Rickson Gracie’s self-proclaimed combat sports record could well be a thousand fights, if you ask the man himself. There’s one fight, he told Trocação Franca, that he wishes he could have taken on, is Kazushi Sakuraba. Sakuraba, around the turn of the century, had already dispatched Gracies Renzo, Royler, Royce, and Ryan. Only the tragic death of Rickson’s son Rockson prevented him from fighting Sakuraba at PRIDE 12, a promotion that more or less existed so that Rickson Gracie could compete in MMA.
“In chronological terms, the only that fight that should have happened and didn’t, was the Sakuraba one, because he was on a great run and I had just won at the Colosseum, it was a millionaire offer from a Japanese TV to do this fight, Sakuraba and I.
Rickson Gracie’s Thousand-Fight Record and the One “Epic Fight” that Got Away
It was Sakuraba’s best moment, when he was the Gracie killer and I had just beaten Funaki. It would have been an epic fight.
Sadly, a month after we started the negotiations, my son was gone and things started to walk backwards and fighting wasn’t a priority for me anymore. It would have been good for me emotionally speaking, to keep me focused, etc., but it would have been a tragedy for my family, who would feel helpless, it would feel bad.
So I decided to cancel the fight and stay as the [leader] for my kids, as the nanny, as the father, a friend, going through the pain together to overcome this crisis.
And then Sakuraba lost to Wanderlei [Silva] and it started to lose that momentum. And when my personal tragedy got better, they weren’t willing to pay a third of what they initially did to make this fight.”
So what of the 1000-fight number? Rickson’s official MMA record is 11-0, but he includes quite a few unofficial bouts in his own count.
“Every seminar I did at the time, 100, 50, 40, 30, 20 seminars, at the end of the six-hour seminars, I’d submit everybody. Who wants to train?’ Everybody wanted to. I submitted everybody, one after the other. And every tournament I entered after I turned 18, weight class or openweight division, I submitted every match I had and never lost. I entered luta livre tournaments back when Rolles was excited about it, I never lost either.
Sambo tournaments in Brazil and in the United States, I also never lost. Street fights against guys that were really tough, professionals, or street fights with surfers … fights with luta livre guys, jiu-jitsu tournaments, seminars, any other situation — every time I faced an opponent, he was submitted. I never won by points. And counting very superficially, it’s at least 450 fights, so I set that as my record.
That [450] number, I think it’s at least that. You can double that and it’s hard for people to deny. If you saw it, you saw it. If you haven’t, there’s no YouTube that goes back that much, unfortunately.”
