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After a long two weeks..i just finished this last night...
Warning, it's very very long.
>>>>>>>>
For three years now I have heard relentless bantering back and forth discussing the greatness of Rickson Gracie. Many of times I have found myself scratching my head over the loyalty of his followers. Worshipping of this nature is usually only reserved for super stars such as American Idol’s Clay Aiken or Christianity’s Jesus Christ. In the beginning, being the typical ignorant American, I first asked myself, ‘how many Super Bowl rings has Rickson won?, as football is the only sport that matters. None, as I soon realized from reading people’s quotes. This Rickson character is a bjj ‘artist’, the best ever and also pound for the pound the world’s greatest fighter of ALL TIME. Wow. “that’s really impressive” I thought.
Over time though, doubts started creeping into my head. Rickson, curiously enough, had a fight record of 400-0, that was thrown around more often than a dirty pair of socks. Being a somewhat numbers obsessed guy, I quickly busted out my hp financial calculator and did some match. He’s 45. He fought nine ‘recorded’ matches from 1994 to 2004. Fair enough as 1993 was the birth of modern day MMA. So that means from Rickson’s age of 18 (1975) to 1993, 18 years, he must have then squeezed in roughly 391 recorded fights. “GOD DAMN” I shouted and scratched my head, amazed at his level of activity. That’s almost 22 fights a year! One fight every 16 days, consistently, over the time span of 18 years. That’s unmatched and to think he never missed a beat due to sickness, injury, being married, or funerals. The man just kept fighting and fighting and fighting. He must have actually snuck in a fight or two while on his honeymoon to boot. “hey honey, no sex tonight, I have to keep my fight streak intact. Will be back in three hours after I put beat down on kids in bar”
Now really twisting my head trying to comprehend this, a few weeks ago more doubts came to the surface. Just as Jesus Christ had Mathew, Mark, Luke and John (nice jewish names to note) Rickson also had followers…JeffP, Compridough, and Rickson4life, the last person consigning his entire personality to that of another mans name. Interesting. What caused these doubts? A thread on the ADCC forum. This thread discussed legendary achievements by athletes. Wrestling’s John Smith came up, how he won an Olympic Gold medal and four World Gold medals. Alexander Karelin’s name come up next; multiple Olympic Gold Medals and decades worth of World Championship Gold’s. Surprisingly enough, the ‘fellowship of rickson’s nuts’, jeffp, compridough and rickson4life swarmed in to comment.
Rickson first chimed in with this;
“I am not a huge fan of gable or smith, both asholes in my book, But I respect their acheivements even if gable was using roids during the 72 games………..there is proof that Rickson is great. he beat Funaki, ya know the guy that beat frank sham, bas, kondo and a few other mellons that are legends of this forum and Rickson was undefeated and won the absolute in every bjj tourney he competed in from black belt on, by sub”
Hmmm..i scratched my head. He then followed up with this comment…
“Rickson has more documented titles of bjj then the wrestlers do in wrestling and bjj IMO is harder from doing both”
Wow…I was shocked as I didn’t know that. I suppose I learned something new that day. Little did I know that more was on the way. The second apostle of Rickson’s nuts, JeffP, immediately countered with more facts to back the Rickson story…
“Now if Rickson counted every guy he ever really tapped into his record, he would be about 4 million and something, not 400-0. Rickson and Felix Heredia tapped 200 guys in Japan in one day back in the early 90's. I'm also sure Gokor has tapped more guys than he can count with an adding machine”
I felt stupid. Here I was, shortchanging Rickson for the past few years, thinking his record was only 400 ‘documented’ wins, when in actuality, I was failing to consider all the practice room victories he had secured. I felt foolish for disagreeing with JeffP. Utilizing my calculater again, I crunched the numbers. From age 16 to age 44…that’s 28 years of fighting. 4 million divided by 28 equals … GASP!!! 391 confirmed victories every single DAY, over the span of 28 years. Was that possible? That’s 16 beat downs every hour, 24 hours a day, over 28 years. Rickson must be tapping people in his sleep, while he takes dumps on the toilet, while he eats. This is incredible, I thought. But catching my breath and trying to relax, I soon realized that I was played for a fool, the above is simply not possible. I posted the above thought trying to rationally reason with these followers. I asked, where can this humble man known only as ‘the wrestler’ find such facts you are now sharing. I too would like to nutride some day and if so, there cannot be a greater set of nuts to suck than the man who taps people while eating and shittting.
