Royce Gracie: “British fighters are 10 years old and still babies in grappling skills
By Gareth A Davies article from http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/
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Royce Gracie has advised British fighters to develop great skills in one style before trying to become rounded mixed martial artists, and believes it will take time before British fighters have jiu-jitsu skills at the very highest level in the sport.
Gracie, the Hall of Famer and the first UFC champion, told The Telegraph that he would advise developing fighters in the UK to stick to one discipline, and master it first. What would he advise young, aspiring fighters to do is to focus hard on becoming highly skilled practitioners of one martial art before attempting to become ’rounded’. Many new MMA fighters are considered hybrid fighters.
“You have to train, and train, but be good at one style. Pick one style, get very good at it, and then complement it with another style later.”
“Add the rest later. Learn one style, instead of learning MMA. What is MMA ? Jack of all trades, master of none.”
“Get good at one. Make a base. Have a base.”
“Watch the UFC Ultimate Royce Gracie. The new DVD that just came out. Look at the first UFC. I come out. It’s Art Jimmison. I dance around with him a little bit, shoot in, take him down. Second fight. Ken Shamrock. I walk in and I go straight into him. If you saw my first fight, you thought I was going to dance around. I shot straight in. Third fight, I walk around. It’s strategy.”
“Dan Severn. Hands up in the air, let him take me down, get inside the guard. Control, control, control. Take a couple of hits, a couple of blows, then catch him in the triangle…”
“Watch the next fight, and the next fight. It’s always changing. Yes, I throw a couple of fake punches, fake kicks out there, I stand up because I need to know what it coming at me.”
“But I am a grappler. I have a home.”
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“He is the godfather. He is the man who started it all and we all bow down and kiss the ring of Royce Gracie. He kick-started the entire sport of martial arts.” – Dana White
Surely the problem for British fighters at the highest level in the sport is that they have been losing on the ground. Dan Hardy in recent fights, Paul Daley against Josh Koscheck…
“You have to grow slowly. Before you go to University you have to go to kindergarten, then to high school. Right now in England they are about 10 years old [in ground skills]. I’ve been teaching in America 25 years, my brother was here 15 years before that so we have been here teaching all that time. They are babies in England right now, 10 years old…It takes time.”
“This is a strategy game. It’s as simple as that. You can’t think ‘I’m going in there, I’m going to hit him a few times, go for the takedown, hit him with a few elbows, take his back, and submit him…’ Is that a strategy ? No. It’s a wish. Strategy is when you figure out what your opponent is going to do, then you set up your game plan, either defensive, or offensive, or both…”
“You have to figure out your opponent’s game, so you can take him out of his game. Most likely, the strategy is constructed before, but can also be when you are in there. There’s plan A, plan B and sometimes you have to pull out plan C during the fight.”
The ‘UFC Ultimate Royce Gracie’ is two DVDs of Gracie’s fights, from UFC 1-5, the history of his family in the sport, and his contests with Nobuhiko Takata (2000), Kazushi Sakuraba (2000), and Hidehiko Yoshida (2003). Inside the book cover, several pages outline ‘The Gracie Way’.
When it began at UFC 1, in November 1993, few in the United States knew who the Gracies were, and when the skinny kid of the clan, Royce, was chosen to represent the family in the first UFC, many shielded their eyes, fearing for his safety against his more visually imposing opposition. “It was just the right time,” explains Gracie on the DVD. “I was the right size. I wasn’t bulked up and I didn’t look very scary, so to speak. It was just the right timing for me.”
