Thanks so much for putting together such a great interview! Great piece of history you have uncovered. Real credit to your work and what it does for the community. 👊
I watched your interview Jesse a long time ago and it was a great one and i came to much of the same conclusions MMA On Point did you are a good interviewer and should do many more with masters around the world
Though Superfoot Wallace was wrong on there being "no wrestlers". Ken Shamrock was a catch wrestler, so that theory on the Gracies saying "No wrestlers" doesn't hold up. If that was the case Ken Shamrock shouldn't of been on the card.
Bill is a fool. I was a good wrestler and I had no chance against bjj when I started. He’s just making excuses for striking. After a year or 2 of bjj wrestlers are the best fighters but there’s no way the Gracie’s didn’t know they could beat any wrestler . And at the time very few thought that wrestlers could hang with kung fu or karate guys. This is all revisionist history. And as stated, shamrock may have only wrestler in highschool but he had submission training in Japan. If the Gracie’s wanted to duck someone it would’ve been Ken
My boyfriend says y'all are being pedantic, and should know that's not what he means. If an NCAA caliber wrestler like Mark Coleman had competed, he would have made Royce Gracie the mother of his children.
They rigged it as much as they could without actually fixing the fights, it was still possible for one of the fighters to KO or stop Royce, but the chances were slim.
UFC 1 being a Gracie infomercial has been common knowledge for years, the only threat to Royce was Shamrock and the rest had no chance. Some of Wallace's claims are ridiculous though, the sumo would have got killed if it hadn't been stopped
Honestly yea, 1 kick sent his teeth flying, imagine a beating. And the random claim about them purposefully "gassing" a fighter that figured out he had asthma that night was absolutely rediculous.
I know the only two people the Gracie's thought could give Royce trouble were Shamrock and Smith...who just happened to fight each other in the opening round, with the hopes that the winner would limp into the next round to get beaten Royce. No fights were staged/thrown/worked, but the Gracie's definitely stacked the deck in their favour.
@@markzuckergecko621 "Teila was just getting warmed up." For the record, Gerard Gordeau broke his foot with that kick to the face. So yeah, Teila Tuli could have easily recovered, and snagged the W.
You left out the design of the ring. It was an Octagon . Eight corners meant you couldn't step in any direction and not get cornered. And the matts were thick and soft. Which made it difficult for stand up fighters to get solid footing for more powerful strikes. It also made it easier to control someone during ground grappling. That ring was definitely designed to give Royce every advantage.
there are other MMA organizations that use a boxing ring where you can't corner people and BJJ / submission grappling still works really well. that is a good point you bring up though because there are grapple-heavy fighters like Khabib who've mastered using the cage to support their grappling.
@@TheRealAbraxas There are now. I'm referring to the very first UFC's. Which were rigged to give Royce every advantage. As the ring was changed, the stand up fighters started scoring a lot more Knock Outs.
@@onlyinthailand88 Once they learned how to leverage punches when one person was on their back: It was all over. Maurice Smith and Bas Ruten were good examples of that.
Very poor assessment of the environment created for "very few rules - no weight classes" event which singlehandedly put MMA on the map. People came up with all types of excuses after the Gracies experienced massive success and subsequently hit a low point with the Sakuraba losses. It didn't matter the type of ring or mat they fought on. The event was set up to find out which art dominated the most against any other fighting art. A fighting art should be adaptable to any type of surface or environment.
Ken Shamrock has claimed that the rules were tilted toward Royce by doing things such as banning Shamrock from wearing wrestling shoes while Royce was able to wear a gi and choke out the competition with it Various people involved have pretty much said the whole thing was to put over Gracie Jiu Jitsu as a brand, which worked with Royce winning three UFCs and having to retire due to injury in one. Once it was clear the opposition was learning how to counter it, he pulled back from competition and let the likes of Shanmrock, Oleg Taktarov, Dan Severn, etc, become the face of the organization.
@mtgsalt1151 no, chose between kicking or wearing shoes. He chose not to wear shoes so it couldn't be that big a deal because he wasn't even a good kicker.
I think fighters not having a clue how to deal with BJJ was a huge factor… once fighters started training how to defend it, you no longer could get away with just doing that
@@andu1854 it's a fight the point is they were trying to show that their way of fighting was good. It's not like professional fighters weren't familiar with fighting and what could possibly happen in a fight. Your comment makes it sound like they have some magic trick or like it's a video game if you don't have the counter you can't beat it no they just knew that their techniques were effective and they wanted to show that. No offense 😁
That literally has nothing to do with the events that occurred at UFC 1 - like your point doesn’t disprove it, there is no logic behind your point, they are not zero sum events that are linked
Yo guys! Just want to quickly shout out to everyone involved in this piece. It literally took months to get this video together and was worked on by a team of video editors between myself, Luke Taylor, and Max Randall. Tommy of course absolutely labored himself to exhaustion on this one and deserves so much recognition. Really appreciate all the kind comments. There will definitely be more coming. It means a ton after all that work to hear positive things. Criticisms are welcome too, of course. -Jason
Great video! Very entertaining and educational. Plus, I love seeing the Karate Nerd getting some shine by MMA on Point. Even though Superfoot had some exaggerated claims, he wasn't wrong about the bouts being scheduled in a way that favored Royce. With that said, I love the UFC and MMA as a whole, so I really can't complain about how everything turned out. It's the greatest sport in the world, and who knows if I'd have discovered it if UFC 1 hadn't have gone the way it did.
Might not have been 100% rigged.. .but it sure was 99% rigged in the Gracies favour, no doubt about it. The “no wrestlers” clause set the competition level in his favour immediately plus the “ref stoppage” of the big guy gave him a huge advantage, then theres his fight gear, so yeah it WAS rigged. They had several plays in effect, but only needed 3 or 4 to work and pull this shiest off
Ken Shamrock was a submission wrestler and eventually the King of Pancrase. He had 3 MMA fights before UFC 1. He was in Shooto, had a 3-0 record in Pancrase (submission wrestling) and was a professional wrestler/street fighter. In the early UFCs the refs were not allowed to stop the fights. So you're wrong here as well. You have no idea what you're talking about and stop passing around disinformation. Calling other people chumps... when you are demonstrably wrong here, just shows who the chump is.
@@jeepnutscottyhe literally proved you weren't. Shamrock was a wrestler. What wrestlers were interested? You clearly aren't old enough to remeber the climate of the day. Nobody thought wrestlers were top fighters. Everyone thought magic karate/Kung fu techniques were too dangerous to use because they'd kill. The whole point was to dispell that traditional martial arts weren't effective in self defense. Not to determine the best athlete.
@@jeepnutscotty What facts? All I saw from you was an opinion that is flawed. Grow up dude. Have some respect for the Gracie family, and quit talking like a child keyboard warrior. Just because someone says something positive about Royce Gracie doesn't make them a fanboy, or a chump. Get a life. You probably weren't even born until 2001, lol.
@@colealia7988 I heard somewhere that they intentionally rejected any wrestlers with college experience or above for fear that they would neutralize the ground game. Ken was only a highschool wrestler so they let him slide.
This series is ballsy as hell and I love it. Can Tommy do a comprehensive investigation into how the Yakuza influenced Pride as well? I'd love to hear about the shadiness of this.
Everyone knows it was an infomercial for Gracie Jiu Jitsu. They’ve openly admitted that. There were many Brazilian vale tudo fighters and other jiu jitsu fighters, Luta Livre fighters, shoot fighters who could have participated, including some of Royce’s family members
Brazil has wrestlers and they did crush a couple of the the gracies some got choked or Koed by slam look up the rivalry between luta livre wrestling and Gracie bjj they got revenge though they would show up with bats after and beat ppl up they did permanent damage to some the guys that beat them even guys that cross trained both got on there bad side and they get kicked out the gym there’s a lot going on back then before the first ufc .
I didn't hear it in the video, but Dan Severn said that wrestling was not even listed as one of the martial arts when he filled out the application to fight. He had to write it in under "other."
@Brian Alfredo Tribolet shoot fighter. So yes he understood double legs, the problem was the first fight against him Royce choked him out with his belt because he realized Shamrock was an actual threat. The only person with some wrestling knowledge got choked out with a belt, when he wasn’t even allowed to where wrestling shoes
“No Wrestlers”. If that doesn’t expose an Achilles heel I don’t know what else does! Definitely begs the question! Especially when you consider most of the top UFC Fighters today are in fact Wrestlers! Great video and impressive research! Keep it up!
It always bothered me that Judo kept changing its rules to reduce groundwork with an insane focus on large spectacular acrobatic throws so watching Royce Gracie use Judo groundwork to win the first few UFC's was incredible even though it wasn't marketed as Judo that's exactly what it was... the Gracie challenge had been around for a long time and was well known to carefully select its opponents however they definitely took on some dangerous athletes. While the early ufcs were not "rigged" the opponent selection was careful to favor Gracie Jiu-Jitsu however they still had to win their fights under the ever evolving rules. Unfortunately Judo never got the recognition it deserved because it had long since sold out to the "grappling Sports" gamesmanship ethos it was still rewarding to see it work because the Gracie's had the good sense to view Judo as a life and death martial art not a complex international sport bedeviled by politics
I trained at a school run by 2 of Relson Gracie's black belts. The older of the 2 was a purple belt at the time and they had a sign up table and lessons going on in hotel rooms at ufc 1. The goal was to immediately capitalize on people wanting to learn how to do what Royce did.
