In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I sit down with UFC legend Royce Gracie to talk about his life growing up in Brazil, how he got into jiu-jitsu, and how he became the first black belt in the sport of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He also talks about how he was chosen to represent the UFC on national TV, and what it was like growing up as the son of a jiu jitsu champion. We also talk about what it's like to grow up in a family of martial artists, and why it's so important to have a martial arts father figure in your life. I hope you enjoy this episode, and that it gives you some insight into the life of a true martial artist. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about this podcast! and I'll give you a shoutout in next week's episode. Cheers, Joe & Rory! -The Joe Rogans Experience. -Jon Sorrentino Check it out! "The Joes Experience" is a podcast where we talk about Jiu Jitsu, MMA, and all things related to the sport, UFC, and life in general. -Jon Rogan Podcast by Night, all day long! -Jon talks about it all and gives his thoughts on it all. "the truth behind it all." -Rory's Dad, Hoist Gracie. -Reed Rogan - "The Truth" - "I'm the Truth Behind it all" - "I don't give a fuck about it. - Rene Gracie, Rene Rogan's story - "It's all about the truth" - Reece's story Rene's story is so much more! -Reece Rogan is a great guy! - Reed's story about it's not the truth, Rodeo's story, not Rene s story, Reeves story, and the truth about it, Reed s story - Rodey's story... Rene talks it all in this episode... Ree s story Rene is a good one, so good, Roe s story... I'm not going to stop talking about it! Reed talks it. Rees talks it out... Reed is a little bit about it... Reeee's story and Reed gives it all out! Reed does it all!
00:00:20.000It's always good to see you, man, but I know you're you, and I know you're just Hoist Gracie, you're who you are, but for most human beings, You are one of the most unusual people that's ever lived.
00:00:39.000The original ultimate fighter, the number one, the guy, the reason why this whole thing is so big.
00:00:51.000But for most people, our introduction to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was you in UFC 1. You know, I grew up in martial arts, but we didn't know about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu until UFC 1 in 1993. That one, Roryon had a vision.
00:01:10.000So back then we used to teach in the garage, private classes, one student at a time.
00:01:17.000And Roryon had the vision, how can we spread out throughout the world?
00:01:24.000Once America finds out, we've got to put it on TV. Once America finds out, the whole world will find out.
00:02:15.000Gracie in action videos were an eye-opening video for a lot of martial artists because they saw all these karate guys who were the guys who thought they were these badass fighters and they just got taken down and strangled, taken down and strangled, taken down and armbarred.
00:03:31.000Even before that, there's a black and white video of Horion, Hellson, Horlish, and some of the students fighting against karate guys on the tile.
00:03:42.000And that's when I was there, I was present on that day.
00:03:49.000Of the family fighting, and yeah, we got to fight this guy on the beach, and the guy showed up at the school, and we had to fight, and I always grew up listening to them, the stories of my father fighting, my uncles and my cousins, and so I was like, I want to be one of them.
00:05:34.000Oh my God, it would shock everybody, but wouldn't show the technique.
00:05:38.000And my father and Jorge were concerned about showing the technique of just what we can do by dominating somebody bigger, stronger, without having to hurt them.
00:05:50.000That's so amazing that you guys had so much confidence in jujitsu that they wanted you to not hurt someone.
00:05:58.000That's the conversation I remember having with my father.
00:07:36.000And the fact that he had had those early matches, like the matches with Kimura, Santana, all those different early matches that a lot of people don't even know about, that you could see online.
00:07:50.000it was a it was a they want to test themselves so kimura haven't lost and not just not lost but nobody lasts more than three minutes with him and my father was like okay I want to try.
00:12:43.000More for me to know what's coming at me than for me to use.
00:12:48.000So it's more for me to know how they move.
00:12:50.000So it wasn't like I'm going to learn striking to learn boxing to fight against a boxer.
00:12:57.000It was more for me to know what's coming, how they're going to move, when they're getting ready to throw a kick, a punch, for me to understand their movements.
00:13:06.000Yeah, Hickson's talked about that the same way.
00:13:08.000He said he didn't learn kickboxing to be a kickboxer.
00:13:11.000He just learned kickboxing to understand what they're doing, the distance, the timing.
