In his day, Royce beat everyone put in front of him - and as far as I know he didn't refuse to fight anyone. Nothing padded about that.
Rickson Gracie vs Gokor Chivichyan
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In his day, Royce beat everyone put in front of him - and as far as I know he didn't refuse to fight anyone. Nothing padded about that.
Seriously, you have a definition in mind for what constitutes "pure" grappling, and then you're annoyed because people don't agree with your unstated definition. But you don't get to redefine grappling. Look it up in the dictionary, it includes all the styles, whether you like them or not, and to compete in each style means using the associated rules.
Or put it this way: grappling is a subset of fighting, and that means pure grappling always has rules associated with it. Take away those rules and it quickly escalates. I've seen people grappling in war a few times - generally it involves wrestling for control of a knife or firearm, and doesn't look anything like any sport grappling because of the importance in controling the weapon. What they were doing was still grappling, but the lack of rules (which meant weapons were on hand) changed it dramatically.
Which means you can't define grappling without defining the rules you have in mind.
Ultimately there is no such thing as "best" grappler, unless you have someone who can win under every rule set, and I doubt such a person has ever existed. If you mean the best BJJ'er then you can argue, if you mean best judoka you can argue. If you mean wrestler it gets harder because there are so many styles of wrestling.
In the case of Tripp vs Rickson that day, if it was no time limit to the submission, for all we know they could still be going at it - without rules and limits, even if none got smart and went for a weapon, its possible it never would have gone to the ground at all. So much of what you think of grappling has all sorts of hidden assumptions - they have to make contact, they can't use weapons, they can't use footwork (a la Starnes) to keep distance. We don't know what would have happened under some hypothetical set of rules, because the match occurred under agreed upon rules and Tripp won that day.
Saying it didn't mean anything is as empty as anyone Rickson beat saying it didn't mean anything because if there were different rules (say allowing knives) it could have turned out differently - excuses like that are for losers, and Rickson, padded record or not (and even Helio thought it was padded) was definitely not a loser.
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You can make an argument that he avoided Oleg Tarkarov.
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There's belts in sambo?
According to Gokor's page on wikipedia, yes. But personally I don't know how the Sambo ranking system works, so can't confirm it.
i've been to gokor's gym. he offers 1k to anyone in he gym that can take him down. he is still active in participating when coaching. no one has ever earned the 1k. this was confirmed by gokor himself and everyone in the gym. i don't know how much rickson weighs but wiki lists him at 185. i would say gokor is quite a bit bigger. i don't think there would be any way gracie could take gokor down, but who knows what happens on the ground. probably what an earlier poster commented that gokor would be in graces guard and they were counter until one of them just retired, gokors leg locks are unbelievable, and again would love to hear from someone to trained with both. in a mma match i would put my money on gokor just due to a better striking background (graices are brutal) and i just can't see any way gracie taking gokor down.
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I've taken seminars with both.
Both are great guys.
Taktarov would've killed Hoyce, six times over.
He's much heavier, stronger and a better overall grappler and striker.
