Royce Gracie

Early life

Royce Gracie was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 12 December 1966. One of the nine children of jiu-jitsu grandmaster Hélio Gracie, he learned the martial art from his father in his childhood. He had his first competition at age 8 and started teaching classes when he was 14 years old. When he was 17, Royce was awarded a black belt by his father, Hélio. A few months later, after he turned 18, he and his brothers Royler and Rickson Gracie moved to Torrance, California, to live with their older brother Rorion Gracie, who had moved there in 1978 and had established Gracie Academy.

The Gracie brothers in the United States continued the family's tradition of the "Gracie Challenge", in which they challenged other martial artists to no-rules full-contact matches in their gym to prove the superiority of Gracie jiu-jitsu. Rorion would later edit footage from the Gracie Challenge fights into a single documentary series known as Gracie in Action, with some footage featuring Royce's fights. The Gracie in Action tapes inspired Art Davie to create the UFC.

Mixed martial arts career

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was founded in 1993 by Rorion Gracie, business executive Art Davie, and the Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG). The premise of the event was doing an eight-man openweight single-elimination tournament, with minimal rules, from fighters representing different martial arts, to find the most effective and strongest fighting style. While Davie and the SEG were interested in doing an event with violent and exciting vale tudo fights similar to what they had seen on the Gracie in Action tapes, Rorion was interested in promoting his family's own jiu-jitsu style by defeating larger and stronger opponents from more well-known martial arts. Rorion said he picked Royce to represent the family's art because of his skinnier and smaller frame, to show how a small person can defeat a bigger opponent using jiu-jitsu.

Gracie entered the tournament wearing his now iconic Brazilian jiu-jitsu gi. In his first match, Gracie defeated journeyman boxer Art Jimmerson. He tackled him to the ground using a baiana (morote-gari or double-leg) and obtained the dominant "mounted" position. Mounted and with only one free arm, Jimmerson conceded defeat.

In the semi-finals, Gracie fought against shootfighter and King of Pancrase fighter Ken Shamrock. This was Royce's most difficult match, as Shamrock had grappling experience (having caught Patrick Smith in a Heel Hook in a previous match). Gracie started the round by attempting a double-leg, which was defended by Shamrock with a sprawl, and Shamrock attempted to stand up back to his feet. Gracie then responded by pulling Shamrock to his guard and started to do small kicks into Shamrock's kidneys, but he got out from his guard and attempted to pull Gracie into a heel hook, as he had done with Patrick Smith similarly before. The Brazilian defended by wrapping his gi around Shamrock's arm, and when the latter sat back, it pulled Gracie on top of him. He then proceeded to take Shamrock's back and used his own gi to secure a rear naked choke. Shamrock later stated it was a gi choke, using the cloth around his neck. Shamrock tapped out to Gracie's choke, but the referee did not see the tap and ordered both fighters to continue the match. Shamrock then admitted defeat to the referee, saying it would not be fair, and Royce was declared the bout's victor, with both fighters exchanging a handshake after some taunting.

Gracie fought in the finals against karate Kyokushin practitioner and savate world champion Gerard Gordeau. Gracie managed to take his opponent to the ground and secure a rear choke, winning the bout. During the fight, Gordeau bit Gracie's ear, breaking one of the few rules of the event. Gracie retaliated by holding the choke after Gordeau had tapped out, with the Dutchman tapping in panic before they were separated by the referee. Royce was then declared the "Ultimate Fighting Champion" and was awarded $50,000 in prize money.

PRIDE Fighting Championships

Gracie was originally going to debut in PRIDE Fighting Championships in their 1998 PRIDE 2 event, where he would be pitted against fellow UFC champion Mark Kerr. The Gracie side demanded special rules without time limit or referee stoppage, which were accepted. However, Royce pulled out due to a back injury after the fight had been advertised.

The situation changed after PRIDE 8, when Royce's older brother Royler Gracie was defeated by Kazushi Sakuraba. Sakuraba dominated the match and won by technical submission, as Royler was caught in a Kimura lock and refused to tap out, the referee stopped the match before his arm could be broken. This was the first time in 50 years a Gracie had been defeated in a mixed martial arts fight and Sakuraba followed by a challenge to Rickson Gracie. In response, the Gracies argued that Royler's loss did not count as he had not conceded or tapped out, and the referee's stopping of the bout went against the special ruleset they had requested for the fight. Many pundits were also affirming that the Gracie pure-BJJ approach was not able to match a well-rounded cross-trained fighter anymore. In response to that assertion, and to defeat Sakuraba in a rematch, the Gracies signed Royce up to PRIDE.

Royce Gracie's first event in PRIDE was in the "PRIDE Grand Prix 2000", an openweight tournament that would be divided into two events: the Opening Round, which consisted of the Round of 16 and the Finals which would happen three months later and consisted of the quarter-finals, Semi-finals and Finals. The bouts in the Opening Round had their rules modified to have only one round of fifteen minutes. In the first round, he fought Japanese professional wrestler Nobuhiko Takada. Takada was a very popular wrestler who had headlined PRIDE 1 and PRIDE 4 against Royce's brother Rickson. Takada was also the former mentor of Sakuraba, the family's rival.