00:13:34.000When you look back on this now, and you think, I mean, when you watch these old matches from like 1993, what does it feel like to see that?
00:14:08.000Yeah, you can punch the nuts, everything.
00:14:10.000But if you do eye gouge or bite, like Gerard Guardu, as soon as I took him down, he beat my ear on the first year in the finals in the first UFC, but there's no punishment.
00:14:20.000There's no, okay, you're going to get disqualified.
00:15:04.000It was UFC 12. And I remember The feeling of the first class, the feeling of how humiliated you are when you don't know jujitsu and you spar with someone who knows jujitsu.
00:15:17.000It's like you think you know how to fight and then you get in there and then all of a sudden you're on your back and you don't know what to do and all of a sudden you're getting choked and you're like, oh no, this is crazy!
00:15:27.000And you've been doing martial arts for a long time already.
00:15:30.000I had a completely distorted idea of my ability to fight.
00:15:40.000It's like back in the garage days, there was always a student that bring a family friend or a family member or coach from different styles of martial arts, and they would come in, and they would come in to fight us.
00:16:00.000But we, Jorge and I, would be like, okay, we're going to control and turn him into a student.
00:16:09.000So we'll take the guy down, mount, and pretty much talk to him.
00:16:12.000Maybe choke, maybe armbar, let it go, not hurting.
00:16:15.000And the guy will go home and goes, oh man, can I sign up?
00:17:08.000Half an hour there's a person coming in and leaving, coming, coming, coming.
00:17:11.000The neighbor's like, what are they doing over there?
00:17:14.000It's amazing what started in that garage, if you really think about it.
00:17:20.000But it's also amazing like his vision that he had some so much belief in jujitsu that he knew that he just it wasn't like it had to be developed it was already there you just have to show people they just need to know And we try advertisements, and so he finally figured out we have to put on TV. And once the American people find out, the whole world will see it.
00:20:38.000See, from the time I first got into martial arts when I was a little kid, there was always this thought, like, what would happen if a karate guy fought a judo guy?
00:20:48.000What would happen if a boxer fought a wrestler?
00:22:27.000Jiu-jitsu is the bond between the striking arts and the grappling arts and all of them.
00:22:35.000I mean, there's still guys who only understand jujitsu in a rudimentary sense, like they understand defense, but you have to at least understand defense.
00:22:43.000You have to at least know what someone's doing.
00:22:46.000You can't compete without understanding it, because you'll get caught.
00:23:54.000If it wasn't you, like if you didn't exist, if they had the UFC won and there was no representative of jujitsu, some big strong guy would have won.
00:24:15.000Yeah, you were the original representative of jiu-jitsu.
00:24:19.000And the reason why the UFC became so exciting was not just because you get to see these wild fights inside of a cage, but you see a smaller guy with better technique Beat the bigger, stronger men, which is what martial arts was always supposed to be.
00:24:39.000Jiu-Jitsu, I always tell people, is the only martial art that delivers as advertised.
00:24:43.000Because if you're a kickboxer, and you're a small guy, and another guy's a kickboxer, but he's like 250 pounds, you're fucked.
00:25:24.000No, it's the only martial art that really delivers as advertised.
00:25:29.000Where technique triumphs over everything.
00:25:34.000And that's what my father and Uncle Carlos and their brothers always tried to show people that you don't have to be the biggest, the strongest, the fastest.
00:25:46.000You just gotta know what you're doing.
00:25:48.000My father used to say, give me the right leverage and I'll lift the world with one hand.
00:29:22.000Like, say if you're a jiu-jitsu guy, and you're fighting in the first round, and rounds are five minutes long, and you take the guy down four minutes and thirty seconds, you only have thirty seconds to work.
00:29:33.000I feel like a fight should be, even if you're gonna make it rounds, the fight is the fight.
00:29:39.000I don't think someone should be able to get up.
00:29:42.000I don't think you should stand people up ever.
00:29:44.000I think once a guy takes you down, the fight is on the ground.
00:29:48.000If it's boring for the audience, tough shit.
00:29:56.000And if the round ends and then the new round begins, I think they should start you right back in the same place.
00:30:03.000I think because they're on the same weight division.
00:30:07.000Back then there was no weight division.