Nonetheless, the man known only as ‘rickson4life’ politely informed me next that:
“hey there jerknutz, I neva promised you nuthin, but I did at one time have those facts and another source that had at least 127 matches listed
Rejected. I was quite despondent.
Therein lies the beginning of my story. The 7 day pilgramidge to the holy land of ‘rickson’ to search for the truth. To attempt to find the holy covenants that lie out there, also known as ‘Rickson’s fight record’ Over this time span, I would actually send one of my employees to go to California, try to ask Rickson himself for the ‘supposed records’ Others in my office would also help as we scoured the internet three times over, pouring over every record and fact available. This is what we would find.
Using our trusted allies ‘google.com’ and ‘booble.com’, we got to searching. The first two web sites were of no use in terms of actual accomplishments. Instead, much of those Rickson sites spent all their time discussing Rickson’s looks. The actual words we found…
“The blankness of the supremely confident. Rickson is 29, as muscular as a bodybuilder, with a Marine's crewcut, the high cheekbones of an Inca Indian and a square jaw”
and
“If Rorion is amiably handsome, Rickson is devastatingly handsome. Noted photographer Bruce Weber”
“Was he a bjj guy or a gay film star?” Carol, my secretary asked. Looking at his beach pictures, Rickson, to the untrained eye looking at his sites, looked like a romo We decided to press on with our search, moving on down the list of google’s rickson sites.
The next site we found the mystical source of the 400-0 record. Our eyes were ablaze. There it was, a bio on Rickson.
“Rickson is a 7th Degree Black Belt Open Class Champion of the Gracie Family, whose technique is considered to be the finest expression of Jiu-Jitsu in the world. His innate talent and early mastery of the sport have resulted in an impeccable undefeated record in more than 400 fights, Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, free-style wrestling, Sambo, open weight free-style competitions, and no holds barred challenge matches. Rickson is a two time Brazilian Champion in free-style wrestling, a Gold Medal Winner of Sambo, and for the last sixteen years he has been the middle-heavyweight and no weight division World Jiu-Jitsu Champion. Most recently, he conquered Japan's elite fighting in a tournament, the Japan Open Vale Tudo, winning both in 1994 and 1995. At this time, Rickson was acknowledged by the Japanese for possessing the Samurai Spirit.”
This was something to sink our hooks in on. Moving fast now, we found three more sites that referenced Rickson’s MMA career records. Ah ha!!!…but unfortunately, they all just linked right back to Sherdog.com, where Rickson’s nine fight career is noted. A far cry from the fabled 400-0. Looking at the nine fight career, Russ, an associate of mine at work, mumbled…”who are all these Japanese no-names he beat, these guys are all lame, there ‘combined’ career MMA record is only 18-27-2 and not a single one was ever ranked in the top 30, at ANY time. What the hell is up with that? David Levicki? Yuki Noiki? Bud Smith? Yoshihisa Yamamoto? There all ‘cans’” I chuckled out loud, at the sound of a man who has watched one MMA event in his life recognizing a tomato can when he saw one. Nonetheless, we were all frustrated. 9-0 versus eight ‘cans was not that impressive, surely there was more.
YES!” We shouted, as we found a good link.
This page read as follows…
”This page attempts to record some of the more significant matches fought by legitimate professional BJJ lutadors against other styles, in the seventy year history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu”
Since Rickson is THE most significant bjj fighter of all times, surely we would find numerous transcripts and results of his fights. This site would hold the answers we seek. Unfortunately, of Rickson’s 400 documented wins, these two 'WINS' would be the only one the site listed:
1. Sometime in the 80’s, Rickson apparently beat up Brazilian fighting legend Hugo Duarte on some beach somewhere, location was not specified as I suppose a beach is just a beach. Could this be the same Hugo Duarte that used his face to bruise Tank Abbot’s hand back in UFC-Brazil? Then added insult to injury by bleeding all over Tanks arm?
