The sun set behind the Seibu Dome baseball stadium in Tokorozawa, Japan, on Aug. 27, 2000. It had been a long time coming, but the violent evening of a day that dawned 92 years earlier was finally here.
More than 39,000 fans packed out the stands and the infield, trusting that their national defender, Kazushi Sakuraba, could finally finish off the family many of their countrymen and countrywomen had come to fear and loathe for literal generations. The Gracie in the ring that night was a brawler named Renzo, but Sakuraba had already done battle with two others of the famed Brazilian clan.
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Before him, Japan had sent a dozen others in against its many-headed nemesis, only for all to be sent back humbled by crushing defeats.
It was a humid night and the grass, trapped under plastic, was sweating, turning the air pungent and the ring canvas slippery. “I felt it under my feet when I got to the ring,” recalls Sakuraba.
“It was just slippery enough to make the fight more dangerous,” says Renzo.
Nevertheless, they flew out of their corners at the first bell.
Japan’s Kazushi Sakuraba always had a flair for the dramatic.
(Chad Matthew Carlson via Getty Images)
That fight, and the larger, decades-long war that preceded it, was inevitable the moment the Kasato Maru docked in Santos, Brazil on June 18, 1908. The former hospital ship carried 781 Japanese farmers to a land that needed them almost as badly as their struggling homeland had needed them to leave.
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The Japanese — and the hundreds of thousands soon to follow — were invited, but not welcome.
Many MMA fans know the lore: One of those immigrants was the famed judoka, Mitsuyo “Count Koma” Maeda, and it was he who tutored the Gracie brothers, Carlos and George. They, in turn, taught their weaker sibling Helio, who adapted and improved Japan’s national art into the fearsome fighting system now known as Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
There’s strong evidence today that the Gracies were actually taught by Jacintho Ferro, Koma’s student, and that Helio was, in fact, a champion swimmer and rower. But the Gracies understood the power of storytelling almost as well as they mastered the violent arts of submission grappling.
From the 1930s onward, the brothers and their descendants took on all comers in vale tudo (translated to “anything goes”) fights. Whether the opponent used boxing, karate, another modified Japanese art, or the Gracie’s hated counterparts from Luta Livre, the Gracie fighting family almost always won — and used their influence to ensure the local and national newspapers reported they’d won.
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In 1951, a São Paulo-based, Japanese-language newspaper — the São Paulo Shimbun — spied an opportunity. It would use the ex-patriate population’s dislike of the Gracies, and the Gracie’s claim to have “improved” Japan’s national sport of judo, to sell newspapers in Brazil and launch a side hustle.
The paper sponsored a demonstration tour led by three-time Japanese champion judoka Masahiko Kimura. The shows delighted the Japanese expats — as did the accompanying editorials praising the troupe as “real black belts” and denigrating the famous Gracies as “pretenders.”
Brazilian martial artist pioneer Helio Gracie in 1995.
(EVAN HURD PHOTOGRAPHY via Getty Images)
“Judo was Japan’s national sport, but much more,” explains Patrick Watabe, a Japanese martial arts historian. “It was part of school curriculums, a source of masculine pride and a touchstone to the era before Japan went through painful transition to modernization. For Japanese in Brazil, the Gracies’ claim to have ‘improved’ judo was insulting on a cultural level which is hard to explain in terms of mere sport.”
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The São Paulo Shimbun must have known the Gracies, already a quarter century deep into fighting at the merest provocation, would respond with a challenge match. However, they underestimated Helio Gracie, who choked judoka Yukio Kato within an inch of his life in September 1951.
Helio then demanded Kimura himself face him.
News of Kato’s humiliation rippled from Rio to Tokyo.
“It was a national crisis,” says Watabe. “It was a deep humiliation for a foreigner to have taken judo, twisted and distorted it, and then used to embarrass Japan.”
Japan was still reconstituting its sense of national pride after the devastation of World War 2. The country was still occupied by the U.S. and the Americans had all but banned judo until recently. The martial art was making a comeback, but, officials feared, if the pre-war hero Kimura was also beaten by a foreigner using a bastardized Japanese style, then judo’s tentative resurgence would end.
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“The consulate in Brazil informed me that, without victory, they would cancel all our passports,” Kimura wrote in his 1985 autobiography. “I would be exiled, cut off from my home and family.”