00:30:09.000I would say the fight doesn't favor one person, one style or another.
00:30:17.000It doesn't favor it, but it gives a distinct advantage if you let a person stand up that didn't stand up.
00:30:22.000So if you start the second round, say if you take me down with 4 minutes and 30 seconds to go and you're dominating me and you're closing in on me and you're about to tap me, but then the round ends.
00:30:34.000And then we start, but now we start standing up.
00:33:21.000I just think that having a fight start, if you start, you start standing up.
00:33:27.000But I think round to round, you should resume the position, whatever you were in, in the previous round.
00:33:34.000I think that's the only thing that makes sense.
00:33:36.000Because otherwise you didn't earn a stand-up.
00:33:38.000But if a guy takes you down and mounts you and he's setting up a head and arm choke and he's sinking it in and then the buzzer rings, you should go right back to that spot when round two starts because you didn't get out of that.
00:33:51.000And now if the guy's a kickboxer, now he goes, oh shit, I almost got caught.
00:33:56.000And now you start that next round standing up.
00:33:58.000He has an advantage because now he's standing up.
00:34:24.000I'm not, though, because I feel like, I mean, if it was the other way, if you start a fight, if a guy stood up and got back to a standing position, you would never take them back down again and start to...
00:34:37.000But if it was a switch around, just playing devil's advocate over here.
00:36:11.000That's an interesting thing, too, right?
00:36:13.000What people don't understand that just watch it and don't do martial arts is that it's really just about pacing yourself, too.
00:36:22.000Knowing when to hit the gas, when to back up, knowing that you have to fight for five rounds, and knowing when to push.
00:36:29.000Like, some fighters, they'll back off in the beginning because they know that a guy's gonna come out fast and hard, and they're just gonna wait.
00:36:44.000Like Horton used to say, if I drop you off in the middle of the ocean and tell you I'm coming back in an hour, all you gotta do is tread water for an hour.
00:36:54.000But if I drop you off and say goodbye, find your way home, now you gotta pick a direction and start swimming.
00:40:54.000If a guy's got a head and arm on you and he's holding you and you're in the turtle and his knees are free and you're not blocking your head, oh, this fight is over.
00:41:01.000But in the UFC, you can't even do anything.
00:41:56.000Also, it's weird that you can't hit the back of the head because the back of the head gets hit a lot.
00:42:01.000A lot accidentally, especially with head kicks.
00:42:04.000Like a lot of times head kicks wrap around the back of your head and it's totally legal.
00:42:09.000Like if two guys are standing and one guy faints and the guy throws a punch and the guy throws a head kick and the head kick hits him, bang!
00:42:17.000It wraps right around the back of the head.
00:42:23.000Which is crazy, but if you get a guy on the ground and you punch him in the back of the head, the referee take a point away, stand you up, doesn't make any sense.
00:48:42.000So I don't necessarily think that that's the best idea because as soon as you go up against that, a lot of times guys wind up falling down and the guy just falls on top of them.
00:49:13.000You start in the center and then that's how you fight.
00:49:18.000I'm just trying to eliminate all the factors that aren't another human.
00:49:22.000Like the other human, if a guy takes you down and you could scooch up to the wall and then you start using the wall and you press up against the wall, now you're standing up again, but you use the wall.
00:49:34.000If that was just flat, no wall, you're not getting up.
00:51:53.000If it wasn't for his vision and the way they decided to go about doing it, and also your father, your father's vision for it, you're like, don't hurt him.
00:52:12.000And that's why I think the first, second, third UFC, until I didn't finish on the third UFC, and first and second, people were like, there's no way.
00:52:44.000Like I said before, my first classes, the ideas that you had in your head of how competent you are versus the reality that you're confronted with.
00:52:53.000And you saw that in all the Gracian action tapes, too.
00:52:56.000These guys, they wanted to do it again.
00:54:42.000So I end up on his back, and that's when I choke him.
00:54:45.000Such a strange time for martial arts, really.
00:54:48.000If you really stop and think about it, such a strange time.
00:54:51.000Because all these years, thousands of years of people fighting, thousands of years of people having this idea of how to fight, and then all of it comes together in the UFC, and then we go, okay, now we have new data.