In the first minute of the bout Gracie pulled Takada into his guard, and he spent the rest of the match unsuccessfully trying to submit or sweep Takada. After a largely uneventful fight, Royce Gracie was declared the winner by unanimous decision and advanced to the Grand Prix Quarter-Finals.

Royce was then set to fight Kazushi Sakuraba in the quarter-finals at the PRIDE Grand Prix 2000 Finals. Sakuraba was a professional wrestler who derived his foundation in submission grappling from catch wrestling and shoot-style wrestling. He had defeated several opponents and become one of the first Japanese stars of PRIDE. As Royce entered the Grand Prix specially to fight Sakuraba, the Gracies demanded special rules for the fight: an unlimited number of 15-minute rounds, no judges, no referee stoppages, and wins could only come by knockout, submission or throwing in the towel. Sakuraba criticized the different ruleset, the Gracie's demands to fight under it and their demands for special treatment, but ended up agreeing to the challenge nonetheless.

Fighting and Entertainment Group

In September 2004 PRIDE had a disagreement with Gracie about his participation in the 2005 PRIDE Middleweight Grand Prix. Gracie had issues with the proposed opponents and rules (Grand Prix fights must have a winner and cannot end in a draw). He jumped to Fighting and Entertainment Group's K-1 organization. Pride sued Gracie for breaching his contract with them. The case was settled in December 2005, with Gracie issuing a public apology, blaming his actions on a misinterpretation of the contract by his manager.

In K-1, Royce Gracie competed on K-1's Dynamite!! series, which featured both kickboxing and MMA matches on their cards. On December 31, 2004, Gracie entered the K-1 scene at the K-1 PREMIUM 2004 Dynamite!! event inside the Osaka Dome, facing off against former sumo wrestler and MMA newcomer Akebono Tarō aka. Chad Rowan under special MMA rules (Two 10-minute rounds; the match would end as a draw if there was no winner after the two rounds). Gracie made quick work of his heavy opponent, forcing Akebono to submit to a shoulder lock at 2:13 of the first round.

Exactly one year later, on the K-1 PREMIUM 2005 Dynamite!! card of December 31, 2005, Gracie fought Japan's Hideo Tokoro, a 143-pound fighter, in a fight ending in a draw after 20 minutes. Gracie's original opponent was scheduled to be the tall Korean fighter Choi Hong-man, another MMA newcomer.

Return to UFC

On January 16, 2006, UFC President Dana White announced that Royce Gracie would return to the UFC to fight UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes on May 27, 2006, at UFC 60. This was a non-title bout at a catchweight of 175 lb. under UFC/California State Athletic Commission rules. To prepare, Gracie trained in Muay Thai and was frequently shown in publicity materials from Fairtex.

In round one, Hughes secured a straight armbar that hyper-extended Royce's arm, however Royce refused to tap. Hughes eventually won the fight by TKO at 4:39 of the first round.

Royce said later after the fight with Hughes that he wanted a rematch and that he was not surprised by Hughes's performance: "No, we knew what he was planning to do. We worked out his gameplan before the fight, and he did exactly what we expected. I over-trained for the fight. That was all. I started training too much, too hard, for too long. He did exactly what we expected."

Rematch with Sakuraba

On May 8, 2007, EliteXC announced that Gracie's opponent for the June 2 Dynamite!! USA event in Los Angeles would be Japanese fighter Kazushi Sakuraba.

Gracie defeated Sakuraba by a unanimous decision. However, a post-fight drug screen revealed that Royce had traces of Nandrolone in his system. "Use of steroids is simply cheating," said Armando Garcia, California State Athletic Commission executive director. "It won't be tolerated in this state."

Steroids scandal

On June 14, 2007, the California State Athletic Commission declared that Gracie had tested positive for Nandrolone, an anabolic steroid, after his fight with Sakuraba. According to the California State Athletic Commission, the average person could produce about 2 ng/ml of Nandrolone, while an athlete following "rigorous physical exercise" could have a level of around 6 ng/ml. Both "A" and "B" test samples provided by Gracie "had a level of over 50 ng/ml and we were informed that the level itself was so elevated that it would not register on the laboratory's calibrator," said the CSAC. Gracie was fined $2,500 (the maximum penalty the commission can impose) and suspended for the remainder of his license, which ended on May 30, 2008. Gracie paid the fine.

Royce Gracie decided to dispute the allegations during an online video interview in May 2009, saying that his weight in the first UFC event was 178 lb and claiming his weight during his Sakuraba fight was 180 lb, thus only gaining 2 pounds. This was widely disputed by experts. According to ESPN, "In the former contest, he weighed in at 175 pounds; for Sakuraba, he was 188. One may not need to be nutritionist to observe that a muscle gain of 13 pounds in one year at the age of 40 is a strikingly accomplished feat. Athletes nearing the half-century mark are often happy to maintain functional mass, let alone pack it on".

