. However, Armando Garcia and I are meeting with the Attorney General next month to begin the process of modifying the existing laws to incorporate those rules for the future. Should everything move along like I anticipate, I would expect to see the changes in place by the end of the year."[28]

Royce Gracie decided to dispute the allegations during an online video interview on May 2009, more than two years after the fact, saying that his weight in the first UFC event was 178 lb and claiming his weight during his Sakuraba fight was 180 lb, thus only gaining 2 pounds.[29] This was widely disputed by experts as his weight was actually 188 lb for the Sakuraba fight. According to ESPN "Gracie is hardly possessed of an exaggerated physique, but he was clearly more sculpted for his June 2 fight with Kazushi Sakuraba than he was for a May 2006 match with Matt Hughes. In the former contest, he weighed in at 175 pounds; for Sakuraba, he was 188. One may not need to be nutritionist to observe that a muscle gain of 13 pounds in one year at the age of 40 is a strikingly accomplished feat. Athletes nearing the half-century mark are often happy to maintain functional mass, let alone pack it on".[30]

On December 15, 2010, the UFC held a press conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil announcing an event August 27, 2011, at the HSBC Arena. During the press conference Royce stated: "This return of UFC to Brazil touched me, made me feel the wish of coming back to the Octagon. Everything is being negotiated with Dana White. Let's wait". On March 11, 2011, Royce Gracie's profile was added back to ufc.com active fighters list as a middleweight. His manager stated that they were actively negotiating with the UFC for a return to the Octagon and said it was just a matter of "getting it nailed down" and that there was plenty of time for it.[31] On November 15, 2013, at UFC 167 on the 20th Anniversary of the UFC, Royce Gracie with MMA journalist Ariel Helwani confirmed he had retired from competing in mixed martial arts.[3]

At Bellator 145, it was announced that Gracie would return from retirement to face rival Ken Shamrock in a trilogy fight, taking place on February 19, 2016, at Bellator 149.[32] Gracie won the fight in the first round after taking Shamrock down and ending the contest with hammerfists. The win was not without controversy, however, as replays showed that Gracie landed a knee strike to the groin of Shamrock prior to the finish. Shamrock protested the stoppage, however the bout was officially ruled a victory for Gracie.

• • UFC Hall of Fame (Inaugural inductee, part of the pioneer wing, class of 2003)
  • UFC 1 Tournament Championship
  • UFC 2 Tournament Championship
  • UFC 4 Tournament Championship
  • UFC Viewer's Choice Award[33]
  • First tournament champion in UFC history
  • Longest fight in UFC history (36 minutes) - vs Ken Shamrock at (UFC 5)
  • Most tournament wins in UFC history (Eleven)
  • Most tournaments won in UFC history (Three)
  • Most fights in a single night in UFC history (Four) - tied with (Patrick Smith)

• • Longest fight in Pride history (90 minutes) - vs Kazushi Sakuraba at (Pride Grand Prix 2000 Finals)

• • Fighter of the Year (1993)[34]

• • Competitor of the Year (1994)[35]

• • Fight of the Year (2000) vs. Kazushi Sakuraba on May 1

• • 2013 Lifetime Achievement[36]