00:55:08.000And then you see it evolve to what it is now, where you see these guys, like Alex Pajeda, the kickboxer who comes in, and now he's got his style.
00:55:18.000I think today is more of a lot of strategy too.
00:55:22.000Because both fighters are practicing the stand-up and the grappling.
00:55:28.000They do jiu-jitsu, they do wrestling, everybody does kickboxing, karate, everybody practices all of them.
00:55:34.000So it's a question of who has the best strategy.
00:55:46.000He just hits you once, you're unconscious.
00:55:48.000You know, like, that guy presents a very unique challenge.
00:55:51.000Like, if you don't grab him and you don't get him to the ground, you're fucked.
00:55:55.000Because if you're standing up with him, at any moment that guy's gonna set you up, move, and BOOM! Like we did with Jamal Hill in that last fight.
00:56:03.000All it takes is one shot from that guy.
00:56:06.000So these guys now, everyone has their own unique skill set, and it's so interesting seeing how that skill set matches up with another guy's skill set.
00:56:16.000With Pajeda, I want to see what happens if he fights against an elite wrestler, who is really good at takedowns, who knows jiu-jitsu.
00:56:24.000You know, and we haven't seen that yet.
00:56:26.000But he trains a lot of grappling, too.
00:58:42.000So yeah, they don't think about anything else.
00:58:45.000They're just more, I think they're more disciplined than this side of the world.
00:58:52.000Yeah, I was watching this interview with Khabib where he was talking, it was a conversation that he was having with someone who was talking about young people, that it's so important that they maintain focus because a young guy who's really talented and is above and better than everybody else when he's 18, sometimes they'll slack off and then they come back to it when they're like 22, but then by then they're average and everybody else has gotten much better and they lost that advantage and they won't be special.
00:59:20.000But the guy who's 18, who's above and beyond everybody else in the gym, that guy, if he can maintain that discipline and maintain that focus, then he can go on to become a champion.
01:00:27.000Before, like a month, two months before the fights, a month before the fight, when I was fighting in Japan, when I went to fight in Japan, a month before the fight, I would move out of the house.
01:00:39.000So I don't have to deal with the kids, with the woman, nothing.
01:02:27.000And what kind of endurance training would you do?
01:02:30.000Oh, doing everything from running to swimming to strength coach.
01:02:37.000And I one time got up and it's like, okay, the guy, he used to be the strength coach for USC, for the Rams when they were in LA. James, man, went for a 41-mile run.
01:03:06.000So, just not too long ago, a couple years ago, a bunch of friends of mine from the Navy SEALs asked me, hey, let's go swim across, let's go swim at Tampa Bay.
01:07:35.000It's crazy when you think about it, how much the sport has changed and how many just, I mean, and what's amazing is you could watch all those matches too.
01:07:45.000Like back then, trying to watch a match was very hard to do.
01:12:35.000Like, I think it was Henzo that said once, Henzo, man, it's another beast on the family, said, we are not a family, we're a factory of fighters.
01:17:55.000Kaizen is this Japanese phrase for doing something over and over and over again, just constantly focusing on this one thing and continuing to perfect it over and over and over and over again.
01:18:10.000And their thought is, if you work out five days a week, but I work out seven days a week, In a month, I've worked out four times more than you.
01:18:19.000In a year, you add that times 52, 52 weeks.
01:18:23.000You keep going over and over and over again.
01:18:25.000After 10 years, I have, you know, extra years of training on you.
01:18:30.000And when you think about it that way, it's really the way to do it.
01:18:35.000If you want to really be the best of the best, and you know there's a guy like Gordon out there that is training 365 days a year, Like, you kind of have to.
01:22:48.000Yeah, it's just, it's again, it's like learning from a real master, you know, and seeing like, when you see him shoot, you're like, Jesus Christ.
01:22:56.000He's like, fast, super accurate, perfect technique, you know, and you see that, you go, oh, that's what it looks like when it's done right.
01:23:43.000They post a picture of somebody was eating some sushi and somebody post a picture in a Brazilian barbecue place and they all post about eating.
01:24:19.000The meats are my house, the hides are my house, the heads are my house, and the leftovers, the cuts that we don't eat, the other animals went to eat.
