Royce: "Jiu-jitsu is enough ... I believe in pure jiu-jitsu."

Oh, leave him alone and let him live in his world. Lots of people from past generations cling to what was once true.

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People are quick to make fun of Royce, but reading his quotes he's just saying that if one is strong in something, he must bring the fight there.. nothing more.

And looking at K-1 Maia or other similar examples, I think he is perfectly right.
 
People always point out Royce vs Hughes, but pretty much any takedown a wrestler would use in MMA is taught in BJJ (or a variant thereof) depending on who you're training under. The difference is in the way those guys train from day-to-day. BJJ players often have shoddy double legs compared to wrestlers for example, but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with BJJ or the double leg takedown; it's just that wrestlers train those techniques from day-to-day in so much more of an intense way than the guys at a BJJ do. That's it in a nutshell. If Royce had the strength and conditioning programme that Hughes had and he trained his takedowns with the intensity that Hughes did, that could very well have been a very different outcome.

I think BJJ can be the only thing you need. But if you train in the casual "BJJ lifestyle" kind of way you're not going to get there. On the other hand if you were in a shark tank of BJJ guys training the same way freestyle wrestlers train when gearing up for the Olympics, then I have no doubt that anyone could come in and destroy the UFC using pure BJJ.
 
Is this the same Royce Gracie who basically tried to become a Muay Thai fighter? Hmmm . . . intredasting.
 
Lots of respect for royce. But I was always taught you can never know enough. And not to be ignorant when acquiring new knowledge.

That is like saying when going to school only knowing one subject is enough.
 
MMA has evolved.. No one can come with being great at only one thing and survive, especially in the top of the food chain MMA.. Roger Gracie who is arguably one of the best BJJ player of his generation won fights earlier with just his BJJ.. but eventually that wasn't enough.. and even Roger realizes that's not enough.

MMA has changed.. and people who don't change with it will fall through the cracks.
 
to me modern mma is an evolved version of bjj. a lot of the older gracies are just stuck in the past. early bjj was effective because they did what worked in a fight, and thats exactly what modern mma is. it uses whatever moves are possible and can be effectively practiced against a resisting opponent.
 
K-1 Maia is a myth invented by delusional BJJ-fan-boys. He's consistently pursued the ground every fight he lost that went longer than 21 seconds.

It isn't delusional neither BJJ-fan-boyesque to say that in some fights like the Weidman or the Munoz ones, he seemed comfortable in exchanging on his feet even if he was losing.

If you say he was "consistenly" pursuing the ground the same way he did with Fitch maybe you need to watch all those fights again.. nothing to be ashamed about :wink: .
 
Royce didn't say "only train jiu-jitsu". He said you should train the rest only to make your jiu-jitsu better/more effective.
 
He shot seven take-downs in both fights. The difference from the Fitch fight was that he wasn't succeeding, not that he wasn't trying. Perhaps you need to watch them again?

Weird that his rededication to pure water Helio Jiu Jitsu from his previous rock-em-sock-em ways just happened to coincide with his drop to a weight class where he wasn't out-sized by all his opponents...
 
Didn't he try to kickbox Hughes and juice in the Saku rematch? Obviously JJ is not enough for him.
 
He shot seven take-downs in both fights. The difference from the Fitch fight was that he wasn't succeeding, not that he wasn't trying. Perhaps you need to watch them again?

Fightmetric is saying that he shot seventeen takedowns against Fitch, and only seven against Munoz and Weidman.

Where are you taking your statistics?
 
Fightmetric is saying that he shot seventeen takedowns against Fitch, and only seven against Munoz and Weidman.

Where are you taking your statistics?
Fightmetric calls every mat return a new take-down, the numbers aren't comparable in that sense. Tripping a guy back down from a rear body-lock != being repeatedly stuffed when trying to shoot from the outside.

P.S. To clarify, "both fights" above refers to both the Weidman and Munoz fights.
 