What state? Half the schools here in Hawaii are Relson affiliated, he even lives here now. Has big beef with some other Bjj schools for not being old-school enough I guess
When you look back and take your emotion out if it you find that UFC 1 was "rigged" in a sense. The fights were real imo BUT the way it was set up it was set up in a way that favoured Gracie. ❤
The problem ive always had was the gracies ALWAYS have rules or stipulations or conditions that favor them to dominate so they can claim how great the style is but then the moment you have more level rules or someone who actually knows some grappling and wrestling they get exposed pretty quickly And thats always a pet peeve of mine in that youre selling an art as the most effective for self defense or whatever but its only true under your specific specs
Yes, but any rules are going to lead to a meta. The octagon is roughly the size of a wrestling circle, and strikers don't have the luxury of backing up more than a few steps, not to mention the limitations on strikes to the back of the head and elsewhere. Wrestling and grappling were always going to flourish under these rules.
@@metalface_villain Obviously yes, but the point is that wrestling isn't dominant by default. Without the limitation, shooting on someone would be life-threatening.
@@Spamcloud wrestling is dominant by default. take away the soft floor and see what happens. a hard floor would also make bottom guard totally useless. probably the first one to take someone down would win fights pretty fast if not instantly
UFC 1 was definitely a showcase for Gracie BJJ, not rigged per se but it's pretty clear they went out of their way to not have anyone that could stop a takedown or submission competing at the event.
Shamrock was a shootfighter which is based upon catch wrestling. Why couldn't Shamrock finish Royce? He knew most of the same submissions. Teila Tuli was a sumo wrestler, surely he knew how to stuff takedowns. Gerard Gordeau had wrestling and judo experience on top of his kickboxing. He was already an MMA fighter more or less. Surely he would know how to stuff takedowns?
If any of those old fighters that lost spoke out against the UFC they would be skewed online. Royce's matches were always favorable. When the Gracie's couldn't pick the matches he started to lose and even got caught using steroids.
@@stopthehate9102 ya I don't know much about promoters, but I did just watch the video, and I don't really feel like going over the contet with someone who didn't even bother to watch the video we are talking about. It could be wrong, I wasn't there, neither were you.
Matt Hughes showed why the Gracie’s wouldn’t want to fight wrestlers in UFC 1, however, Joyce beat Dan Severn in UFC 4 which goes against the theory claiming they won’t fight wrestlers.
The way I used to understand the event was ground game was basically non existent in traditional martial arts until the Gracie's exposed its superiority. But something I only recently realized is that this isn't completely true. I was rewatching Enter the Dragon and Bruce Lee beats a sparring partner in the opening with an arm bar. And that struck me as interesting bc this was at the height of the ancient martial art myth that these styles can beat anyone with very specific rule sets. But his first fight in the movie is winning with a grapple, not with kicks, punches, or mysticism. And it wasn't considered strange or special. Clearly the idea of only standing game wasn't that rigid if it was done so casually in the film (I know Lee eventually paved the way for MMA in a sense and grappling styles existed, but I'm talking about the mainstream perspective). What I think the Gracie's intended was to basically show off their skills and BJJ and did position the event at best in their favor to do this. But I wouldn't say it was rigged as there were also hurdles for them as well. Fighting multiple opponents, no weight classes, barely any rules, and only ending by tap out or ko. Its legacy is not the Gracie's but more exposing how every fight ends up on the ground and that everyone has a plan until they have a dude half their size choking them. That ultimately every fight ends up on the ground if you don't know how to prevent that and regardless of how hard you can punch you will succumb to it if that's all you know. But there is no perfect style or anything that will guarantee a win against a competent opponent. But learned that cutting the fluff and bs is the only way to truly be the best fighter and the less flashy ground work is required. And now striking imo has become more the focus of mma than grappling, even elite wrestlers like Cejudo and DC had to have good standing game, once everyone learned how to block take downs. But we'll still often see the idea that ground game will always beat standing game if the striker has no grappling skills.
To say they hand-picked opponents for Royce for the first 4 UFCs, I feel 100% absolutely. For UFC 3, with Kimo coming in under the banner of Tae Kwon Do, I think they really thought it was going to be a cake walk. But then after it came out that Kimo had some wrestling knowledge. Let's look at UFC 4. I mean c'mon, Royce's first fight was against the 51 year old Ron Van Cleef karateka. And Royce's first fight in UFC2 against the smaller karateka Minoki Ichihara. It's hard to believe that was an accident. Would have been interesting to see Royce's first fight in UFC2 against Sambo practitioner Frank Hamaker.
Hamaker took forever just to finish a kung fu guy with zero ground skills...and then withdrew because of a sore forearm. Royce would have submitted Hamaker as easily as he did Remco, if not easier.
When Kimo entered the octagon the commentator talked about how his trainer told them he had been training Ju Jitsu for the past 6 months and also Rorion only owned shares in the UFC and Art Davie was the match maker.
"Royce's first fight was against the 51 year old Ron Van Cleef karateka." Ron Van Clief was already a 10th-degree black belt with 40 years of training. He was literally a grandmaster - when Royce choked him out.
"And Royce's first fight in UFC2 against the smaller karateka Minoki Ichihara." Minoki Ichihara weighed 180 pounds, about the same weight as Royce. Additionally, he was Japan's #1 ranked bareknuckle karate fighter, with 54 victories. There are no weight divisions in Kyokushin Karate tournaments. Minoki Ichihara was considered by many Japanese to be the best karate fighter in the world - when Royce choked him out.
Allowing Gracie to wear the gee was enough to make it extremely unfair. He used that to grip everyone in a hold, when they could have easily slipped out.
Thank you for this video, Tommy and everyone at MMA On Point involved. This was phenomenal from start to finish and never once did my interest wane. A fantastic example of what UA-cam videos should be: content that makes you want to keep watching because it is so good as opposed to content you don't want to stop watching out of fear that you'll miss what was advertised in the thumbnail which ends up being clickbait anyway. Great work
It was rigged in the same way fights are still rigged. Not straight up telling someone to take a dive, but setting up circumstances to favor one fighter. A good example of a failed rigging is usman vs edwards 2. The altitude, and the fact that the ref was letting usman cheat while calling out edwards on the same things made it pretty clear. Edwards didn't get the memo though
Your theory's biggest hole reveals itself when you think of how big that moment was for the UFC. Having a champ from the UK, the hype, the money made off the rematch. Why would the UFC want to avoid that? Usman is not a popular champion. Attention and hype is always built around dominant champions falling. Seeing big names lose makes money. The UFC understands that. Hype around a good fighter comes more from people wanting to see them lose than it does from seeing them win. Also, from your same logic, what does that say about Izzy vs Poatan? Izzy is much more marketable and liked by fans. Izzy called it an early stoppage, where was the ref helping him out there? Where was the UFC playing things out in Izzy's favor?
just goes to show wrestling is and always has been best martial art. No wonder why Islam ran through Charles, like hot knife through butter. these Brazilians always have been scared of wrastling🤣
@@almazingsk8er usman is fairly popular. Not necessarily liked but he is more known to casuals than most fighters, especially edwards at the time. Its pretty obvious that khamzat vs usman wouldve been gigantic, but khamzat vs edwards not as much. Not to mention usmans manager is ali who seems to be able to pull strings considering most of his fighters get preferential treatment. Edwards winning in the way he did works out for the ufc, since it was a comeback ko, but that definitely wasn't part of the "plan"
also a point about gears that wasn't mentionned is that savate is meant to be practiced with shoes, savate kicks are designed with this in mind, and it might be a reason why gordo got injured in his feet prior to his fight with gracie. again, i am not sure it would have changed the end result, but i have always been curious to know how mma would have look like if it was practiced with "casual cloth" (although one would have to define what a "casual cloth" is) as fighting gears
I want to personally thank you, it's great a channel as big as yours actually goes into depth about the truth of what happened. Not many are willing to actually call into question the shady practices of the Gracies. They've been mythologized over the years. To cover this without bias shows a great amount of integrity. Thanks again.
@@tarancehill651 Tank mocking his opponent when the guy seized up from a KO punch is perpetually burned in my mind. Thats when I realized Abbott was not a nice guy. Brutal fxckin fighter
I remember all of this so vaguely. I was about 18 when this went down. I remember people talking about UFC being rigged, but I never really cared much either way. This is very interesting to see a retrospective investigation. You are welcome for "making it to the end". That seems like it should be the norm and not something worth thanking, but I guess I'm out of touch or something.
He’s an old guy and this is exactly how human memory works- it isn’t like a digital tape recording of events that you play back exactly- every time we remember we re create the memory and over time the memory can not resemble what actually occurred But his overall theme is correct
Another story you can do is the Gracie history in Brazil. Because I heard they wasn't good people during that time in Brazil, and cause a lot of problems in the country.
Helio and 2 other Gracies permanently maimed Rufino dos Santos for beating one of them in a tournament. They jumped him, with a weapon and broke his arm. They should have been imprisoned for a long time but they got a presidential pardon.
@@dondraper4438 was that the perception back then? i thought it was well known that bjj was more reserved for the more wealthy while the people that couldn‘t afford the gear and to attend the gyms fought in luta livre
I always heard, as far as mma goes, Brazilian’s in general like to bend the rules. One example: Vitor Belfort being absolutely juiced to the gills when came into the UFC Theres many other examples as well
Rigged? No. Stacked in his favour? Yes. Great video even if it is common knowledge it was a promo for Gacie Jiu-Jitsu. I believe the book Total MMA by Jonathan Snowden discusses it.