The Oct. 23, 1951 showdown at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, less than a month after Helio’s embarrassment of Kato, was like a UFC championship fight hurled back in time. Among the 20,000 who took their seats were Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas and Mishima Shōdō, the celebrated Japanese novelist who’d served as Japan’s sports minister.
Kimura arrived to his dressing room to find an open coffin waiting for him, and, for some last-minute encouragement, the Brazilians then pelted him with rotten eggs on the way to the ring.
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But with the threat of exile hanging over his head, he dominated the match, easily throwing Gracie to the canvas several times before following him down and cranking in an ude garami (double wrist lock) — a submission today known more commonly by a different name: The kimura.
Kimura wrote:
“The stadium grew very quiet and sound of bone breaking echoed. Helio still did not surrender. I had no choice but to twist the arm again. Another bone snapped. Helio still did not tap — but a white towel was thrown in. My hand was raised.”
Japan had carried the day, but the rapidly-expanding Gracie family continue to preach the gospel of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
A rematch between Japan and the Gracies was inevitable.
An exterior view of the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, circa 1960.
(Pictorial Parade via Getty Images)
The man who would rescue a nation was born July 14, 1969. A happy child who smiled with his eyes as well as his lips, Sakuraba grew up in the farming and fishing villages of Ibaraki Prefecture to the north of Toyko.
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Upon graduating from college, Sakuraba mortified his parents by announcing he was moving to Tokyo to pursue a career as a professional wrestler. Mom and dad can be forgiven for not envisioning a bright future for their son — Kazushi was tall, 6-foot, but retained a dedicated aversion to physical exercise despite years of amateur wrestling. He was also a non-stop joker, a smoker and drinker, and had a big-kid persona that surely would not fit in.
Nobuhiko Takada also struggled to envision the young man becoming a draw in puroresu (pro-wrestling). Takada was the founder and top star — what are the chances? — of the ultra-realistic UWFI wrestling promotion from 1991-96 and owner of Japan’s UWFI gym. To him, Sakuraba was merely another kōhai — a dues-paying student who probably wouldn’t amount to much.
Yet head coach Billy Robinson, a world-famous catch wrestler from England, saw something very different. Suddenly doing exactly what he loved, Sakuraba worked harder and longer than anyone in the gym. Robinson also noted Sakuraba had a great feeling for catch wrestling, both setting up and escaping legitimate submission holds.
UWFI presented a form of wrestling at the time that was so realistic, many fans mistook it for legitimate fights — and mistook Takada as the greatest Japanese fighter of his generation, even over and above Japan’s boxing world champions.
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Feeling no one would take Sakuraba seriously as a shooter — pro-wrestling parlance for a legitimate tough guy — Takada kept him at the bottom of the cards. Takada’s own reputation as a shooter, though, was counterfeited with two pro-wrestling matches where he viciously double-crossed his opponents. First, in 1991, he kicked a shellshocked Trevor Berbick’s legs so hard, the former WBC heavyweight boxing champion literally ran from the ring, gathered his gangster friends from ringside, and stormed into Takada’s office …
… only to find better-dressed and better-armed Japanese gangsters waiting for them. Berbick and pals left Japan that same night.
Former WBC heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick learned the hard way about the dark corners of the Japanese fight game.
(John Iacono via Getty Images)
A year later Takada brutally knocked out unsuspecting sumo yokozuna Koji Kitao with a Leon Edwards-esque head kick.
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But then 1993 came, and the ground moved from underneath Takada and the UWFI.
“First Masahiko Kimura died in April,” explains Watabe, “and in celebrating him, the older generation remembered how a real fighter should conduct themselves. It also reintroduced the Gracies to the national conversation — and just months later, Helio Gracie’s young son, Royce, won the first UFC event. Japan had the thought: ‘The enemy of Kimura has gotten stronger.’”
In evolutionary biology, a convergence is when two completely unrelated species happen to evolve into similar forms, like the way sharks and whales both have dorsal fins, jagged teeth and a streamlined grey appearance. In late 1993, there was a convergence for what would soon be called mixed martial arts.
Just weeks before Helio’s elder son, Rorion Gracie, teamed up with Art Davie and Campbell McLaren to form the UFC in North America, two frustrated pro-wrestlers — Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki — took the UWFI style to its logical conclusion and put on a card of legitimate fights.