Retirement

On March 11, 2011, Royce Gracie's profile was added back to ufc.com active fighters list as a middleweight. His manager stated that they were actively negotiating with the UFC for a return to the Octagon and said it was just a matter of "getting it nailed down" and that there was plenty of time for it.

On November 15, 2013, at UFC 167 on the 20th Anniversary of the UFC, Royce Gracie confirmed to MMA journalist Ariel Helwani that he had retired from competing in mixed martial arts.

Return with Bellator MMA

At Bellator 145, it was announced that Gracie would return from retirement to face rival Ken Shamrock in a trilogy fight, taking place on February 19, 2016, at Bellator 149. Gracie won the fight via TKO in round one. The win was not without controversy, however, as replays showed that Gracie landed a knee strike that grazed the groin of Shamrock prior to the finish. Shamrock protested the stoppage, however the bout was officially ruled a victory for Gracie. It was later announced that Shamrock had failed his pre-fight drug test for banned substances.

Submission grappling career

On December 17, 1998, at Oscar de Jiu Jitsu, Royce Gracie competed in a grudge-match superfight against Wallid Ismail in front of several thousand spectators. Carlson Gracie was Ismail's coach, though Ismail originally was Carlson's fourth choice to face Royce after Mario Sperry, Murilo Bustamante and Amaury Bitetti. The match was contested without points and with no time-limit in place, with Ismail choking Gracie unconscious via clock choke in four minutes and fifty-three seconds.

Post-fight career

Gracie has been since retired from MMA competition and has been focusing in teaching jiu-jitsu. He mostly travels around the world going to schools, teaching in seminars and doing interviews in magazines, websites and talk shows. He has opened his own association of gyms known as "Royce Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Network", with affiliate schools in 34 locations in the United States, and many throughout the world in Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, Guatemala, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Royce Gracie's branch of jiu-jitsu focuses mainly on the self-defense parts of the martial art. Gracie has accused modern "sporting" jiu-jitsu of teaching techniques that are unpractical and unrealistic to use in a self-defense situation, and claims to be rescuing the true intent of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu as devised by his father Hélio Gracie.

Personal life

Gracie filed for divorce in 2016. He and his former wife Marianne have three sons and a daughter. His son Kheydon Gracie enlisted in the US Army.

Despite being a 7th degree coral belt, Gracie wears a dark blue belt when training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu paying homage to his father, Hélio Gracie, who primarily wore a dark blue belt despite having the highest possible rank, red belt. Hélio Gracie died in 2009, and Royce said he does not want to be promoted by anybody else.

Gracie is an avid firearms shooter. In 2022, Gracie competed in and was on the winning team of the Sig Hunter Games as a member of team Warrior.

On July 6, 2023, it was announced that ESPN Films is producing a documentary series on the Gracie family directed by Chris Fuller and produced by Greg O'Connor and Guy Ritchie.

Conversion to Islam

Gracie identified as a Zionist and a supporter of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. until March 2024 when he abruptly announced his conversion to Islam and took his shahadah on camera in front of Sheikh Uthman Ibn Farooq and Imams Da’ee and Muhaddith. The event was facilitated by Eddie Redzovic, an ethnic Bosnian American Muslim YouTuber and fifth-degree BJJ black belt based in Chicago.

Controversies and legal troubles

Gracie has engaged in multiple disputes with other martial artists including his nephews Rener Gracie, Ryron Gracie, and Eddie Bravo.

On April 1, 2015, the IRS sent Royce Gracie and his wife a Notice of Deficiency claiming they owe $657,114 in back taxes and $492,835.25 in penalties for Civil Fraud, based on IRC 6663(a). The case was settled on March 31, 2023, and Royce Gracie agreed to pay $461,611.80 to the US government.

Instructor lineage

Brazilian jiu-jitsu

Kano Jigoro → Tomita Tsunejiro → Mitsuyo Maeda → Carlos Gracie → Hélio Gracie → Royce Gracie

Championships and accomplishments

Mixed martial arts

Ultimate Fighting Championship

UFC Hall of Fame (Inaugural inductee, Pioneer Wing, class of 2003)

UFC 1 Tournament Championship

UFC 2 Tournament Championship

UFC 4 Tournament Championship

UFC 3 Tournament semi-finalist

UFC Viewer's Choice Award

UFC Encyclopedia Awards

Fight of the Night (Four times) vs. Ken Shamrock 1, Minoki Ichihara, Kimo Leopoldo and Dan Severn

Submission of the Night (Four times) vs. Gerard Gordeau, Remco Pardoel, Kimo Leopoldo and Dan Severn

First tournament champion in UFC history

Longest finish streak in UFC history (11)

Most bouts won in tournaments in UFC history (11)

Most tournaments won in UFC history (3)

Most fights in a single night in UFC history (4) (tied with Patrick Smith)

Longest fight in UFC history (36 minutes) - vs. Ken Shamrock 2 at UFC 5

Longest submission streak in UFC history (6)

Tied (Gilbert Burns) for most armbar submission wins in UFC history (4)