I do believe the deck was stacked in Royce's favour but not that he was guaranteed to win. The real question is would we ever know about the event if Royce lost.
Came very close to that and if they hadn't played games with Ken I think he was definently good to win. Royce couldn't strike and Ken was a monster,for the time Ken was the most fully rounded fighter,one of the first true mixed martial artists....
I think they had a backup plan. If Royce had lost they would have sent in Rickson for UFC2. Rickson was much stronger, had more fighting experience, better at BJJ and decent at standing up.
Which if you watch the full video with Bill Wallace was his whole point. He never said it was rigged but it was stacked heavily in Royce's favor and it was definitely intended to be a marketing campaign for Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Which it succeeded at to this day.
Good work. I've watched other videos on this and my conclusion is that while it wasn't outright fixed fights, the scales were very heavily tipped in Gracie's favor. Still wild as heck, and the birth of MMA in the west, so there's that.
I always felt they picked fighters based on personality and style , I mean Bloodsport came out in 1988 and was followed by many similar movies so they knew that multi-style approach was a money maker .
For real, my other sport is baseball, and looking back at all the changes the sport has undergone in the last 150 years, it's been a lot slower and more gradual than the insanely fast evolution of MMA. Just in 30 years the sport has changed about as much as baseball did in the first 60-70 years.
@Mark Zuckergecko I think it has to do with the nature of fighting, the consequences are so dire for not evolving, instead of losing a game you risk getting put to sleep or having bones broken or worse
in the last 8 years especially. Remember when Rhonda was snatching arms? That was the last under developed division, then Holm KO’d her and the Div got SUPER competitive 🔥
Great work on this video! Would be interesting to see someone dig into the, surprisingly little known, 'Super Fighters/Tough Guys' tournaments that took place in Pennsylvania, well over a decade before UFC 1, that were forced out due to politics.
I remember hearing that they have lost matches to wrestlers before which is why they wernt allowed in the first event. I even heard they went and found one of these guys later and broke his legs for having the "audacity" to beat one of them.
This is a question of whether picking an advantageous opponent in a fighting sport can be considered a form of match-fixing. He may have set the matchup in his favor, but it is clear that he beat everyone he faced anyway. I think that in modern MMA like the UFC, there are many cases where fighters are assigned easy opponents for promotion and lose, so there is no room for indulging in conspiracy theories.
Spoiler alert, yes, sort of. There were "rules" set in place by the Gracies which heavily favored the BJJ representative, Royce Gracie. Edit: that said, the outcomes were NOT predetermined.
I would never say rigged but it was heavily in favor of Gracie. Remember the event was literally created as a show case for Gracie bjj and patriarch of the Gracies was one of the promoters. Its no coincidence that there was a clear lack of grappling specialists like Judo and freestyle wrestlers
@@JudeMalachi no I think you're taking one definition of the word and blatantly ignoring the other in order to sound smart, idk why you chose my comment since not even close to the most liked or commented but you chose mine to showcase your "intelligence". Rigged is a synonym of fixed, I would hope someone who like to correct others would be aware of that otherwise they'd end up looking really foolish
Great video! I also always felt Ken’s interview post fight to be very odd, ken has discussed at depth his belief it wasn’t real up to the event, & confused if it was real or rigged during the event. His stoppage w Royce always felt in a cloud, ken seemed to tap much sooner than we know his abilities to be & isn’t consistent with his career behavior I think. Not proof but more conjecture i know. But thanks for this video, incredible stuff, much enjoyed sir!
That's because Ken was accustomed to having fixed fights in Pancrase & he probably had trouble believing that the UFC was going to be the real deal. Pancrase advertised itself as the real deal too, but it wasn't. I think Ken also believed a little too much in his leg locks & didn't realize that leg locks were old news to Royce.
I’d consider that. The Gracies do deserve respected for their skill and proficiency in BJJ. That being said, where are they now? Why did they disappear from the UFC once legit wrestlers & muay thai guys started jumping in the mix? They disappeared back to their (overly-priced) schools.
But they have worst sportsmanship ever and lose most every fair fight they have, always cheat or make excuse then jump superior opponents with many ppl and attack them with weapons. Gracie is huge disgrace to martial arts
They just havent adapted. A pure BJJ fighter (unles its oliveira) will lose. Same as a pure striker or wrestler will. Every foghter today has a huge understanding of TDD and submissions and guard
Considering this was the first ufc and the negatively it was attracting, I could see why they had issues getting better fighters. The world had not really seen BJJ either yet so it doesn't surprise me that they were so dominate in that first event. The rules about what the fighters could wear though is what bothers me. That alone gives Royce an unfair advantage and tarnishes the event and the victories imo.
@@ETAisNOW I don't think so. It is not rigged in the sense of 'winning was impossible' or having opponents taking a dive for cash. It would be more like a baseball game between the New York Yankee's starting lineup against a low end AA minor league team with completely fair officiating. It was not meant to be an evenly matched fight by those setting it up.
It was absolutely rigged for Royce to win. It had 6 strikers, but they weren't allowed to wrap their hands or feet. Royce was the only one to wear a Gia, Ken wasn't allowed to wear wrestling shoes.
As a teen back in the mid 90s, I would have NEVER imagined that the UFC or MMA would overtake WWF / WWE / pro wrestling as the most entertaining sport around. I’m glad it did. Pro wrestling is garbage nowadays.
Exactly..... Using the gi as a choking weapon. I've got a problem with that. Especially since no one else could even use wraps and Shamrock couldn't use wrestling shoes.
They did put themselves out there which they had done for years, and it paid out tremendously I’m sure more than they could have thought during that time. Could there have been people that could’ve defeated Royce Gracie unquestionably. One would have been the Olympian Mark Schultz who grappled I forget which Gracie it was I think it was Rickson Gracie for like 2 hours if not three until he was able to get a submission. That was just grappling no strikes, and we’ve seen how heavy handed he was in taking out Gary Goodridge. He tossed him to the ground like nothing picking him up, and striking the very strong Gary Goodridge controlling him with ease.
My old muay Thai instructor told us he'd applied to be in ufc 1 and was rejected, I don't remember why. The guy was a phenomenal practitioner in his prime and very well known in Thailand. Imo, he would have had a good chance at royce had it worked out that way. High level MT fighters have excellent stand up grappling and clinch fighting. It's interesting that MT was not represented at all at ufc 1.
They talk about Gracies not wanting wrestlers at UFC 1. Then conclude by saying that UFC 1 was not fixed 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Wouldn't be surprised if they hand picked the contestants to favor Royce.
Yea a brutal sport MT I don't do any MMA but I do wrestle a bit and I always think to myself they'd be the last people I'd want to fight style against style only takes a knee coming in when I shoot and it'd be lights out and if you clinch with them they can knee you there too 😂. It does seem very strange that as you say no MT in UFC when Art Davie said he wanted strikers. I wonder if it's because the Gracie's had seen what guys trained in MT could do in the vale tudo matches back home and some of the MT guys that then trained Luta livre seemed to give them their biggest challenges
I find it weird he claims that they specifically picked people Royce could pick, but that they also got rid of the sumo wrestler because Royce couldn't beat him
@mmaonpoint --In regards to Ken Shamrock's comments about the finishing hold - it can be clearly seen that Royce is applying an RNC (so called Rear Naked Choke - Naked being without the use of Kimono or any material.) Awesome video - Thanks for putting in the work!
He inspired me to enter a race wearing one shoe. It didn't work very well, I just kind went in a crooked circle and lost the race by a long shot, got blisters on the bare foot too. But I was inspired.
@@poindextertunes did you even watch the video? They (mostly) said the Gracies did whatever they could to improve their advantage, but calling it a conspiracy might be a bit far.
My brother and I got this one PPV thinking it was some sort of blood sport movie. Boy were we wrong haha. It was amazing to see real fighting. I don't know about rigged or anything but, it changed my path in life forever. I've not missed a UFC event since then.
Its documented in the book, "The Gracie Way" that this was done 100% to show off Gracie Jiu-jitsu. No one denies that. Now they thought ken shamrock would be the most dangerous for Royce and no one counted on Jimmerson wearing 1 glove and immediately tapping. Jimmerson is even quoted as saying, "After I saw Royce practice all that ground stuff, I decided I would immediately tap if he got on top." I can also say I personally know sean Daugherty, who participated in UFC 2. The fights themselves were not rigged. He was legitimately shocked at how well the grappling worked. He went on to train with Shamrock and is onlw a well known catch wrestler and bjj black belt. But back then he was fighting as ninjitsu.
The fact that they specifically didn't want wrestlers makes me mad tbh. Like this whole time I've been defending bjj saying it is the best martial art in a 1 on 1 fight against any other martial art but they ducked wrestlers.
Dude, whatever martial art you think is the best (bjj, wrestling, etc.), why are you taking as reference what happened at UFC1? You have almost 30 years of MMA after that first event and countless fights between bjj black belts and wrestlers to use as reference to build your own opinion. If you have been defending bjj based solely on UFC1 and not the other literally tens of thousands vale-tudo and then later MMA fights thaat happened ever since you are just doing it wrong.
@@dondraper4438 Sure, whatever. I'm not questioning which martial art is best, I just didn't understand why you picked 1 data point (UFC1 event) to build your opinion regarding which martial art is best, instead of picking countless data points in the history of almost 30 years of MMA events that happend after that UFC1.