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“All of this was bad news for Takada,” says Watabe. “The UFC and Pancrase showed the world what real fighting actually looked like, and it didn’t look like UWFI. Because the Gracies had been in the news with Kimura’s obituaries, and because Ken Shamrock [who Royce submitted in just 57 seconds at UFC 1] was a top star in Pancrase, the Gracies were quickly becoming famous in Japan.”
Takada responded by using a complicit Japanese media to challenge the Gracies to fight him in the UWFI. An approach was made to Rickson Gracie, widely considered to be the family’s fiercest fighter at the time, but it was new promotion Vale Tudo Japan who secured his services for a UFC-like eight-man single elimination tournament.
The Gracies hadn’t deployed Rickson in the UFC precisely because he radiated such a menacing and muscular presence. They felt, correctly, that smiling and skinny Royce dominating much larger men would serve as the more effective commercial for their Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Now unleashed in a tournament of his own, Rickson cut through the competition in Vale Tudo Japan like he had a chainsaw. None of his three opponents made it to the third minute.
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The Japanese press were dismayed.
Finally unleashed in a one-night tournament for Vale Tudo Japan, Rickson Gracie proved to be a destroyer.
(Sankei via Getty Images)
“The Gracies bring fight of generations to Japan!” announced Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine.
“Who will defend Japan?” Gong Kakutogi magazine bemoaned.
Between Vale Tudo announcing Rickson Gracie for a return in 1995, and Pancrase staging an ongoing series of events featuring the best fighters in Japan alongside international talents like Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten, Takada’s UWFI lost the public’s attention.
So, in an audacious and ill-conceived move, Takada dispatched tough-guy student Yoji Anjo to “dojo storm” Rickson at his Santa Monica gym. Anjo was accompanied by a UWFI official and a half-dozen Japanese media, all of whom travelled to capture their own modern-day “Kimura moment.”
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Rickson was at home with his 11-year-old son, Rockson, when he got the call that a Japanese posse was at the gym throwing down a challenge. The Gracie champion sped down the freeway with young Rockson helping his dad tape his wrists.
Bursting through the back door, the words Rickson yelled to accept the challenge are now stenciled on dojos walls all over the world.
“If we fight for money, I’ll stop hitting you when you ask me to,” he spat. “If we fight for honor, I’ll stop hitting you when I feel like it!”
As it turns out, Rickson felt like hitting the interloper for quite some time.
Only days later, the images a bloodied and humbled Anjo leaving the dojo loomed large on the front pages of Japan’s big-selling weekly magazines.
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Weekly Pro Wrestling ran a typical headline:
“Japanese hitman knocked out! Dojo storm fails! Gracies are all-powerful!”
Takada, though, wasn’t about to surrender the narrative without a fight. An influential man, he mobilized a counter public-relations campaign and stories began appearing that Anjo was there only to make an offer for a UWFI match, and had been blindsided by Rickson.
The Gracies bring fight of generations to Japan! … Who will defend Japan?
Word of this nonsense reached Rickson over Christmas 1994. A week later, working with his own contacts in Japan, the Gracie fighter flew to Tokyo to host a press conference. A television and VCR were wheeled out, and the entire fight — as captured on video by one of Rickson’s students — was screened to a stunned partisan media.
As Weekly Gong informed its readers:
“Gracie was triumphant in six minutes. Anjo’s defeat and Japanese shame could not have been more comprehensive.”
The next batch of headlines called for Takada to man up and challenge Rickson on behalf of Japan.
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For once, Takada misjudged his ability to craft a narrative the media would peddle for him. UWFI closed it doors shortly thereafter, and Takada began talks to join new promotion, one which had access to a mountain range of laundered banknotes and wanted to base an entire card around Takada vs. Rickson.
The promotion would be called PRIDE Fighting Championships.
“Unlike the West, Japan was in a very bad place in the ’90s,” says a former PRIDE executive, who spoke under the condition of anonymity for fear of yakuza retaliation. “In the ’80s, Japanese innovation made our companies — Sony, Fuji, Toyota — international giants and our economy was about to overtake the United States. Instead, it crashed and set on fire. People lost jobs, self-respect, belief in the collective mission of Japan. Marriage and children became more rare.
