R.I.P. Helio Gracie, pt. 1

Helio Gracie was buried with his red belt. Royce Gracie, son, and UFC Champion three times out ofthe first four UFCs threw his black belt atop the casket.

Just got the latest WON with Meltz writing Helio's obit and thought it was super compelling and appropriate that the week after MMA probably had its highest grossing pay-per-view, that the godfather of the sport needed to paid his respect. Copied and pasted w/o permission. If the writer of this piece wishes it to be pulled, all requests will be respectfully complied.
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Helio Gracie, the father of not only early MMA fighting legends Royce and Rickson Gracie, but in many ways, the father of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA style fighting, passed away in his sleep on 1/29 at the age of 95.

Gracie was a Brazilian with something of an age-defying Jack LaLanne- like reputation for always staying active and never getting sick, even in old age, which he attributed to his diet and lifestyle. But he had been ill in recent months, and had been hospitalized for more than a week after contracting pneumonia, in his home town of Itaipava, Brazil, before passing away.

“My mom said he just stopped eating, and was only drinking water,” said son Royler Gracie.

A small man, maybe 155 pounds in his fighting prime, Gracie learned Jiu Jitsu at first from observing older brother Carlos’ teachings while a teenager. As an adult, he refined the concepts and developed a style based on almost exclusively technique, defense and conditioning designed to allow a smaller man to survive and outlast a bigger man in competition, based on using as little strength as possible, which his sons later marketed in the U.S. as Gracie Jiu Jitsu. He became a sports star in his native country in the 50s, and later was portrayed as something of an inventor and patron saint of no holds barred fighting, which in recent times he actually wasn’t even a proponent of. In his later years, he achieved a sort of celebrity status to a degree in the U.S., but even more in

Japan and Brazil as this master and legendary figure, particularly when in the corner of son Royce in most of his biggest matches in the early days of UFC, and later Pride. Oldest son Rorion, who moved to the U.S. in the late 80s looking to take what he learned from his father and market it in a new part of the world, marketed tapes and a history of Gracie Jiu Jitsu, known as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu back home, portraying his father as the inventor, and claiming that his family had been unbeaten in no holds barred matches for 60 years, presenting him as a sort of Babe Ruth of his world. The marketing got little traction, other than he taught some celebrities out of his garage he met while working as a stunt man, and got an article in Playboy magazine based on a $10,000 challenge he made to fighters from any other discipline, the Gracie Challenge that his family publicly made in Brazil as a way to market their product.

Rorion and Art Davie came up with the concept of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, based on the Gracie Challenge matches against fighters of different styles in Brazil, with the concept of fighting inside a cage instead of a ring, as was standard in the Vale Tudo wars his father and cousin Carlson had been big stars in during the 50s, when two of the most famous matches were held in soccer stadiums. They went to virtually everyone in U.S. television with the concept of a no holds barred tournament pitting masters of different styles against each other, and were turned down flat by everyone, from the biggest networks to the smallest cable stations. The only nipple came from an enthused Campbell McLaren, an executive of Semaphore Entertainment Group, a company that was looking for an idea to crack the PPV market after doing concerts and other events that ended up being unsuccessful. The only concepts that worked up to that point on PPV were boxing and pro wrestling. McLaren was looking at bringing Lucha Libre to PPV, when Rorion Gracie and Davie came to him with the concept.

The first UFC, held November 12, 1993, in Denver, was for McLaren, a spectacle of an event, pro wrestling without fake matches, which he and probably nobody involved had any

intention of it ever becoming what it turned out to be. For Rorion Gracie, it was meant as a million dollar marketing idea, establishing Gracie Jiu Jitsu and changing the world of martial arts. The concept was to put younger brother Royce, at 6-1 and 176 pounds, skinny, and looking nothing what Americans visualized a badass fighter looking like, in with bigger guys who were clueless to the ground game. Although Royce himself had never fought in a professional match, he had won numerous dojo challenge matches, and in theory would be able to use Helio’s techniques to get a match to the ground before eating too many punches, either by takedown or pulling guard, and then the clueless opponent would burn out trying to escape the guard, make a mistake, and get tapped. In those days, when nobody knew the techniques, at seminars, any of the Gracies could routinely tap just about anyone within a few minutes. The idea was he would win, people would be amazed at a skinny guy winning, and Gracie Jiu Jitsu would take over from karate, Tae Kwon Do and kung fu classes in the lucrative market of self- defense, particularly for women.

UFC was set up to be an infomercial for Gracie Jiu Jitsu, but Royce still had to win the first tournament, which he did, as expected, as he had a lifetime of training from people with decades of experience in this game against people completely clueless as to what awaited them.

The entire martial arts world in the U.S. went crazy. It had always been marketed around myths, and this reality of combat destroyed the myths of what would happen when masters of different disciplines were put together. The traditional martial arts world complained that real world champions were not in the tournament. And this was a complete spectacle, with credentials, records and backgrounds of the participants exaggerated or outright made up.

The Gracies marketed that 90% of fights end up on the ground, and their system was all about technique, so a small man could beat a big man since size and strength didn’t matter.

Of course, in the long run, that wasn’t going to be the case, but the truth was, smaller guys who started studying with the Gracies for even a short period of time were able to easily tap out their bigger friends who may have been more athletic, but had no training, and before styles became mixed and people learned from the best of every style, Jiu Jitsu, with its ground defensive techniques and submissions, was the most effective singular art for at least one-on-one self defense against a bigger attacker, which is what the average person wanted. It was not as effective against multiple attackers, but for the average person, nothing really is.

(part 2 con't tommorow)