Happy 47th Birthday Royce Gracie!!

Source pic:  www.trainwithdoc.com

Today, Dec 12, 2013 marks the 47th Birthday Royce Gracie!!

Back in 1966, UFC Hall of Famer Royce Gracie was born. Until 20 years ago, almost the whole world never heard of "Royce Gracie". Then one historic night back on Nov 12, 1993, we got to meet, then 27 years old, Royce Gracie. What an impact! Living Legend in MMA!! Needless to say, the world knows Royce.

In his honor, posting some vids of Royce in action!

Happy 47th Birthday Royce Gracie!!

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UFC 1 11/12/93 - Royce Gracie vs Ken Shamrock (Gracie Breakdown)

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Pride Grand Prix 2000 Finals - Royce Gracie vs Kazushi Sakuraba

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K-1 PREMIUM 2004 Dynamite!! - Royce Gracie vs Akebono

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K-1 Premium Dynamite! 2005 - Royce Gracie vs Hideo Tokoro

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Royce Gracie vs Kung Fu fighter

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Royce Gracie Vs Bobby Ologun (unsure why this fight is not included in his record)

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For more information, please check out:

• Official site
• Twitter
• Facebook
• UFC.com's Profile
• Wiki

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My other Royce Gracie-related posts:

• UFC 1 Animated GIF Set 1 (Royce Gracie vs Art Jimmerson)
• UFC 1 GIF Set 2 (Royce Gracie vs Ken Shamrock)
• MMA: Sports Illustrated's Top 10 UFC fights
• MMA: The Ultimate 100 UFC Fights - part 2
• UFC.com's Top 20 greatest submissions in UFC history!
• Helio Gracie's Diary Entries (humor)
• UFC legend Royce Gracie to showcase Brazilian jiu-jitsu by Jeff Wagenheim

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UFC 1 GIF Set 2 (Royce Gracie vs Ken Shamrock)

Today's entry is a followup to this previous post:

• UFC 1 Animated GIF Set 1 - Royce Gracie X Art Jimmerson

I present to you 7 GIFs from the fight - Royce Gracie vs Ken Shamrock.

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Entrance!

Opening of the fight!

Opening of the fight - isolated for the takedown.

Opening of the fight - isolated for the heel hacking! Count 'em - 10!

3 slomo's of the tapout

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More GIF sets coming! Enjoy!

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UFC 1 Animated GIF Set 1 (Royce Gracie vs Art Jimmerson)

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the premiere of the UFC (Ultimage Fighting Championship). Put another way:

• Happy 20th Birthday UFC! (includes full video)

Please check out the above link for the full video of the first ever UFC!


I've made some animated GIF's in celebration! 


Come join me in reliving history! Enjoy these Royce Gracie vs Art Jimmerson highlights GIFs!

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The Entrance!

Royce Kicking!
The Front Kick in Portuguese is called "Pisão"

Takedown and Mount with Grapevine

Slomo's of the Takedown and the Tapping

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After I watched this 20 years ago, I couldn't sleep! I was so hyped up! There was not something like this before on this big of a "stage"! All of the Martial Arts claimed their art was too deadly or that they would win if they fought other styles. But no one tested their style against other styles. And then along came Rorion Gracie and the birth of the UFC!


Respect to Royce Gracie and Art Jimmerson!

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NOTE:  Deepest thanks to both my friends Badger and Armando Basulto for teaching me the name of the Front Kick.

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The next set of animated GIF's from UFC 1 is here:

• UFC 1 GIF Set 2 (Royce Gracie X Ken Shamrock)

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20 years ago today! UFC 1 !!! (Nov 12, 1993) (Full Video)

Happy 20th Birthday UFC!!

Full video below (not like you haven't seen this oh, once, or twice, or 10 times!)

And the rest is history as they say... MMA, the world's fastest growing sport!

'Nuf said!

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UFC legend Royce Gracie to showcase Brazilian jiu-jitsu by Jeff Wagenheim

Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

It's been 20 years since a family from Brazil showed the world how to fight. The Gracies organized a combat tournament in the old McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, invited seven fighters from various disciplines -- a boxer, a sumo wrestler, a kung fu fighter, and so on -- to compete against the smallest guy they could find in their family photo, and put the whole spectacle on pay-per-view television under the title the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

The fighting style that Royce Gracie used to defeat three bigger, stronger men and win that one-night single-elimination tourney -- plus two more UFC events over the next year -- was Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a variant of a Japanese martial art that had found its way to South America a century ago. Royce and the other offspring of Helio Gracie, collectively the most prominent practitioners of the art, called it Gracie jiu-jitsu. And today, even as the UFC has moved on to feature fighters well versed in all combat styles, from ground fighting to standing fisticuffs, the Gracies continue to preach the gospel of jiu-jitsu.

