Why didn't Gene Lebell ever roll with the Gracies?

Kforcer said:
It was the reverse; the Gracies challenged Gene, who was vastly older than him and he responded by challenging Helio, I think in a somewhat tongue and cheek manner.
Click to expand...

Yup, you're right! That's it. They started it by pulling their "rig it so it'll favor us" shenanigans essentially.
 
Kforcer said:
It was the reverse; the Gracies challenged Gene, who was vastly older than him and he responded by challenging Helio, I think in a somewhat tongue and cheek manner.
Click to expand...

Why didn't he take up the challenge? Did he know his judo was too outdated on the ground?
 
shunyata said:
Pure hearsay, but I thought I half remembered a story about Rorion trying to book a proto MMA fight against Benny Urquidez back in the day.

When the Gracies found out Benny had been training grappling with Gene and Gokor they immediately stopped pursuing the fight.

They wanted to tap a famous kickboxer on film, but not if he'd been crosstraining grappling.
Click to expand...

I dont remember where I read it but a couple of years ago there was an article writing about trash talking in the fight business before the internet. One of the storylines where news clips from black belt magazine where the Gracies and Urquidez were arguing with eachother. If Im not mistaken the article said Urquidez really believed the fight was happening so he started training intensivly with the Gene and his crew which led to the Gracies pulling out.
 
Rallarsvingare said:
I dont remember where I read it but a couple of years ago there was an article writing about trash talking in the fight business before the internet. One of the storylines where news clips from black belt magazine where the Gracies and Urquidez were arguing with eachother. If Im not mistaken the article said Urquidez really believed the fight was happening so he started training intensivly with the Gene and his crew which led to the Gracies pulling out.
Click to expand...

sounds about right

think I heard it in gym, so that'd be the Hayastan account

they were in talks and told to send a fight contract but the Gracies balked and never sent it after finding out Benny wasn't a novice in grappling

jiu jitsu guys don't want to fight a combination puncher who can stuff a double leg
 
Last edited:
Intermission said:
Why didn't he take up the challenge? Did he know his judo was too outdated on the ground?
Click to expand...
Because he was an old man and it was absurd to have these young guys challenging him like that. He illustrated the absurdity of their challenge to him by challenging Helio, I think. As far as being "out of date", people are continuing to pull out moves and techniques LeBell taught as "ground-breaking."
 
shunyata said:
jiu jitsu guys don't want to fight a combination puncher who can stuff a double leg
Click to expand...
Royce Gracie did fight a karateka who had wrestling background and Royce didn't know what to do for a very long time.

It wasn't even a good striker. But he could stuff takedowms


 
Kforcer said:
Because he was an old man and it was absurd to have these young guys challenging him like that. He illustrated the absurdity of their challenge to him by challenging Helio, I think. As far as being "out of date", people are continuing to pull out moves and techniques LeBell taught as "ground-breaking."
Click to expand...

Not 20 minutes ago I saw some guy in a short showing a "kimura to bicep slicer" like it was the newest thing since sliced bread. Literally a double wrist lock to arm scissor, and Josh barnett has been showing it forever. And he learned it from guys who have probably been doing it since before movies had talking.

Like they have to be doing it on purpose at this point, right?
 
Big Nasty Edison said:
Not 20 minutes ago I saw some guy in a short showing a "kimura to bicep slicer" like it was the newest thing since sliced bread. Literally a double wrist lock to arm scissor, and Josh barnett has been showing it forever. And he learned it from guys who have probably been doing it since before movies had talking.

Like they have to be doing it on purpose at this point, right?
Click to expand...
Yeah, you have to wonder. The DWL to biceps-slicer is like, a fundamental catch-wrestling move; throw a dart at any Lou Thesz footage and chances are you'll land on an instance of him using that precise chain. But of course, it didn't originate with him either; you can find it in catch-wrestling instructionals, professional wrestling matches, just all over the place.

I guess they are just capitalizing on the fact that so few people make any sort of study of grappling history so its super-easy to take an older but less common technique and present it as your personal invention. Give it a few decades and people will probably be doing that with the Imanari.
 