@@douglasdbs7139 I am not using that single data point. However, the UFC did use that single data point for promotional reasons, and had casual fans convinced for a long long long time. To the point that even I as a younger man believed it at one point.
This issue with having Big John involved in fighting if he had won. He would have won using Gracie Jiu Jitsu. So their message would still work as Gracie Jiu Jitsu would have come out on top.
Great video guys. And your findings are spot on. It was not rigged in that all the fights were works, but it was certainly set up in Gracie's favor. And just to poke another hole in the theory that a sumo wrestler would have squashed Royce, he fought a much bigger and more successful (he made the rank of Yokozuna) sumo wrestler later when he fought Akebono in K-1.
This is your best video by far. Clearing such a controversial topic is pure gold. Watched start to finish, was sold on the arguments, got a clear picture of the events that took place. Hell yeah, subscribed!
I don’t know about “rigged”, but it was definitely setup as a promotion for Gracie Jujitsu, and Royce was given every advantage available. Thats never really been a secret.
I think you pretty much covered all the points really well. The only fights rigged were Macias vs Taktarov, Don Frye vs his teammate, cant remember his name & Tito Ortiz vs Ryan Bader.
Whats the story with Ortiz and bader? I remember seeing it live and being shocked that Ortiz won... he was meant to be a sacrificial lamb for sure I thought
Excellent video. I'd be interested to hear Royce's rebuttal. I always saw him as a dirty fighter, who really didn't deserve the praise he got. This really clarifies things.
Art Jimmerson was smart. Got in at 20K, which is more than some guys make to show in UFC nowadays, took virtually no damage and was able to keep pro boxing.
I don't know if this is a mystery. Can you dig into why TUF coaches were allowed their own students and how much of an advantage it was was for Leben to have Quarry on the same team under Couture. Also the fact that Leben was able to jump the fence and not get eliminated, similar to Junie Browning getting multiple chances after huge violations. Maybe a video along those lines.
"Junie" (real name is Allen, TUF producers wanted him to go by Junie) was a normal guy and a *very* good fighter before TUF. He was "given multiple chances" because everyone knew the producers were setting him up purposefully in events outside the ring that would be "entertaining" because he's a "weird sounding kentucky boy"
It's sad how people like to bring down the validity of the early UFC tournaments. People need to reemember that it wasn't really a sport inn the same way it is today. BJJ wasn't a widely known martial art at the time. That was partially the purpose of creating the UFC. It was to show how effective BJJ was at nulifying and defeating a much larger man. The reason the Gracie's took a step back, and slowly became overtaken by the evolution of the sport was because everyone started to use their Gracie BJJ system combined with the most effective techniques from kickboxing, judo, karate, Taekwondo, boxing, freestyle wrestling, Sombo, and Greco Roman. It was no longer martial art vs martial art, and the skill gap became more and more narrow between the competitors. The next generations truly started to mix all of the different arts (including BJJ) into the style of fighting we call MMA. UFC fans, and mma fans should really appreciate the Gracie family, and their contributions to combat sports. The sport literally wouldn't exist without them. Every UFC fighter over the last 25 years uses at least the basic fundamentals of BJJ within their style. It's a necessity in mma just like striking, working top control, or working from the clinch. You have to be able to work from your back at some point.
Some things to correct from bill wallace, fighters did wrap their hands. Royce later fought sumo wrestler akebono who is way bigger than Teila Tuli. If other fighters would have worn gis it would have given Royce a bigger advantage as to use the gi for chokes and control, look at ufc 2 , Royce versus Minori ichihara who wore a gi and Royce versus Remco Pardoel who also wore a gi.
Yes, this was pointed out by jesse's interview with bill wallace and if you watched the later ones, the gracies got butt hurt by wrestlers with striking abilities. it was all designed to showcase how bad ass their BJJ was.
Thanks for featuring my interview with Bill Wallace! 🙏🥋🤘
Thanks so much for putting together such a great interview! Great piece of history you have uncovered. Real credit to your work and what it does for the community. 👊
I watched your interview Jesse a long time ago and it was a great one and i came to much of the same conclusions MMA On Point did you are a good interviewer and should do many more with masters around the world
Though Superfoot Wallace was wrong on there being "no wrestlers".
Ken Shamrock was a catch wrestler, so that theory on the Gracies saying "No wrestlers" doesn't hold up.
If that was the case Ken Shamrock shouldn't of been on the card.
Bill is a fool. I was a good wrestler and I had no chance against bjj when I started. He’s just making excuses for striking.
After a year or 2 of bjj wrestlers are the best fighters but there’s no way the Gracie’s didn’t know they could beat any wrestler .
And at the time very few thought that wrestlers could hang with kung fu or karate guys. This is all revisionist history.
And as stated, shamrock may have only wrestler in highschool but he had submission training in Japan.
If the Gracie’s wanted to duck someone it would’ve been Ken
My boyfriend says y'all are being pedantic, and should know that's not what he means. If an NCAA caliber wrestler like Mark Coleman had competed, he would have made Royce Gracie the mother of his children.
They rigged it as much as they could without actually fixing the fights, it was still possible for one of the fighters to KO or stop Royce, but the chances were slim.
Bingo!
Shamrock had the best chance
@@charlesharsha6527 And then they banned him from wearing his boots
UFC 1 being a Gracie infomercial has been common knowledge for years, the only threat to Royce was Shamrock and the rest had no chance. Some of Wallace's claims are ridiculous though, the sumo would have got killed if it hadn't been stopped
Better question is did they tailor any other events to hype a style?
Honestly yea, 1 kick sent his teeth flying, imagine a beating. And the random claim about them purposefully "gassing" a fighter that figured out he had asthma that night was absolutely rediculous.
Nah man, Teila was just getting warmed up. He would have caught a second wind as soon as he got up, after eating 12-46 more soccer kicks.
I know the only two people the Gracie's thought could give Royce trouble were Shamrock and Smith...who just happened to fight each other in the opening round, with the hopes that the winner would limp into the next round to get beaten Royce.
No fights were staged/thrown/worked, but the Gracie's definitely stacked the deck in their favour.
@@markzuckergecko621 "Teila was just getting warmed up."
For the record, Gerard Gordeau broke his foot with that kick to the face. So yeah, Teila Tuli could have easily recovered, and snagged the W.
You left out the design of the ring. It was an Octagon . Eight corners meant you couldn't step in any direction and not get cornered. And the matts were thick and soft. Which made it difficult for stand up fighters to get solid footing for more powerful strikes. It also made it easier to control someone during ground grappling.
That ring was definitely designed to give Royce every advantage.
there are other MMA organizations that use a boxing ring where you can't corner people and BJJ / submission grappling still works really well.
that is a good point you bring up though because there are grapple-heavy fighters like Khabib who've mastered using the cage to support their grappling.
@@TheRealAbraxas There are now. I'm referring to the very first UFC's. Which were rigged to give Royce every advantage.
As the ring was changed, the stand up fighters started scoring a lot more Knock Outs.
You mean when the strikers started studying bjj , they started winning 🤣
@@onlyinthailand88 Once they learned how to leverage punches when one person was on their back: It was all over. Maurice Smith and Bas Ruten were good examples of that.
Very poor assessment of the environment created for "very few rules - no weight classes" event which singlehandedly put MMA on the map. People came up with all types of excuses after the Gracies experienced massive success and subsequently hit a low point with the Sakuraba losses. It didn't matter the type of ring or mat they fought on. The event was set up to find out which art dominated the most against any other fighting art. A fighting art should be adaptable to any type of surface or environment.
Ken Shamrock has claimed that the rules were tilted toward Royce by doing things such as banning Shamrock from wearing wrestling shoes while Royce was able to wear a gi and choke out the competition with it
Various people involved have pretty much said the whole thing was to put over Gracie Jiu Jitsu as a brand, which worked with Royce winning three UFCs and having to retire due to injury in one. Once it was clear the opposition was learning how to counter it, he pulled back from competition and let the likes of Shanmrock, Oleg Taktarov, Dan Severn, etc, become the face of the organization.
I really don’t 5ink shoes would of helped Shamrock out of that choke Royce put him in.
It's not actually true though. Ken chose not to wear shoes. He chose kicking over traction.
@@russellward4624 he was forced to choose or not play in the tournament.
@mtgsalt1151 no, chose between kicking or wearing shoes. He chose not to wear shoes so it couldn't be that big a deal because he wasn't even a good kicker.
@@k9m42 Maybe, but Royce using his robe to choke Shamrock wouldn't have occurred anywhere else.
I think fighters not having a clue how to deal with BJJ was a huge factor… once fighters started training how to defend it, you no longer could get away with just doing that
I mean that was the whole point. Style vs style
But style vs a style most of us were not familiar with…
@@andu1854 it's a fight the point is they were trying to show that their way of fighting was good. It's not like professional fighters weren't familiar with fighting and what could possibly happen in a fight. Your comment makes it sound like they have some magic trick or like it's a video game if you don't have the counter you can't beat it no they just knew that their techniques were effective and they wanted to show that. No offense 😁
It took a while though. We saw BJJ only fighters owning striking only fighters for several years before the cross training started to catch up.