“The mission of PRIDE was to say, ‘The newspaper about politics and jobs are filled with bad things and shame, but look at the sports [section] and realize that Japan is still strong.’ We would put on a show where Japan faced the Gracies, our enemies. We would say to Japan, ‘Look we are still samurai.’”
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Unfortunately, the samurai died out in 1876 and the best PRIDE could come up with to face perhaps the most dangerous Gracie in 75 years was Takada. Yet Japan still believed in the huckster. A huge television deal with a terrestrial network guaranteed the fight was happening, even before a jaw-dropping 40,000 tickets were sold for the famed Tokyo Dome for the Oct. 11, 1997 event.
(In contrast, UFC Ultimate Japan sold around 5,000 tickets two months later.)
At the majestically produced show, the Japanese crowd in attendance took some solace from their own Akira Shoji going to a time-limit draw with another Gracie, the then-undefeated Renzo — the grandnephew of Helio — who struggled wearing MMA gloves for the first time. But the feeling evaporated quickly when the main event began.
Takada backed away from Rickson wearing a look of terror. He even clung to the ropes while Rickson pressed a double-leg. No matter, the takedown — a slam — came quickly, and the tapout quicker still.
Takada’s performance was so woeful that one weekly magazine, with the kind of vividly blunt prose you only get in Japan, stated that he’d brought equal shame to his people as its conduct during World War 2.
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Takada did little better in the PRIDE FC 4 rematch exactly one year later in 1998, but then neither did anyone else against the seemingly invincible Gracies, who went 12 fights unbeaten over the following two years in Japan.
“PRIDE now had a problem,” recalls the former promotional executive. “We could not find a Japanese fighter to beat the Gracies, but we also must keep paying the Gracies because they were the most famous strong fighters. Now the [fans] were saying, ‘Look at PRIDE — Japan is weak even in martial arts, where we thought ourselves strong.’”
PRIDE’s ticket sales began to trend downward.
Weekly Pro Wrestling wondered aloud in July 1999:
“Does the nation have a warrior whose power can overcome the Gracies?”
“Where is our generation’s Kimura-san? When will he step forward?”
Yet the warrior Japan so desperately needed had been standing in front of them the whole time.
Kazushi Sakuraba reacts after winning the UFC Ultimate Japan Event event in 1997.
(Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
After being refused a spot on PRIDE 1, Sakuraba became the first man to tap out a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt in a formal professional bout when he armbarred the Gracie-trained Marcus “Conan” Silveira at UFC Ultimate Japan in late 1997. Silveira was 230 pounds, and Sakuraba was so worried the UFC wouldn’t allow him to fight, he wore weights in his sock when he hit the scales the day prior.
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Then, with a unique style that saw him utilize pro-wrestling moves like Mongolian chops, baseball slides and the hitherto unthought-of bicycle guard pass, he set about taking PRIDE FC by storm, earning wins that included former — and future — UFC champion and Gracie jiu-jitsu black belt Vitor Belfort in April 1999.
After two more submission finishes that same year, the calls for Sakuraba to face a Gracie became unmistakable.
Rickson dismissed the man in the oranges trunks as just another Takada-trained imposter. He said at the time: “With ‘Conan,’ you have a big guy who tries to use power over technique. It is no surprise when he loses. Vitor? Let’s just say he didn’t last long on the mat with me.”
Nevertheless, alert to their market value in Japan, the family demanded bespoke rules for their chosen representative — Royler Gracie, then 3-0, the brother of Rickson and son of Helio — just as they had for Royler’s Vale Tudo Japan win over Noboru Asahi three years prior. The match went ahead as two rounds of 15 minutes, where the result would be declared a draw if it went the distance and only the corners — not the referee — could not stop the fight.
Royler Gracie attends a UFC weigh-in in 2012.
(Josh Hedges via Getty Images)
When the fight began on Nov. 21, 1999, Royler was much smaller than the catch wrestler. He was outmatched on the feet, too. Sakuraba shelled the smaller, slower man with rapid punches and volley after volley of leg kicks. Whether his foe was standing or laying on the canvas, Sakuraba slammed his baseball-bat shins into the Gracie’s legs.
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As the minutes ticked by, the Japanese audience began to realize that, more than doing well, Sakuraba was actually beating up a Gracie.