2. Sometime in 1980 and then again 1985, Rickson beat down a monster known only by the name of ‘Zulu’ Ahhhhhhhh…we had heard of this man. This is the first sighting of a ‘significant’ Rickson Gracie victory. YES. From what we had heard, Zulu was Brazil’s version of ‘Paul Bunyan’, a giant amongst men, 450lbs of raw muscle who shot flames out of his arse. A present day ‘Bob Sapp’ Unfortunately, backchecking Zulu’s record, very little could be found. His weight was listed at only around 220lbs and his discipline was listed as ‘no formal training’ Hmmm. Who was Zulu? After hours of searching, the best and only documented ‘anything’ on this man was that he was from the town of São Luis and his real name was ‘Rei Zulu’. To sum up a lot of nonsense, Zulu was basically the local ‘toughman’, a bully who beat up locals. His record of 140-0 was puffed up on fat, drunk American tourists and neighborhood kids. We were perplexed as to why Rickson would define his career on this man?
Frustrated immensely, we searched over 45 more sites but more of the same. One site intereviewed Rickson, asking him his greatest fighting achievement. He listed his Pride 1 victory over Japan’s greatest fighter of all time, Nobuhiko Takada, who sported a lofty lifetime record of 2-6-2.
Another site that had Rickson apparently had a movie review of a movie he was in.
That was interesting until we noticed the site was ‘rottentomatoes.com’. LOL at the irony of his jump into movies getting the same review as the opponents that he has taken on.
“hey, not fair’ cried my associate Russ. We should use Rickson’s greatest movie, “choke” as a more unbiased review of his opponents. Surely an actual documentary on his fighting career will show who he beat and give footage of at least some of his 400 wins. Russ was right and I moved onto the next site....
Unfortunately again, the site had nothing good to say about the video. The actual words in the review…
“My biggest complaint about Choke isn't the violence, however, but the lack of competition that Gracie faces at this event. Maybe it's that Gracie is just that good instead of these other competitors being wussies, but he wins in complete squashes. That does not make for great drama”
Warning, it's very very long.
>>>>>>>>
For three years now I have heard relentless bantering back and forth discussing the greatness of Rickson Gracie. Many of times I have found myself scratching my head over the loyalty of his followers. Worshipping of this nature is usually only reserved for super stars such as American Idol’s Clay Aiken or Christianity’s Jesus Christ. In the beginning, being the typical ignorant American, I first asked myself, ‘how many Super Bowl rings has Rickson won?, as football is the only sport that matters. None, as I soon realized from reading people’s quotes. This Rickson character is a bjj ‘artist’, the best ever and also pound for the pound the world’s greatest fighter of ALL TIME. Wow. “that’s really impressive” I thought.
Over time though, doubts started creeping into my head. Rickson, curiously enough, had a fight record of 400-0, that was thrown around more often than a dirty pair of socks. Being a somewhat numbers obsessed guy, I quickly busted out my hp financial calculator and did some match. He’s 45. He fought nine ‘recorded’ matches from 1994 to 2004. Fair enough as 1993 was the birth of modern day MMA. So that means from Rickson’s age of 18 (1975) to 1993, 18 years, he must have then squeezed in roughly 391 recorded fights. “GOD DAMN” I shouted and scratched my head, amazed at his level of activity. That’s almost 22 fights a year! One fight every 16 days, consistently, over the time span of 18 years. That’s unmatched and to think he never missed a beat due to sickness, injury, being married, or funerals. The man just kept fighting and fighting and fighting. He must have actually snuck in a fight or two while on his honeymoon to boot. “hey honey, no sex tonight, I have to keep my fight streak intact. Will be back in three hours after I put beat down on kids in bar”
Now really twisting my head trying to comprehend this, a few weeks ago more doubts came to the surface. Just as Jesus Christ had Mathew, Mark, Luke and John (nice jewish names to note) Rickson also had followers…JeffP, Compridough, and Rickson4life, the last person consigning his entire personality to that of another mans name. Interesting. What caused these doubts? A thread on the ADCC forum. This thread discussed legendary achievements by athletes. Wrestling’s John Smith came up, how he won an Olympic Gold medal and four World Gold medals. Alexander Karelin’s name come up next; multiple Olympic Gold Medals and decades worth of World Championship Gold’s. Surprisingly enough, the ‘fellowship of rickson’s nuts’, jeffp, compridough and rickson4life swarmed in to comment.