That literally has nothing to do with the events that occurred at UFC 1 - like your point doesn’t disprove it, there is no logic behind your point, they are not zero sum events that are linked
Yo guys! Just want to quickly shout out to everyone involved in this piece. It literally took months to get this video together and was worked on by a team of video editors between myself, Luke Taylor, and Max Randall. Tommy of course absolutely labored himself to exhaustion on this one and deserves so much recognition.
Really appreciate all the kind comments. There will definitely be more coming. It means a ton after all that work to hear positive things. Criticisms are welcome too, of course.
-Jason
Great video! Very entertaining and educational. Plus, I love seeing the Karate Nerd getting some shine by MMA on Point. Even though Superfoot had some exaggerated claims, he wasn't wrong about the bouts being scheduled in a way that favored Royce. With that said, I love the UFC and MMA as a whole, so I really can't complain about how everything turned out. It's the greatest sport in the world, and who knows if I'd have discovered it if UFC 1 hadn't have gone the way it did.
We deserve the MMAOP teams UFC 1 “audition” videos.
Please do a video for how BJJ got popular, and the whole rivalry with Luta Livre etc.
@@champ1159 idk, fighting in the age of loneliness was solid on the topic, and as much as they want to be impartial we all have bosses
"NO WRESTLERS"
Then what the hell was Shamrock doing in UFC 1?
Might not have been 100% rigged.. .but it sure was 99% rigged in the Gracies favour, no doubt about it. The “no wrestlers” clause set the competition level in his favour immediately plus the “ref stoppage” of the big guy gave him a huge advantage, then theres his fight gear, so yeah it WAS rigged. They had several plays in effect, but only needed 3 or 4 to work and pull this shiest off
Royce beat Dan Severn who is a high level wrestler and way heavier than Royce. get out of here
@@GMunoz-oj5zb 🤣 we just found ourselves a Gracie Fan Boi haha im still 100% correct though buddy, facts are facts chump
Ken Shamrock was a submission wrestler and eventually the King of Pancrase. He had 3 MMA fights before UFC 1. He was in Shooto, had a 3-0 record in Pancrase (submission wrestling) and was a professional wrestler/street fighter.
In the early UFCs the refs were not allowed to stop the fights. So you're wrong here as well.
You have no idea what you're talking about and stop passing around disinformation. Calling other people chumps... when you are demonstrably wrong here, just shows who the chump is.
@@jeepnutscottyhe literally proved you weren't. Shamrock was a wrestler. What wrestlers were interested? You clearly aren't old enough to remeber the climate of the day. Nobody thought wrestlers were top fighters. Everyone thought magic karate/Kung fu techniques were too dangerous to use because they'd kill. The whole point was to dispell that traditional martial arts weren't effective in self defense. Not to determine the best athlete.
@@jeepnutscotty What facts? All I saw from you was an opinion that is flawed. Grow up dude. Have some respect for the Gracie family, and quit talking like a child keyboard warrior. Just because someone says something positive about Royce Gracie doesn't make them a fanboy, or a chump. Get a life. You probably weren't even born until 2001, lol.
What I’m curious about is all the fighters that applied to be in UFC1 but got rejected. That would show the selection process.
💯
Definitely. Would like an idea as to what sort of people were denied entry
@@colealia7988 me as well! Would tell us so much more!
@@colealia7988 I heard somewhere that they intentionally rejected any wrestlers with college experience or above for fear that they would neutralize the ground game. Ken was only a highschool wrestler so they let him slide.
@@Abettergrappler didn’t know that. That would definitely be an interesting point!
This series is ballsy as hell and I love it.
Can Tommy do a comprehensive investigation into how the Yakuza influenced Pride as well? I'd love to hear about the shadiness of this.
Me too.
Oh hell yeah
Yes
Yes
Yes plz
Everyone knows it was an infomercial for Gracie Jiu Jitsu. They’ve openly admitted that. There were many Brazilian vale tudo fighters and other jiu jitsu fighters, Luta Livre fighters, shoot fighters who could have participated, including some of Royce’s family members
Marco ruas ,Mario sperry ,oleg,bas rutten,pele ,hugo and more could have competed
Right. It was to pit different styles against each other. Except wrestling apparently.
@@glucasme grappling… Dan Severn was UFC what? 3 or 4… arguably Shamrock was a wrestler coming out of Pancrase.
This just reinforces how grateful I am to have seen MMA really gain traction and be where it’s at today. Great video
Having no wrestlers was DEFINITELY a bomb eye-opener! Looking back at the old-school Gracie Challenges, was there a wrestler who heeded the call?
Sakuraba 💯
Brazil has wrestlers and they did crush a couple of the the gracies some got choked or Koed by slam look up the rivalry between luta livre wrestling and Gracie bjj they got revenge though they would show up with bats after and beat ppl up they did permanent damage to some the guys that beat them even guys that cross trained both got on there bad side and they get kicked out the gym there’s a lot going on back then before the first ufc .
Ken Shamrock counts.
I didn't hear it in the video, but Dan Severn said that wrestling was not even listed as one of the martial arts when he filled out the application to fight. He had to write it in under "other."
@Brian Alfredo Tribolet shoot fighter. So yes he understood double legs, the problem was the first fight against him Royce choked him out with his belt because he realized Shamrock was an actual threat. The only person with some wrestling knowledge got choked out with a belt, when he wasn’t even allowed to where wrestling shoes
"It's human cockfighting"
"Is Jack Kevorkian the referee?"
*short and largely bloodless PPV ensues*
“No Wrestlers”. If that doesn’t expose an Achilles heel I don’t know what else does! Definitely begs the question! Especially when you consider most of the top UFC Fighters today are in fact Wrestlers! Great video and impressive research! Keep it up!
It always bothered me that Judo kept changing its rules to reduce groundwork with an insane focus on large spectacular acrobatic throws so watching Royce Gracie use Judo groundwork to win the first few UFC's was incredible even though it wasn't marketed as Judo that's exactly what it was... the Gracie challenge had been around for a long time and was well known to carefully select its opponents however they definitely took on some dangerous athletes. While the early ufcs were not "rigged" the opponent selection was careful to favor Gracie Jiu-Jitsu however they still had to win their fights under the ever evolving rules. Unfortunately Judo never got the recognition it deserved because it had long since sold out to the "grappling Sports" gamesmanship ethos it was still rewarding to see it work because the Gracie's had the good sense to view Judo as a life and death martial art not a complex international sport bedeviled by politics
The Gracies didn't learn "Judo", they learned "Kano Jiu-Jitsu". Yes, it's the same art, but they never used the name Judo in Brazil at the time.
@@tjl4688 semantics either way it's a Japanese martial art with Brazilian hot sauce sprinkled on it
@@tjl4688 yrs they did Black Belt magazine used to do big articles on " Brazilian Judo" back in the day
L by o
@@BURGAWMMAcorrect
Yo i LOVED this. I really appreciate all the effort and time it must have taken to throw this together. These investigative videos are really gripping
Bjj pun?
I trained at a school run by 2 of Relson Gracie's black belts. The older of the 2 was a purple belt at the time and they had a sign up table and lessons going on in hotel rooms at ufc 1. The goal was to immediately capitalize on people wanting to learn how to do what Royce did.
What state? Half the schools here in Hawaii are Relson affiliated, he even lives here now. Has big beef with some other Bjj schools for not being old-school enough I guess
As the event was going on?
It was the Migliarese Brothers school. Phil was the one who told the story and yes I understand stood it to be during the event.
@@forekin836 Gracie's are always beefin with someone, it's that old school favela way
Sorry mate. I don’t give a hot darn about anything you’ve got to say. Simply put; do one. Yeah, you heard. I’ll use my hose pipe on you.
When you look back and take your emotion out if it you find that UFC 1 was "rigged" in a sense. The fights were real imo BUT the way it was set up it was set up in a way that favoured Gracie. ❤
The problem ive always had was the gracies ALWAYS have rules or stipulations or conditions that favor them to dominate so they can claim how great the style is but then the moment you have more level rules or someone who actually knows some grappling and wrestling they get exposed pretty quickly
And thats always a pet peeve of mine in that youre selling an art as the most effective for self defense or whatever but its only true under your specific specs
Yes, but any rules are going to lead to a meta. The octagon is roughly the size of a wrestling circle, and strikers don't have the luxury of backing up more than a few steps, not to mention the limitations on strikes to the back of the head and elsewhere. Wrestling and grappling were always going to flourish under these rules.
@@metalface_villain Obviously yes, but the point is that wrestling isn't dominant by default. Without the limitation, shooting on someone would be life-threatening.
@@Spamcloud wrestling is dominant by default. take away the soft floor and see what happens. a hard floor would also make bottom guard totally useless. probably the first one to take someone down would win fights pretty fast if not instantly
UFC 1 was definitely a showcase for Gracie BJJ, not rigged per se but it's pretty clear they went out of their way to not have anyone that could stop a takedown or submission competing at the event.
Cut the crap and just call it for what it was. A commerical.
That’s still rigged lol
Royce is a convicted criminal. He committed major tax fraud. I'm shocked he isn't in prison!
Paul Orndorf with his bad arm would have smoked the Brazilian fool
Shamrock was a shootfighter which is based upon catch wrestling. Why couldn't Shamrock finish Royce? He knew most of the same submissions.
Teila Tuli was a sumo wrestler, surely he knew how to stuff takedowns.
Gerard Gordeau had wrestling and judo experience on top of his kickboxing. He was already an MMA fighter more or less. Surely he would know how to stuff takedowns?