Royler became desperate. He even offered Sakuraba his hand, but the catch wrestler, sensing it was a trap, simply fired off another leg kick. Then Sakuraba leapt forward and landed a hard kick to Royler’s face. The round ended to an eruption of cheers — a Gracie, for once, looked mortal.
Knowing only that Gracies would be satisfied with a draw, Sakuraba intensified his pressure in the second round. He led with right hooks to the chest, and then, after feinting another, a head kick sent Royler flying backward to the canvas. When Royler immediately brought his limbs up in the traditional Gracie open-guard posture, Sakuraba again laid siege to his legs. Deep, black bruises swelled to the surface of Royler’s calves and thighs.
Finally, with two minutes to go, Royler managed to pull his tormentor towards his guard — only for Sakuraba to scramble, take side control and slap on Kimura’s fabled move.
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The often-restrained Japanese fans erupted.
“They recognized destiny with Japan,” says historian Watabe. “They’d seen other fighters make the Gracie’s work, but Sakuraba had sustained success. Now they saw Sakuraba was close to winning — not simply doing OK — and with the same technique Japan beat Royler’s father with so many years ago.”
Sakuraba dislocated Royler’s shoulder. It looked agonizing and, despite the pre-fight agreement, the referee stopped the fight. The Gracies were furious, feeling — with some merit — that they’d been doubled-crossed.
“The Gracies are saying they didn’t lose,” Sakuraba relayed via microphone to a uproarious audience, “Well, I would like to know how they planned to get out of that hold.”
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Noticing that Rickson, red-faced with fury, was escorting his younger brother back to the arena locker room, Sakuraba added: “Hey! Big Brother! Please have a match with me!”
Rickson quickly priced himself out of the callout, which is amazing considering his other brother, UFC 1 hero and multiple-time tournament champion Royce, was ultimately paid a reported signing fee of more than $250,000 ($461,230 today) to take part in the generation-defining PRIDE Grand Prix, a 16-man openweight bracket featuring a who’s won of the world’s best middleweights to heavyweights.
The opening round took place on Jan. 30, 2000. Neither Royce nor Sakuraba particularly impressed on their way to the May 1 finale event, where they were joined by former UFC stars Mark Coleman and Mark Kerr, as well as Igor Vovchanchyn, Gary Goodridge, Akira Shoji and Kazuyuki Fujita. The tournament winner would have to fight three times in one night to win a reported grand prize of more than $400,000.
But, still seething at being double-crossed by PRIDE FC in the Royler fight, and acutely aware of Royce’s market value, especially now that the tournament brackets called for a match with Sakuraba, the Gracies began making extraordinary demands.
They called their own Tokyo press conference.
“These are supposed to be men fighting,” Royce proclaimed. “A real fight should be decided by the fighters, not a referee, not judges, not a doctor. A real fight should have no rules. No rounds. No time limit.”
When asked why PRIDE officials, much less the other grand prix quarterfinalists, would agree to any of this, Royce replied simply: “Are they not men?”
“Our family created this business,” elder brother Rorion added. “The Gracies are why you have PRIDE and why you have the UFC — so this isn’t special treatment we are demanding. We want a real fight, as we established it.”
The mission of PRIDE was to say, ‘The newspaper about politics and jobs are filled with bad things and shame, but look at the sports [section] and realize that Japan is still strong.’ We would put on a show where Japan faced the Gracies, our enemies. We would say to Japan, ‘Look we are still samurai.’”
For his part, Sakuraba said he would acquiesce to any ruleset PRIDE instructed him to fight under.
But he was no one’s fool, either.
“The Gracies want the best rules they can think to help the Gracies,” he told the Japanese media. “What confuses me is why did they all come from Los Angeles to Japan to give their list of rules at a press conference? Is there no one in their big family who can use a fax machine?”
By late spring, Sakuraba admitted in an interview that he was looking at the Gracie fight as the only contest he would have on May 1, tournament be damned.
“I cannot think beyond this thing,” he said. “I am doing all I can to prepare. All I can think about is this fight, which may go for an hour, two hours or even longer. There can be no second and third fight after that. The Gracie fight will be enough for me and, I believe, the fans, who deeply wish to see this bout happen.
“Just, I think Royce Gracie is going about his special rules in an insulting way.”
“It was nothing personal against Sakuraba,” Royce stressed to me in 2014. “But [PRIDE] had already gone back on their word [in the Royler fight] and we needed to stop that happening again. We were just one family against a huge company. No, one family against a huge country. We were correct to push for everything we wanted in the fight.”