Fightmetric calls every mat return a new take-down, the numbers aren't comparable in that sense. Tripping a guy back down from a rear body-lock != being repeatedly stuffed when trying to shoot from the outside.

P.S. To clarify, "both fights" above refers to both the Weidman and Munoz fights.

Well, you made a comparison I didn't really suggested nor asked about. It's pretty obvious the Munoz and the Weidman ones were pretty similar bouts. In fact I was talking about the difference in attitude between those two AND the one with Fitch, that looked pretty big to me, statistics (..) or not.
 
Didn't he try to kickbox Hughes and juice in the Saku rematch? Obviously JJ is not enough for him.

He's just stoking up the old Gracie myth again. Now that submissions have lost their power to awe since there is more of a level playing field in terms of knowledge, even the Gracies have to adapt their game to be at the cutting edge.
 
So Roger Gracie, the greatest BJJ competitor of all time, would have been successful in the UFC if he only focused on his BJJ more, and gave up trying to learn striking and wrestling?
 
I don't know, part of me wants blast him because he trained extensively in Muay Thai for the Hughes fight. Now maybe this was in preparation for a lack of ability to take the Fight to the ground vs Hughes.


But the other part of me commends him for speaking up for his art and reminding people that BJJ works so work BJJ!!!!! Royce and his generation didn't fuck around with the stand up. It was......

Bell rings
Walk out
Lung kick to clinch
Takedown
BJJ

None of this pushing the jab out for 2 minutes straight while circling at striking distance nonsense! They got after the grappling!!!!!!!


Of course they fought in a different era of style vs style. But some of these newer BJJ guys coming over to MMA could use a reminder for sure.

I mean most of the time you won't see a wrestler at the mid level of MMA mess around to long in the standup, cause they are wrestlers at heart and that means shout, slam, smash!
 
So Roger Gracie, the greatest BJJ competitor of all time, would have been successful in the UFC if he only focused on his BJJ more, and gave up trying to learn striking and wrestling?

Nope, but he would have been more successful in MMA if he had a more BJJ mindset, I think that's the point. You practice something like striking and then you look to implement it into your game instead of using it as a set up to get to your BJJ.

Roger was way to reliant on his weak, slow, telegraphed standup instead of fighting to get to the clinch.
 
I don't know, part of me wants blast him because he trained extensively in Muay Thai for the Hughes fight. Now maybe this was in preparation for a lack of ability to take the Fight to the ground vs Hughes.


But the other part of me commends him for speaking up for his art and reminding people that BJJ works so work BJJ!!!!! Royce and his generation didn't fuck around with the stand up. It was......

Bell rings
Walk out
Lung kick to clinch
Takedown
BJJ

None of this pushing the jab out for 2 minutes straight while circling at striking distance nonsense! They got after the grappling!!!!!!!


Of course they fought in a different era of style vs style. But some of these newer BJJ guys coming over to MMA could use a reminder for sure.

I mean most of the time you won't see a wrestler at the mid level of MMA mess around to long in the standup, cause they are wrestlers at heart and that means shout, slam, smash!

I think Shamrock-Gracie 2 is instructive here. If you can't take someone down you have to pull guard to get the fight to the ground. And if that person is wise to subs (which all modern MMA fighters are), then they can basically safely beat on you for an unlimited amount of time. Outwaiting people only works if

  1. They don't know where the danger is in your style, and
  2. You're in better shape than they are and can wait out their attacks until they're tired/careless enough for you to catch them with a sub

Neither of these would be true anymore. And the idea that a lunge kick-clinch-trip TD is going to work against most modern MMA fighters is ludicrous. Repping your art is fine, I'm a big advocate for BJJ myself, but you have to recognize the areas where other arts are stronger. When Royce was an active fighter he trained other disciplines because he knew he'd get killed if he tried to clinch-trip-sub a guy like Hughes. Only now that he's retired to the traditional Helio side of the family post-career role of purity cheerleader does he have the luxury of saying that all you need is Helio GJJ. He's demonstrably wrong, as evidenced by Roger's difficulties.
 
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