If any of those old fighters that lost spoke out against the UFC they would be skewed online. Royce's matches were always favorable. When the Gracie's couldn't pick the matches he started to lose and even got caught using steroids.
Did you watch the video? Gracie's didn't pick the matches
@@pointysidedown why because their spokesman who was explicit in the corruption said so. You don't know much about promoters.
@@stopthehate9102 ya I don't know much about promoters, but I did just watch the video, and I don't really feel like going over the contet with someone who didn't even bother to watch the video we are talking about. It could be wrong, I wasn't there, neither were you.
@@pointysidedown I wasn't in on the match making obviously but I was there. I did watch the video and have more information than you have access to.
@@stopthehate9102 would you ever make a video exposing gracies and proving this one wrong? I'd watch it.
Matt Hughes showed why the Gracie’s wouldn’t want to fight wrestlers in UFC 1, however, Joyce beat Dan Severn in UFC 4 which goes against the theory claiming they won’t fight wrestlers.
The way I used to understand the event was ground game was basically non existent in traditional martial arts until the Gracie's exposed its superiority.
But something I only recently realized is that this isn't completely true. I was rewatching Enter the Dragon and Bruce Lee beats a sparring partner in the opening with an arm bar.
And that struck me as interesting bc this was at the height of the ancient martial art myth that these styles can beat anyone with very specific rule sets.
But his first fight in the movie is winning with a grapple, not with kicks, punches, or mysticism. And it wasn't considered strange or special.
Clearly the idea of only standing game wasn't that rigid if it was done so casually in the film (I know Lee eventually paved the way for MMA in a sense and grappling styles existed, but I'm talking about the mainstream perspective).
What I think the Gracie's intended was to basically show off their skills and BJJ and did position the event at best in their favor to do this.
But I wouldn't say it was rigged as there were also hurdles for them as well. Fighting multiple opponents, no weight classes, barely any rules, and only ending by tap out or ko.
Its legacy is not the Gracie's but more exposing how every fight ends up on the ground and that everyone has a plan until they have a dude half their size choking them.
That ultimately every fight ends up on the ground if you don't know how to prevent that and regardless of how hard you can punch you will succumb to it if that's all you know.
But there is no perfect style or anything that will guarantee a win against a competent opponent.
But learned that cutting the fluff and bs is the only way to truly be the best fighter and the less flashy ground work is required.
And now striking imo has become more the focus of mma than grappling, even elite wrestlers like Cejudo and DC had to have good standing game, once everyone learned how to block take downs.
But we'll still often see the idea that ground game will always beat standing game if the striker has no grappling skills.
Ken Shamrock still talking about how they took away his shoes
To say they hand-picked opponents for Royce for the first 4 UFCs, I feel 100% absolutely. For UFC 3, with Kimo coming in under the banner of Tae Kwon Do, I think they really thought it was going to be a cake walk. But then after it came out that Kimo had some wrestling knowledge. Let's look at UFC 4. I mean c'mon, Royce's first fight was against the 51 year old Ron Van Cleef karateka. And Royce's first fight in UFC2 against the smaller karateka Minoki Ichihara. It's hard to believe that was an accident. Would have been interesting to see Royce's first fight in UFC2 against Sambo practitioner Frank Hamaker.
Hamaker took forever just to finish a kung fu guy with zero ground skills...and then withdrew because of a sore forearm. Royce would have submitted Hamaker as easily as he did Remco, if not easier.
When Kimo entered the octagon the commentator talked about how his trainer told them he had been training Ju Jitsu for the past 6 months and also Rorion only owned shares in the UFC and Art Davie was the match maker.
"Royce's first fight was against the 51 year old Ron Van Cleef karateka."
Ron Van Clief was already a 10th-degree black belt with 40 years of training. He was literally a grandmaster - when Royce choked him out.
"And Royce's first fight in UFC2 against the smaller karateka Minoki Ichihara."
Minoki Ichihara weighed 180 pounds, about the same weight as Royce. Additionally, he was Japan's #1 ranked bareknuckle karate fighter, with 54 victories. There are no weight divisions in Kyokushin Karate tournaments. Minoki Ichihara was considered by many Japanese to be the best karate fighter in the world - when Royce choked him out.
He did beat Pat Smith though who had trained with him(Royce) before the fight
Damn all this from just trying to unwind on YT. I love the dedication.
Allowing Gracie to wear the gee was enough to make it extremely unfair.
He used that to grip everyone in a hold, when they could have easily slipped out.
Thank you for this video, Tommy and everyone at MMA On Point involved. This was phenomenal from start to finish and never once did my interest wane. A fantastic example of what UA-cam videos should be: content that makes you want to keep watching because it is so good as opposed to content you don't want to stop watching out of fear that you'll miss what was advertised in the thumbnail which ends up being clickbait anyway. Great work
It was rigged in the same way fights are still rigged. Not straight up telling someone to take a dive, but setting up circumstances to favor one fighter. A good example of a failed rigging is usman vs edwards 2. The altitude, and the fact that the ref was letting usman cheat while calling out edwards on the same things made it pretty clear. Edwards didn't get the memo though
Your theory's biggest hole reveals itself when you think of how big that moment was for the UFC. Having a champ from the UK, the hype, the money made off the rematch. Why would the UFC want to avoid that? Usman is not a popular champion. Attention and hype is always built around dominant champions falling. Seeing big names lose makes money. The UFC understands that. Hype around a good fighter comes more from people wanting to see them lose than it does from seeing them win. Also, from your same logic, what does that say about Izzy vs Poatan? Izzy is much more marketable and liked by fans. Izzy called it an early stoppage, where was the ref helping him out there? Where was the UFC playing things out in Izzy's favor?
@@almazingsk8er same thing for conor vs khabib. Izzy vs whittaker 2 was given to izzy cuz of bias to the popular champ
just goes to show wrestling is and always has been best martial art. No wonder why Islam ran through Charles, like hot knife through butter. these Brazilians always have been scared of wrastling🤣
@@almazingsk8er usman is fairly popular. Not necessarily liked but he is more known to casuals than most fighters, especially edwards at the time. Its pretty obvious that khamzat vs usman wouldve been gigantic, but khamzat vs edwards not as much. Not to mention usmans manager is ali who seems to be able to pull strings considering most of his fighters get preferential treatment. Edwards winning in the way he did works out for the ufc, since it was a comeback ko, but that definitely wasn't part of the "plan"
@@ShoeWeb Just because you disagree with a result doesn't mean it was rigged lol
Tommy is absolutely killing it, what a video. Hope this hits the millions eventually.
also a point about gears that wasn't mentionned is that savate is meant to be practiced with shoes, savate kicks are designed with this in mind, and it might be a reason why gordo got injured in his feet prior to his fight with gracie.
again, i am not sure it would have changed the end result, but i have always been curious to know how mma would have look like if it was practiced with "casual cloth" (although one would have to define what a "casual cloth" is) as fighting gears
I want to personally thank you, it's great a channel as big as yours actually goes into depth about the truth of what happened.
Not many are willing to actually call into question the shady practices of the Gracies. They've been mythologized over the years. To cover this without bias shows a great amount of integrity.
Thanks again.
I read also that Tank Abbott asked to compete at UFC 4 but he had to wait until ufc 6 just after Gracie left the company
Can't even blame him for dodging tank back then. Phew.
@@tarancehill651 Tank mocking his opponent when the guy seized up from a KO punch is perpetually burned in my mind. Thats when I realized Abbott was not a nice guy. Brutal fxckin fighter
@@poindextertunes it's always trying to throw the dude out of the damn cage for me. Wild man.
Sure makes sense, Tank would have slaughtered the puny roidy one.
Tank would not have stood a chance. He was lucky when he won.
I remember all of this so vaguely. I was about 18 when this went down. I remember people talking about UFC being rigged, but I never really cared much either way.
This is very interesting to see a retrospective investigation.
You are welcome for "making it to the end".
That seems like it should be the norm and not something worth thanking, but I guess I'm out of touch or something.
He’s an old guy and this is exactly how human memory works- it isn’t like a digital tape recording of events that you play back exactly- every time we remember we re create the memory and over time the memory can not resemble what actually occurred
But his overall theme is correct
A 30 minute conspiracy video narrated by Tommy? Shut up and take my money
Where's the money
Another story you can do is the Gracie history in Brazil. Because I heard they wasn't good people during that time in Brazil, and cause a lot of problems in the country.
Helio and 2 other Gracies permanently maimed Rufino dos Santos for beating one of them in a tournament.
They jumped him, with a weapon and broke his arm.
They should have been imprisoned for a long time but they got a presidential pardon.
They were also a fairly wealthy Brazilian family, so the slum dog millionaire image fans had of the Gracie's was also inaccurate.
@@dondraper4438 was that the perception back then? i thought it was well known that bjj was more reserved for the more wealthy while the people that couldn‘t afford the gear and to attend the gyms fought in luta livre
Now THIS is a video I'd love to see
I always heard, as far as mma goes, Brazilian’s in general like to bend the rules. One example: Vitor Belfort being absolutely juiced to the gills when came into the UFC
Theres many other examples as well
Having two guys named Art mixed up in this historic mixed martial arts story seems like an artistic decision.
It’s absolutely believable. UFC 1 no high level Muay Thai fighters, no high level judokas and no high level freestyle or catch wrestlers.
Rigged? No. Stacked in his favour? Yes. Great video even if it is common knowledge it was a promo for Gacie Jiu-Jitsu. I believe the book Total MMA by Jonathan Snowden discusses it.