As May 1 approached, the battle over the exact nature of the bout became a war of attrition between PRIDE officials and the Gracies. The Brazilian clan have long denied that they seriously threatened to withdraw Royce from the tournament, but PRIDE certainly thought that could happen.
So, over a period of weeks, an incredible match outline was announced:
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The fight would be contested over an unlimited amount of 15-minute rounds
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Royce would wear his gi, and could use it to choke Sakuraba
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Sakuraba could not remove the gi, or Royce’s black belt, nor use them to choke Royce
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A submission, including the corner throwing in the towel, was the only way to win
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Other than to recognize the above, the referee could not stop the fight under any circumstances
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The ringside doctor could not stop the fight under any circumstances
Even for PRIDE, even for Japanese MMA — even for the Gracies — this was recklessness incarnate. The MMA messages boards lit ablaze as fans tried to grasp the sheer insanity of what had happened.
Unfair? Rickson couldn’t have cared less. “If you have enough clout,” he said at the time, “and they say ‘yes,’ it is good.”
Despite his growing status as a national hero, Sakuraba had no clout. To his propertied promoters eternal shame, Sakuraba took home just under $23,750 for the Royce fight.
It was nothing personal against Sakuraba, but [PRIDE] had already gone back on their word and we needed to stop that happening again. We were just one family against a huge company. No, one family against a huge country.
While Sakuraba met every rule change with a shrug behind the scenes, he was sure to troll the Gracies for obviously stacking the deck in their favor at the event’s final press conference.
“I asked [the Gracies] if they were happy with the rules they now had, if they thought they could finally win now,” he says. “‘What about a rule, I must fight hopping on one leg? Would that make you feel happy? Maybe I have to juggle knives between rounds?’ Stuff like that to annoy them.”
Sakuraba then revealed he was wearing an adult diaper. “The match could last for many hours,” he cracked up, “and I’d rather be prepared.”
Rorion Gracie was incensed. “Japan is sending a clown to fight for them,” he said. “He has a clown’s approach to martial arts, a clown’s approach to everything he does.”
The two camps crossed paths in the Hilton Hotel on the eve of the fight. Hostile words were exchanged and the two sides began posturing. Royce, however, calmed tensions down. Stepping forward and offering Sakuraba a handshake, he smiled and said simply: “We will have a great fight.”
As seismic as Japan’s first win over a Gracie had been, the nation was aware a three-time UFC tournament champion was a significant threat escalation.
Fight day came and a nation held its breath.
“It felt like all of Japan had stacked their emotion upon my back,” Sakuraba says, recalling his feeling on the fateful morning. “Whether they went to sleep that night happy or sad, they left [that up] to me.”
He ate a larger than normal lunch and went to the arena more than four hours before his walk time. Once he got to his locker room, he made himself a pillow out of white towels and took a nap.
Outside, the weather was a warm 75 degrees and fans began filing into the neighboring area early. Most spent the tense hours before doors opened in the surrounding cafes and restaurants.
A nervous camaraderie took hold. Perfect strangers reassuring each other that “Saku” would prevail.
Others grasped for more desperate measures. A 20-minute walk from the Dome is the Taira no Masakado (首塚), a tiny but well-preserved burial temple. A thousand years ago, when Tokyo was but a tiny fishing village called Edo, a renegade samurai named Masakado was interned there. Ever since, the shrine has received visitors begging Masakado’s vengeful spirit to strike down their enemies.
On May 1, 2000, the Taira no Masakado was crowded with PRIDE fans pleading with the demon samurai to aid Sakuraba against the hated enemy of Japan.
Kazushi Sakuraba prepares to fight for his national audience at a 2000 show in Japan.
(Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
By Round 5, the bout’s one-hour mark, Royce Gracie’s surprising aggression — surging forward with the best punches of his career, firing palm strikes on the ground and holding his opponent against the ropes while he slamming in knees to the thigh — was waning.
Both men’s muscles were choked by lactic acid, but only Royce was caught in a trap of his own making. His heavy cotton gi and gi pants held sweat and heat, accelerating dehydration and electrolyte depletion.
“The gi is not so good a thing,” Sakuraba says.