Rickson first chimed in with this;
“I am not a huge fan of gable or smith, both asholes in my book, But I respect their acheivements even if gable was using roids during the 72 games………..there is proof that Rickson is great. he beat Funaki, ya know the guy that beat frank sham, bas, kondo and a few other mellons that are legends of this forum and Rickson was undefeated and won the absolute in every bjj tourney he competed in from black belt on, by sub”
Hmmm..i scratched my head. He then followed up with this comment…
“Rickson has more documented titles of bjj then the wrestlers do in wrestling and bjj IMO is harder from doing both”
Wow…I was shocked as I didn’t know that. I suppose I learned something new that day. Little did I know that more was on the way. The second apostle of Rickson’s nuts, JeffP, immediately countered with more facts to back the Rickson story…
“Now if Rickson counted every guy he ever really tapped into his record, he would be about 4 million and something, not 400-0. Rickson and Felix Heredia tapped 200 guys in Japan in one day back in the early 90's. I'm also sure Gokor has tapped more guys than he can count with an adding machine”
I felt stupid. Here I was, shortchanging Rickson for the past few years, thinking his record was only 400 ‘documented’ wins, when in actuality, I was failing to consider all the practice room victories he had secured. I felt foolish for disagreeing with JeffP. Utilizing my calculater again, I crunched the numbers. From age 16 to age 44…that’s 28 years of fighting. 4 million divided by 28 equals …
Nonetheless, the man known only as ‘rickson4life’ politely informed me next that:
“hey there jerknutz, I neva promised you nuthin, but I did at one time have those facts and another source that had at least 127 matches listed
Rejected. I was quite despondent.
Therein lies the beginning of my story. The 7 day pilgramidge to the holy land of ‘rickson’ to search for the truth. To attempt to find the holy covenants that lie out there, also known as ‘Rickson’s fight record’ Over this time span, I would actually send one of my employees to go to California, try to ask Rickson himself for the ‘supposed records’ Others in my office would also help as we scoured the internet three times over, pouring over every record and fact available. This is what we would find.
Using our trusted allies ‘google.com’ and ‘booble.com’, we got to searching. The first two web sites were of no use in terms of actual accomplishments. Instead, much of those Rickson sites spent all their time discussing Rickson’s looks. The actual words we found…
“The blankness of the supremely confident. Rickson is 29, as muscular as a bodybuilder, with a Marine's crewcut, the high cheekbones of an Inca Indian and a square jaw”
and
“If Rorion is amiably handsome, Rickson is devastatingly handsome. Noted photographer Bruce Weber”
“Was he a bjj guy or a gay film star?” Carol, my secretary asked. Looking at his beach pictures, Rickson, to the untrained eye looking at his sites, looked like a romo We decided to press on with our search, moving on down the list of google’s rickson sites.
The next site we found the mystical source of the 400-0 record. Our eyes were ablaze. There it was, a bio on Rickson.
“Rickson is a 7th Degree Black Belt Open Class Champion of the Gracie Family, whose technique is considered to be the finest expression of Jiu-Jitsu in the world. His innate talent and early mastery of the sport have resulted in an impeccable undefeated record in more than 400 fights, Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, free-style wrestling, Sambo, open weight free-style competitions, and no holds barred challenge matches. Rickson is a two time Brazilian Champion in free-style wrestling, a Gold Medal Winner of Sambo, and for the last sixteen years he has been the middle-heavyweight and no weight division World Jiu-Jitsu Champion. Most recently, he conquered Japan's elite fighting in a tournament, the Japan Open Vale Tudo, winning both in 1994 and 1995. At this time, Rickson was acknowledged by the Japanese for possessing the Samurai Spirit.”