I do believe the deck was stacked in Royce's favour but not that he was guaranteed to win.
The real question is would we ever know about the event if Royce lost.
Came very close to that and if they hadn't played games with Ken I think he was definently good to win. Royce couldn't strike and Ken was a monster,for the time Ken was the most fully rounded fighter,one of the first true mixed martial artists....
Big advantage tho
He quit after the kimo fight he definitely wasn't as good as he's made out to be right place right time is all
I think they had a backup plan.
If Royce had lost they would have sent in Rickson for UFC2.
Rickson was much stronger, had more fighting experience, better at BJJ and decent at standing up.
Which if you watch the full video with Bill Wallace was his whole point. He never said it was rigged but it was stacked heavily in Royce's favor and it was definitely intended to be a marketing campaign for Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Which it succeeded at to this day.
These essay videos are brilliant. Great job guys
I really enjoy your videos and can't wait for your new material..Keep up the great work, Kiiyon. That was terrible this happened, the vids are great
Hoping they mention how Gerard Gordeau was scheduled to fight Royce in the 1st round. But they wanted to soften him up.
Could've placed him near Ken Shamrock honestly
Reads at 475 views right now, lets hope this one gets the exposure it deserves, if nothing else to justify the crazy amount of work. Great video.
Good work. I've watched other videos on this and my conclusion is that while it wasn't outright fixed fights, the scales were very heavily tipped in Gracie's favor. Still wild as heck, and the birth of MMA in the west, so there's that.
I always felt they picked fighters based on personality and style , I mean Bloodsport came out in 1988 and was followed by many similar movies so they knew that multi-style approach was a money maker .
Shouldn't come as a shock. That was the whole point. They sold it as such.
Watching this and looking at the current state of the UFC rn oh man how fast this sport has grown.
For real, my other sport is baseball, and looking back at all the changes the sport has undergone in the last 150 years, it's been a lot slower and more gradual than the insanely fast evolution of MMA. Just in 30 years the sport has changed about as much as baseball did in the first 60-70 years.
@Mark Zuckergecko I think it has to do with the nature of fighting, the consequences are so dire for not evolving, instead of losing a game you risk getting put to sleep or having bones broken or worse
@@5liter Plus, MMA has the advantage of having other sports' progress as a prototype, which helps a lot.
same fake commentary today
in the last 8 years especially. Remember when Rhonda was snatching arms? That was the last under developed division, then Holm KO’d her and the Div got SUPER competitive 🔥
Another excellent video! Everyone seems to be enjoying these documentary style videos, so congratulations on your work.
Great work on this video! Would be interesting to see someone dig into the, surprisingly little known, 'Super Fighters/Tough Guys' tournaments that took place in Pennsylvania, well over a decade before UFC 1, that were forced out due to politics.
I remember hearing that they have lost matches to wrestlers before which is why they wernt allowed in the first event. I even heard they went and found one of these guys later and broke his legs for having the "audacity" to beat one of them.
It was his arm they broke, and that was years before the UFC
Rufino dos Santos, yup, and I think he was a catch wrestler
Correct, he beat Carlos Gracie
I love how it was literally a mortal kombat invitational
This is a question of whether picking an advantageous opponent in a fighting sport can be considered a form of match-fixing. He may have set the matchup in his favor, but it is clear that he beat everyone he faced anyway. I think that in modern MMA like the UFC, there are many cases where fighters are assigned easy opponents for promotion and lose, so there is no room for indulging in conspiracy theories.
And….we just had the Paddy Pimblett robbery/ rigging
Spoiler alert, yes, sort of.
There were "rules" set in place by the Gracies which heavily favored the BJJ representative, Royce Gracie.
Edit: that said, the outcomes were NOT predetermined.
This
@@thedonofthsht76-58 pointless comment
@@themostdiabolicalhater5986 name checks out, aha
These rule changes meant nothing cause kasushi sakuraba beat the Gracies down regardless of rules
@@theitfactorjameswheezer2852 Sakuraba beat em like they stole something.
I would never say rigged but it was heavily in favor of Gracie. Remember the event was literally created as a show case for Gracie bjj and patriarch of the Gracies was one of the promoters. Its no coincidence that there was a clear lack of grappling specialists like Judo and freestyle wrestlers
It was literally rigged xD they cheat Ken over and over
@@antonioyeats2149 Except Ken was in on it.
@@jd9119 🤨 never heard that one before. Wym
@@antonioyeats2149 Ken was a professional wrestler before UFC and after UFC. Don't tell me he's never done jobs before.
@@JudeMalachi no I think you're taking one definition of the word and blatantly ignoring the other in order to sound smart, idk why you chose my comment since not even close to the most liked or commented but you chose mine to showcase your "intelligence". Rigged is a synonym of fixed, I would hope someone who like to correct others would be aware of that otherwise they'd end up looking really foolish
the first ufc champion wasn't even the champion of his own brothers
Great video! I also always felt Ken’s interview post fight to be very odd, ken has discussed at depth his belief it wasn’t real up to the event, & confused if it was real or rigged during the event. His stoppage w Royce always felt in a cloud, ken seemed to tap much sooner than we know his abilities to be & isn’t consistent with his career behavior I think. Not proof but more conjecture i know. But thanks for this video, incredible stuff, much enjoyed sir!
That's because Ken was accustomed to having fixed fights in Pancrase & he probably had trouble believing that the UFC was going to be the real deal. Pancrase advertised itself as the real deal too, but it wasn't. I think Ken also believed a little too much in his leg locks & didn't realize that leg locks were old news to Royce.
@@VultureLivesAgain totally agree
I’d consider that. The Gracies do deserve respected for their skill and proficiency in BJJ. That being said, where are they now? Why did they disappear from the UFC once legit wrestlers & muay thai guys started jumping in the mix? They disappeared back to their (overly-priced) schools.
But they have worst sportsmanship ever and lose most every fair fight they have, always cheat or make excuse then jump superior opponents with many ppl and attack them with weapons. Gracie is huge disgrace to martial arts
They just havent adapted. A pure BJJ fighter (unles its oliveira) will lose. Same as a pure striker or wrestler will. Every foghter today has a huge understanding of TDD and submissions and guard
Considering this was the first ufc and the negatively it was attracting, I could see why they had issues getting better fighters. The world had not really seen BJJ either yet so it doesn't surprise me that they were so dominate in that first event. The rules about what the fighters could wear though is what bothers me. That alone gives Royce an unfair advantage and tarnishes the event and the victories imo.
Not rigged, but with almost all promotions, the fight match making is structured.
Structured…rigged…a fighters family member organizing the event and picking the fighters…it’s up in the air
I'm not saying it's aliens.... but it's aliens.
That literally rigged lol
@@ETAisNOW I don't think so. It is not rigged in the sense of 'winning was impossible' or having opponents taking a dive for cash. It would be more like a baseball game between the New York Yankee's starting lineup against a low end AA minor league team with completely fair officiating. It was not meant to be an evenly matched fight by those setting it up.
@@nickivankoughnett9470 structuring match making to favor a certain fighter is absolutely a form of rigging.
If The Gracies said "no wrestlers" then why was Ken Shamrock included in the tournament?
It was absolutely rigged for Royce to win. It had 6 strikers, but they weren't allowed to wrap their hands or feet. Royce was the only one to wear a Gia, Ken wasn't allowed to wear wrestling shoes.
As a teen back in the mid 90s, I would have NEVER imagined that the UFC or MMA would overtake WWF / WWE / pro wrestling as the most entertaining sport around. I’m glad it did. Pro wrestling is garbage nowadays.
Once the Monday Night Wars ended, pro-wrestling has been absolute garbage. I miss the Attitude era. 😥
The fact that Royce Gracie won by gi choke is enough for me
Exactly..... Using the gi as a choking weapon. I've got a problem with that. Especially since no one else could even use wraps and Shamrock couldn't use wrestling shoes.
In a way yes it was. Letting Gracie use his wardrobe as a weapon which is how he won a lot of his fights and the UFC used it to promote itself
They did put themselves out there which they had done for years, and it paid out tremendously I’m sure more than they could have thought during that time. Could there have been people that could’ve defeated Royce Gracie unquestionably. One would have been the Olympian Mark Schultz who grappled I forget which Gracie it was I think it was Rickson Gracie for like 2 hours if not three until he was able to get a submission. That was just grappling no strikes, and we’ve seen how heavy handed he was in taking out Gary Goodridge. He tossed him to the ground like nothing picking him up, and striking the very strong Gary Goodridge controlling him with ease.
My old muay Thai instructor told us he'd applied to be in ufc 1 and was rejected, I don't remember why.
The guy was a phenomenal practitioner in his prime and very well known in Thailand. Imo, he would have had a good chance at royce had it worked out that way. High level MT fighters have excellent stand up grappling and clinch fighting.
It's interesting that MT was not represented at all at ufc 1.
They talk about Gracies not wanting wrestlers at UFC 1. Then conclude by saying that UFC 1 was not fixed 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Wouldn't be surprised if they hand picked the contestants to favor Royce.
@@dondraper4438 yeah I think Davey and rorion worked together on the matches more than whats been let on
@@ChaosAD187 bingo
whats his name?