Intermission said:
Why didn't he take up the challenge? Did he know his judo was too outdated on the ground?
Click to expand...
That wasn't it at all. And Gene, as someone who trained under Karl Gotch, Lou Thesz, Ed "The Strangler" Lewis and Vic Christy was bringing a lot more than judo to the table. It was that he was an old man getting called out by young men and he pointed out the absurdity of their challenge to him by making the challenge to Helio.

As it is, proteges of Gene LeBell have done great in MMA and grappling. Karo Parisyan, Manny Gamburyan, John Lewis, Ronda Rousey, Neil Melanson...if anything, far from being outdated, LeBell was, as compared with the Gracies, ahead of his time, what with his mastering of leglocks which they had still not embraced. And the bread and butter hold of catch-wrestling and one of LeBell's favorites, the DWL, was the same technique Sakuraba used to make things so tough on the Gracies in the early 2000's.
 
Kforcer said:
That wasn't it at all. And Gene, as someone who trained under Karl Gotch, Lou Thesz, Ed "The Strangler" Lewis and Vic Christy was bringing a lot more than judo to the table. It was that he was an old man getting called out by young men and he pointed out the absurdity of their challenge to him by making the challenge to Helio.

As it is, proteges of Gene LeBell have done great in MMA and grappling. Karo Parisyan, Manny Gamburyan, John Lewis, Ronda Rousey, Neil Melanson...if anything, far from being outdated, LeBell was, as compared with the Gracies, ahead of his time, what with his mastering of leglocks which they had still not embraced. And the bread and butter hold of catch-wrestling and one of LeBell's favorites, the DWL, was the same technique Sakuraba used to make things so tough on the Gracies in the early 2000's.
Click to expand...
So students of his that said Gene was the toughest guy in grappling even in his 60s were delusional? Bob Wall said nobody could submitt gene.

Catch wrestling has also lagged behind the groundwork development of BJJ. We have challenge matches to prove that
 
Kforcer said:
That wasn't it at all. And Gene, as someone who trained under Karl Gotch, Lou Thesz, Ed "The Strangler" Lewis and Vic Christy was bringing a lot more than judo to the table. It was that he was an old man getting called out by young men and he pointed out the absurdity of their challenge to him by making the challenge to Helio.

As it is, proteges of Gene LeBell have done great in MMA and grappling. Karo Parisyan, Manny Gamburyan, John Lewis, Ronda Rousey, Neil Melanson...if anything, far from being outdated, LeBell was, as compared with the Gracies, ahead of his time, what with his mastering of leglocks which they had still not embraced. And the bread and butter hold of catch-wrestling and one of LeBell's favorites, the DWL, was the same technique Sakuraba used to make things so tough on the Gracies in the early 2000's.
Click to expand...

Furthermore, when Cummings and Danaher sat down and devoured content before compiling it all into what would become the modern bjj leglock meta, they were basing everything on the existing data which was older media put out by Gene, Gokor, Vlad Koulikov, etc.

Everything they thought works got absorbed. And here we are now with purple belts on tiktok pushing old catch, judo, and sambo moves as new not knowing their history.

Personally I'm all for the end results, which is more complete free style submission grappling training and competition. But it does lead to silly purple belts on tiktok too.
 
shunyata said:
Furthermore, when Cummings and Danaher sat down and devoured content before compiling it all into what would become the modern bjj leglock meta, they were basing everything on the existing data which was older media put out by Gene, Gokor, Vlad Koulikov, etc.

Everything they thought works got absorbed. And here we are now with purple belts on tiktok pushing old catch, judo, and sambo moves as new not knowing their history.

Personally I'm all for the end results, which is more complete free style submission grappling training and competition. But it does lead to silly purple belts on tiktok too.
Click to expand...
Was leg locks Genes speciality?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,251,840
Messages
56,483,253
Members
175,244
Latest member
Someguy79

Share this page

Back
Top