This was something to sink our hooks in on. Moving fast now, we found three more sites that referenced Rickson’s MMA career records. Ah ha!!!…but unfortunately, they all just linked right back to Sherdog.com, where Rickson’s nine fight career is noted. A far cry from the fabled 400-0. Looking at the nine fight career, Russ, an associate of mine at work, mumbled…”who are all these Japanese no-names he beat, these guys are all lame, there ‘combined’ career MMA record is only 18-27-2 and not a single one was ever ranked in the top 30, at ANY time. What the hell is up with that? David Levicki? Yuki Noiki? Bud Smith? Yoshihisa Yamamoto? There all ‘cans’” I chuckled out loud, at the sound of a man who has watched one MMA event in his life recognizing a tomato can when he saw one. Nonetheless, we were all frustrated. 9-0 versus eight ‘cans was not that impressive, surely there was more.
YES!” We shouted, as we found a good link.
This page read as follows…
”This page attempts to record some of the more significant matches fought by legitimate professional BJJ lutadors against other styles, in the seventy year history of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu”
Since Rickson is THE most significant bjj fighter of all times, surely we would find numerous transcripts and results of his fights. This site would hold the answers we seek. Unfortunately, of Rickson’s 400 documented wins, these two 'WINS' would be the only one the site listed:
1. Sometime in the 80’s, Rickson apparently beat up Brazilian fighting legend Hugo Duarte on some beach somewhere, location was not specified as I suppose a beach is just a beach. Could this be the same Hugo Duarte that used his face to bruise Tank Abbot’s hand back in UFC-Brazil? Then added insult to injury by bleeding all over Tanks arm?
2. Sometime in 1980 and then again 1985, Rickson beat down a monster known only by the name of ‘Zulu’ Ahhhhhhhh…we had heard of this man. This is the first sighting of a ‘significant’ Rickson Gracie victory. YES. From what we had heard, Zulu was Brazil’s version of ‘Paul Bunyan’, a giant amongst men, 450lbs of raw muscle who shot flames out of his arse. A present day ‘Bob Sapp’ Unfortunately, backchecking Zulu’s record, very little could be found. His weight was listed at only around 220lbs and his discipline was listed as ‘no formal training’ Hmmm. Who was Zulu? After hours of searching, the best and only documented ‘anything’ on this man was that he was from the town of São Luis and his real name was ‘Rei Zulu’. To sum up a lot of nonsense, Zulu was basically the local ‘toughman’, a bully who beat up locals. His record of 140-0 was puffed up on fat, drunk American tourists and neighborhood kids. We were perplexed as to why Rickson would define his career on this man?
Frustrated immensely, we searched over 45 more sites but more of the same. One site intereviewed Rickson, asking him his greatest fighting achievement. He listed his Pride 1 victory over Japan’s greatest fighter of all time, Nobuhiko Takada, who sported a lofty lifetime record of 2-6-2.
Another site that had Rickson apparently had a movie review of a movie he was in.
That was interesting until we noticed the site was ‘rottentomatoes.com’. LOL at the irony of his jump into movies getting the same review as the opponents that he has taken on.
“hey, not fair’ cried my associate Russ. We should use Rickson’s greatest movie, “choke” as a more unbiased review of his opponents. Surely an actual documentary on his fighting career will show who he beat and give footage of at least some of his 400 wins. Russ was right and I moved onto the next site....
Unfortunately again, the site had nothing good to say about the video. The actual words in the review…
“My biggest complaint about Choke isn't the violence, however, but the lack of competition that Gracie faces at this event. Maybe it's that Gracie is just that good instead of these other competitors being wussies, but he wins in complete squashes. That does not make for great drama”
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