So people still believe this?

[Hanzou]

The "get off my lawn" tone is strong with Bill Superfoot Wallace in the original post's video. Do I agree with what he says? No. I think the Gracies were conscious about portraying BJJ in a good light, but I don't think anything was rigged.

Am I going to rage about what an awful person Superfoot is for doing this interview? Nope. He's the real deal and a full contact kickboxing legend, and after his career he has totally earned the right to be a grumpy old man from time to time.

It's like elderly boxers who think kicking or ground-and-pound is "dirty." I don't agree, but with their age and experience, I'm not going to berate them for their opinion.

The issue is what Wallace was saying was completely false.

 

[punisher73]

A couple of things. First, I don't agree with everything that Bill Wallace said, but he is partially correct on other things.

MMA Origins: UFC 1

Another perspective from an MMA website. They also point out that the fighters had no clue as to what they were doing and even Shamrock had only competed for one year prior to the UFC.

I agree that none of the fights were "rigged" as to their outcome (fight decided ahead of time who would win), but if you were alive back then and watching the first UFC as it happened, even then there were A LOT of questions on Royce's "random" first round draw of the one gloved boxer, and how the good strikers were all paired up right away against each other.

Shortly after this, there was also a backlash on the Gracie family as to all their "undefeated" claims and then stuff started showing up about their losses. A couple of examples were Helio havin a draw against Kato and then losing to Kimura and the Gracie family making excuses why it was really a win. Rickson Gracie's boast of being 400-0 in fights (which even Helio disputed the claim), then footage of him losing in a Sambo tournament to Ron Tripp surfaced and the family making excuses about how Rickson didn't know the rules (even though he claimed to be a 2 time Sambo Champion) and it wasn't really a loss.

Even in the BJJ community there was backlash about the Gracie propaganda that they were the one true source of all that is BJJ in Brazil.

All of these things play into "why" people don't believe the Gracies and the history of the UFC and "why" it is easy to pass on misinformation to this day.

 

[wab25]

Rickson Gracie's boast of being 400-0 in fights

I was never really a fan of Rickson's record. To me it did more bad than good for his reputation... as he proved it was fake himself. When he had his first fight in Pride, he came in boasting of a 400-0 fight record. Okay, sure, lets go with that for a minute. He won that fight. Then he came back to his second Pride fight... with a fight record of 400-0. Shouldn't that have been a fight record of 401-0??? That was the first red flag about him. The second was how he kept ducking the fight with Sakuraba, when both were in their prime. Sakuraba accepted the Gracie Challenge and started beating them all, working his way up to the best Gracie, who ducked the fight for years.

Don't get me wrong, I like BJJ and I like watching the Gracie's fight. They are very good. I was just sad to see shenanigans take away from what they were doing... Personally, the one I look up to most is Royce. He wasn't the best, but he was a fighter. I don't recall him ducking out of a fight and he always gave his all. His interview after the Sakuraba loss was incredible... where he said his foot was broken but he was going out to fight... Dad says fight, I fight.

 

[Hanzou]

I was never really a fan of Rickson's record. To me it did more bad than good for his reputation... as he proved it was fake himself. When he had his first fight in Pride, he came in boasting of a 400-0 fight record. Okay, sure, lets go with that for a minute. He won that fight. Then he came back to his second Pride fight... with a fight record of 400-0. Shouldn't that have been a fight record of 401-0??? That was the first red flag about him. The second was how he kept ducking the fight with Sakuraba, when both were in their prime. Sakuraba accepted the Gracie Challenge and started beating them all, working his way up to the best Gracie, who ducked the fight for years.

Yeah, I have a great deal of respect for Rickson, but he very clearly avoided Sakuraba by any means necessary. That simply can't be denied.