Yea a brutal sport MT I don't do any MMA but I do wrestle a bit and I always think to myself they'd be the last people I'd want to fight style against style only takes a knee coming in when I shoot and it'd be lights out and if you clinch with them they can knee you there too 😂. It does seem very strange that as you say no MT in UFC when Art Davie said he wanted strikers. I wonder if it's because the Gracie's had seen what guys trained in MT could do in the vale tudo matches back home and some of the MT guys that then trained Luta livre seemed to give them their biggest challenges
MMA on point never disappoints, congratulations to that
Thank you! Great investigation! Please do a follow-up on this. Also, please investigate other UFC controversies.
To use the word "rigged" is either idiotic or deliberate buffoonery. "Curated" to lean in BJJs favor is something true fans have known for years
Here we are 30 years later and most fighters still don't want to fight wrestlers
Especially dagestani ones 🤣🤣🤣
I find it weird he claims that they specifically picked people Royce could pick, but that they also got rid of the sumo wrestler because Royce couldn't beat him
@mmaonpoint --In regards to Ken Shamrock's comments about the finishing hold - it can be clearly seen that Royce is applying an RNC (so called Rear Naked Choke - Naked being without the use of Kimono or any material.) Awesome video - Thanks for putting in the work!
Royce was the only one with special gear!
Art Jimmerson: Am I a joke to you?
He inspired me to enter a race wearing one shoe. It didn't work very well, I just kind went in a crooked circle and lost the race by a long shot, got blisters on the bare foot too. But I was inspired.
That one glove was more hindrance than help though, so no reason to deny him. (not agreeing with the conspiracy though...)
@@LiamNI its not a conspiracy tho. pretty much everyone in the video agrees the Gracies cheated
@@poindextertunes did you even watch the video? They (mostly) said the Gracies did whatever they could to improve their advantage, but calling it a conspiracy might be a bit far.
My brother and I got this one PPV thinking it was some sort of blood sport movie. Boy were we wrong haha. It was amazing to see real fighting. I don't know about rigged or anything but, it changed my path in life forever. I've not missed a UFC event since then.
why lie to strangers on the internet? is it an attention thing?
@@ppstorm_ lmao at u for being a clown
@@ppstorm_ why be an idiot? Can’t help it?
You've really never missed an event since the early 90's?
@@achilles1545 u mad?
Would love to see a video diving into the history of the Gracie family. Proving or disproving the stories surrounding them.
Its documented in the book, "The Gracie Way" that this was done 100% to show off Gracie Jiu-jitsu. No one denies that.
Now they thought ken shamrock would be the most dangerous for Royce and no one counted on Jimmerson wearing 1 glove and immediately tapping.
Jimmerson is even quoted as saying, "After I saw Royce practice all that ground stuff, I decided I would immediately tap if he got on top."
I can also say I personally know sean Daugherty, who participated in UFC 2. The fights themselves were not rigged. He was legitimately shocked at how well the grappling worked. He went on to train with Shamrock and is onlw a well known catch wrestler and bjj black belt. But back then he was fighting as ninjitsu.
Fantastic video. Was born like a year before UFC 1 && didn't start watching regularly until 2008 so love the lore/history of the early days of MMA
Have you seen the Vale Tudo lore and 1920s through 1950 bjj vs shoot wrestling / judo rivalry
The fact that they specifically didn't want wrestlers makes me mad tbh. Like this whole time I've been defending bjj saying it is the best martial art in a 1 on 1 fight against any other martial art but they ducked wrestlers.
Dude, whatever martial art you think is the best (bjj, wrestling, etc.), why are you taking as reference what happened at UFC1? You have almost 30 years of MMA after that first event and countless fights between bjj black belts and wrestlers to use as reference to build your own opinion. If you have been defending bjj based solely on UFC1 and not the other literally tens of thousands vale-tudo and then later MMA fights thaat happened ever since you are just doing it wrong.
@@douglasdbs7139 BJJ is okay, but for a street fight you're better off with Boxing, kick boxing, or Muay Thai.
@@dondraper4438 Sure, whatever. I'm not questioning which martial art is best, I just didn't understand why you picked 1 data point (UFC1 event) to build your opinion regarding which martial art is best, instead of picking countless data points in the history of almost 30 years of MMA events that happend after that UFC1.
@@douglasdbs7139 I am not using that single data point. However, the UFC did use that single data point for promotional reasons, and had casual fans convinced for a long long long time.
To the point that even I as a younger man believed it at one point.
This issue with having Big John involved in fighting if he had won.
He would have won using Gracie Jiu Jitsu.
So their message would still work as Gracie Jiu Jitsu would have come out on top.
There was no judoka invited.
Because Masahiko Kimura, a judoka, beat a Gracie with a move that was then named after him.
Great video guys. And your findings are spot on. It was not rigged in that all the fights were works, but it was certainly set up in Gracie's favor. And just to poke another hole in the theory that a sumo wrestler would have squashed Royce, he fought a much bigger and more successful (he made the rank of Yokozuna) sumo wrestler later when he fought Akebono in K-1.
Isn't Akebono a title?
@@razorx8270 No. Yokozuna, however is a title and is the highest rank one can attain in Sumo.
My bad. Now I remember, Akebono wrestled Big Show. Also RIP WWF's Yokozuna. Embarrassing, but that was my mix-up
I love Tommy's animated face throughout the video
This is your best video by far. Clearing such a controversial topic is pure gold. Watched start to finish, was sold on the arguments, got a clear picture of the events that took place. Hell yeah, subscribed!
I don’t know about “rigged”, but it was definitely setup as a promotion for Gracie Jujitsu, and Royce was given every advantage available. Thats never really been a secret.
Long story short: it wasn’t rigged but Gracie’s did everything in their power to make sure they won. So, they “manipulated” the event.
that's what rigged means, you mean it wasn't fixed, it was rigged
I think you pretty much covered all the points really well.
The only fights rigged were Macias vs Taktarov, Don Frye vs his teammate, cant remember his name & Tito Ortiz vs Ryan Bader.
Whats the story with Ortiz and bader? I remember seeing it live and being shocked that Ortiz won... he was meant to be a sacrificial lamb for sure I thought
@@ChaosAD187 Some people might disagree.
But it's my opinion that Bader was hit with a phantom punch and then fell into the guillotine.
the Don Frye fight was rigged for sure. if you go back and watch it now its pretty clear lol
Yea let’s just for get about every Conor fight
Excellent video. I'd be interested to hear Royce's rebuttal. I always saw him as a dirty fighter, who really didn't deserve the praise he got. This really clarifies things.
I never liked him. Fought like a toddler. Never impressed with a single fight of is.
Art Jimmerson was smart. Got in at 20K, which is more than some guys make to show in UFC nowadays, took virtually no damage and was able to keep pro boxing.
I don't know if this is a mystery.
Can you dig into why TUF coaches were allowed their own students and how much of an advantage it was was for Leben to have Quarry on the same team under Couture.
Also the fact that Leben was able to jump the fence and not get eliminated, similar to Junie Browning getting multiple chances after huge violations.
Maybe a video along those lines.
Great idea for a video
McGregor's TUF coaching role was all about Artem.
@@folksurvival they don’t wanna talk and out their favorite fake fighter.
"Junie" (real name is Allen, TUF producers wanted him to go by Junie) was a normal guy and a *very* good fighter before TUF. He was "given multiple chances" because everyone knew the producers were setting him up purposefully in events outside the ring that would be "entertaining" because he's a "weird sounding kentucky boy"
@@wolfhoodie setting him up?
didn't he actually cut someone with glass?
also he almost injured Bader when he pushed him in the pool.
Brilliant video. Love these deep dives into the origins of MMA 👏
It's sad how people like to bring down the validity of the early UFC tournaments. People need to reemember that it wasn't really a sport inn the same way it is today. BJJ wasn't a widely known martial art at the time. That was partially the purpose of creating the UFC. It was to show how effective BJJ was at nulifying and defeating a much larger man. The reason the Gracie's took a step back, and slowly became overtaken by the evolution of the sport was because everyone started to use their Gracie BJJ system combined with the most effective techniques from kickboxing, judo, karate, Taekwondo, boxing, freestyle wrestling, Sombo, and Greco Roman. It was no longer martial art vs martial art, and the skill gap became more and more narrow between the competitors. The next generations truly started to mix all of the different arts (including BJJ) into the style of fighting we call MMA. UFC fans, and mma fans should really appreciate the Gracie family, and their contributions to combat sports. The sport literally wouldn't exist without them. Every UFC fighter over the last 25 years uses at least the basic fundamentals of BJJ within their style. It's a necessity in mma just like striking, working top control, or working from the clinch. You have to be able to work from your back at some point.
IDK about "rigged," but it was definitely skewed in Gracie's favor.
There’s a reason it feels like your watching WWE instead of the UFC.
Keep doing this investigation videos these definitely suits you!
Some things to correct from bill wallace, fighters did wrap their hands. Royce later fought sumo wrestler akebono who is way bigger than Teila Tuli. If other fighters would have worn gis it would have given Royce a bigger advantage as to use the gi for chokes and control, look at ufc 2 , Royce versus Minori ichihara who wore a gi and Royce versus Remco Pardoel who also wore a gi.
It’s crazy to look back at how the sport started!
Shooto and Pancrase were established before the UFC.
@@piotrd7355 they were both a worked shoot not real.
Yes, this was pointed out by jesse's interview with bill wallace and if you watched the later ones, the gracies got butt hurt by wrestlers with striking abilities. it was all designed to showcase how bad ass their BJJ was.