On Sunday, the first family of Brazilian jiu-jitsu will present its second annual Metamoris Pro Jiu-Jitsu Invitational at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles (7 p.m. ET, PPV stream at metamoris.com, $19.95). The six-bout card features an arm twister's row of black belts, from Andre Galvao to Braulio Estima to Kron Gracie, and also some names recognizable to mixed martial arts fans, such as UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub and Shinya Aoki, a former champion in the Dream, Shooto and One FC promotions.

Royce Gracie, whose nephew Relek founded Metamoris, sat down with SI.com to talk about the event as well as what he's up to.

SI.com: What seems to set Metamoris apart from other prominent jiu-jitsu tournaments is that there are no points awarded to score the matches in this event. Why is that?

Royce Gracie: Martial arts were created as a means of defending yourself. They were not created to score points. So what my nephew did was he took the points out and also made the fights 20 minutes long. It's a mix of endurance and skill. You have to know what you're doing and you have to pace yourself, but to win you have to attack. The best man will win.

SI.com: What if no one gets a submission in the allotted 20 minutes?

Gracie: This year there are three referees who will decide who won. Not by points, but by who was the best fighter. And it's possible, also, that the fight will be a draw.

SI.com: Another of your nephews, Kron, is in the main event, against Aoki. What is it like for you to watch him compete, as opposed to being in there yourself? Do you get more nervous?

Gracie: [Laughs.] Yes, I get more nervous when I'm in the corner than when I'm in the ring. My nephew knows what he is doing, but when I'm watching I can't react for him. I can help him train, but on the day he's the one who's going to walk in and take care of business.

SI.com: Speaking of which, do you have any unfinished business in fighting? A couple of years ago, when the UFC returned to Brazil after a long absence, there was talk that you might make a comeback. You even said you had one fight left in you, that you wanted a rematch with Matt Hughes. But now Hughes is retired. Are you officially finished, too? At age 46, do you feel comfortable with that?

Gracie: Man, been there, done that. I fought in the first UFC, three fights in one night. Second UFC, four fights in one night. I fought the second-longest fight in history. My father had the longest fight in history, three hours and 40 minutes [against Valdemar Santana in 1955]. I fought for an hour and 45 [vs. Kazushi Sakuraba in 2000]. I fought against Akebono, 6-foot-8, 490 pounds. Yeah, I paid my dues. I did my job. I sleep fine at night.

SI.com: With no fighting in your life anymore, how do you satisfy your competitive nature?

Gracie: I just got back from an MMA tournament in Dubai. And the night I got there, I heard that earlier in the day the promoters took some fighters up in a plane for skydiving. But when they got up in the air, most of the guys were, like, "Uh-uh." No one wanted to jump. I thought, man, I would have been the first one off the plane. Get out of my way. I'm a Gracie. We take every day as a competition, a challenge.

SI.com: I suppose in your family you get that way from an early age. Are your own young kids always pulling out a checkerboard and saying, "Let's go, Dad"?

Gracie: They're always challenging me. And that's good. They keep me on my toes, man. Keeps the sword sharp and clean.

SI.com: You don't seem like a guy who'd let someone beat him. Do you go hard at the kids?

Gracie: [Laughs.] Well, with the kids, we want to build them up to win. So every time they challenge me, I push them and push them, and at the last minute, they take it.

SI.com: What do you think of the MMA that your kids are growing up watching? The fighters of today are well versed in a variety of disciplines, from standup to the ground. The thinking is you can't survive as simply a jiu-jitsu guy anymore. Do you agree?

Gracie: Fighters have to adapt. Look at Lyoto Machida, for instance, or Chuck Liddell. They come from a karate background, but they had to learn wrestling to avoid being taken down. If they did wind up on the mat, they had to know jiu-jitsu, just to know what's coming at them. I learned my boxing and kickboxing not because I was planning to knock somebody out. I just needed to know how standup fighters moved, how they would set me up with a kick or punch. So, yes, fighters have evolved, but they all have one main style that they call home, where they feel most comfortable.

SI.com: Nowadays, though, a lot of gyms don't teach one particular discipline, like jiu-jitsu or karate. They teach mixed martial arts. Do you think something gets lost when young people learn this way rather than focusing on a single tradition that's been passed down through the generations?

Gracie: You don't say, "Hey, I'm going to go get some Starbucks." No, you're going to get some coffee at Starbucks. "Hey, I'm going to make a Xerox." No, you're making a copy on a Xerox machine. So kids want to learn mixed martial arts? Mixed martial arts is what you do inside the cage, inside the ring. What they should be looking to learn is a martial art.

You learn a style. You learn wrestling. You learn Gracie jiu-jitsu. You learn boxing. You learn judo. You don't learn mixed martial arts. You learn a style or maybe more than one style, and then you mix them. But you don't teach a mix. People come up to me all the time and ask, "Do you teach UFC style?" [Laughs.] UFC is a brand. It's not a martial art.

Copied from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/

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