01:24:30.000So I had to educate a lot of them on that.
01:25:36.000But when you're shooting out of a helicopter and shooting 250 pigs, you're not...
01:25:40.000You're not going to go and take those pigs and bring them anywhere.
01:25:43.000No, I have a friend of ours in Texas that take us out to have his helicopter, Ryan Ashcraft, and we shoot, but then we go back down, we collect.
01:32:25.000California spent $24 billion tackling homelessness over five years, but didn't track if the money was helping the state's growing number of unhoused people.
01:32:35.000so they spent 24 billion dollars and they can't they can't figure out what the it did god it's ridiculous and it's not it's not getting better at all it's getting worse every time i go back there i'm like oh god it's worse and i only go back like once a year now i go back once a year i love it i hope it gets better i would love to move back but It's not going to get better.
01:33:01.000It's not going to get better for a long time.
01:33:47.000It's insane because they're hiring the most insane district attorneys and they're making it easier and easier for people to get out of jail who've committed violent crimes.
01:33:56.000I mean, they've lost their fucking minds.
01:33:59.000And I don't know how it comes back, other than they have to get some hardcore Republican governor who starts cleaning things up and just cuts back on all the waste and cuts back on all the bullshit and just puts their foot down.
01:34:13.000It's gonna take a long time, but I have hope.
01:38:23.000I think a lot of it is influenced by foreign governments.
01:38:26.000I think foreign governments influence universities by supporting people with very ridiculous ideologies and then making sure that those people with ridiculous ideologies enforce those things in children.
01:38:39.000And then you have social media, which social media is also propped up, especially TikTok, which is essentially owned by China, and they promote All these ridiculous things, and these things get into kids' heads, and they're on TikTok every day, and then they start thinking that this is the only way to think and behave.
01:38:57.000But the way I... Sometimes it's like the way I think in the martial arts business.
01:39:08.000If your school has 100 students or 1,000 students, it doesn't make a difference to me.
01:39:16.000I prefer that you succeed and have a thousand students.
01:40:29.000Everybody should have the opportunity to work hard and get better and move ahead and try to better your life and better the life of your family.
01:40:38.000And if you think that way, You're gonna have a good society, but if you think that society is evil and it's all colonists and that we've got to destroy it and take it all down and capitalism is evil, okay, what are you gonna replace it with?
01:40:52.000They didn't even thought this thing through.
01:44:03.000And then you have classes all day long, and everybody's getting better, and the level is high, because there's guys that are good in the gym, so you get excited, and you're thinking about your game, and you're thinking about constantly improving.
01:44:22.000There's nothing oppressive about that success.
01:44:25.000We're not talking about the success of like the military industrial complex or like, you know, the oil companies polluting the ocean.
01:44:31.000No, you're talking about there's a lot of people that work hard and their success is not even remotely oppressive.
01:44:37.000So when people connect all capitalism to degradation of the environment and controlling of people and oppressing people, that's ridiculous.
01:44:48.000That's just a foolhardy way of looking at the world.
01:48:30.000There was a group of people that were training for a triathlon and they were in the ocean doing a swim and one of them got killed by a great white.
01:48:35.000And my friend went swimming there the next day.
01:48:38.000Because he had to prepare for the swim that he was doing.
01:48:40.000The shark was already stomach full, so...
01:51:29.000If they're not moving, if you know they're feeding, and they're not moving, and there's no wind, and you know you practice at 100, and you know you can make it, but you have to be like...
01:52:23.000Just no anticipation of the shot pulled through.
01:52:27.000To me, I have to get that ingrained in my head, that technique.
01:52:31.000It has to just be over and over and over again where it's ingrained in my head so that when I'm drawing on an animal, I know exactly what to do.
01:53:09.000But don't you think that because you've fought so many times and because of all your years of jiu-jitsu and things like shooting and things that involve technique and concentration, they come naturally?
02:00:08.000Well, in California they're starting to hand out concealed carry permits to people in Los Angeles again because the crime is so bad and they realize like...
02:03:07.000Well, listen, Hoist, you're a legend, and it was great running into you at the UFC. I'm so glad we got a chance to talk to each other, because I've been wanting to make contact with you, get you on the podcast for a long time.