Piled on those woes, Sakuraba’s kicks — dozens of them by now — had cracked his shin bone and destroyed tendons. Sensing the fight moving into its final act, Sakuraba tapped into the last of his remaining energy reserves and began to push. He attacked over and over again. Exhaustion has already hollowed out Gracie’s thighs and now his tormentor struck at them with vicious kicks. Royce’s oft-stoic features, for the first time in his career, betrayed the agony within.
It was no longer a contest. For the millions of Japanese watching, it had become an act of revenge. They delighted as their man bombarded the almost immobile Gracie, who’d taken on the appearance of a thorn-raked martyr, suffering for the sake of his family religion.
And yet, still, Helio wouldn’t allow Rickson to throw in the towel.
The Japanese production crew picked up on the family drama and sent a cameraman to focus on Helio’s face. The cameras cuts between the old patriarch’s stoicism, the elder brother’s dismay, and the quiet agony of the younger brother in the ring, would be near-identical if the fight was recreated today in a Hollywood movie.
So Royce continued to fight as hard as he could with the very little he had left. He continued to fight even after he had nothing left.
The sixth round ended. Royce collapsed onto his stool and his brother leaned in close.
“We need you to move more,” Rorion said.
Royce’s eyes were open but unseeing.
His reply was a sandpapered whisper: “I can stand. I can fight. I can’t walk.”
One last, desperate look at their father, and — finally — the old man nodded. After 90 minutes of fighting, the towel flew in the ring. It was over.
The sheer enormity of the moment almost crashed through the Tokyo Dome’s 50-ton roof.
Japan had won.
It was bedlam.
The most famous of the Gracies had been beaten. Forced to quit. Those in the stadium howled in triumph, and all over the Japanese islands people spilled out of restaurants, bars and their homes into the streets. The joy of victory that only those who have grown accustomed to losing can really feel to the fullest.
Japan’s national nightmare, at least for tonight, was gone.
But then they were called back to their televisions.
Something was happening.
Sakuraba still had to fight in tournament semifinals.
When he reached his locker room, Sakuraba drank as much water as he was able, then poured ice water over his head, neck and chest and slowly stretched himself down on damp towels on the tiled floor.
“Two rounds more,” he told his team.
And so, 20 minutes later, around 11 p.m. local time, Sakuraba fought the 215-pound Igor Vovchanchyn, he of the 42-2 MMA and 61-2 kickboxing records. The stocky Ukrainian was fresh, too, having taken barely 10 minutes to win his quarterfinal fight against Gary Goodridge.
Sakuraba wasn’t merely tired. Ninety minutes of combat had scorched his glycogen stores, left his muscles swollen with microtears, and drained his nervous system so badly that the very signals from his brain to his limbs were sputtering like dying sparks. Despite bucketing water during his short respite, he remained dehydrated, his electrolytes gone, with his vision narrowed and his reactions blunted.
What looked like ordinary fatigue was closer to systemic failure. Sakuraba’s body was quite literally shutting down in self-defense.
And yet, somehow, he won the opening 10-minute round against Vovchanchyn, scoring with punches and single-leg takedowns. He was having the best of it in the second, as well, until the last of his adrenaline cut off, abruptly, like a car out of gas. Without it, his body had no way of obeying his fighting heart.
The two-round fight was ruled a draw, and, thankfully, Sakuraba’s corner declined to send their champion out for the overtime round.
In a little more two hours, Kazushi Sakuraba had fought for 105 minutes — the equivalent of 21 rounds in modern MMA or 35 rounds of championship boxing.
The 38,429 people in the stands stood in awe of their hero. Now that it was all over, the sheer enormity of what he had achieved hit them.
It felt like all of Japan had stacked their emotion upon my back. Whether they went to sleep that night happy or sad, they left [that up] to me.
Older men bowed their heads while some younger ones cheered while choking back tears.
“Everyone at the Dome was humbled by what Sakuraba-san had done,” says the former PRIDE executive. “What that man had done for Japan … nothing will ever compare.”
The solemn moment, of course, was soon undercut by the prankster himself.
“I hate tournaments,” Sakuraba said, smiling. “Who is responsible for this bad idea?”
To their immense credit, the Gracies took questions from the Japanese press. Flanked by Rorion, Royce limped in front of the cameras and readied himself for slings and arrows dipped in poison ink.
You told us Gracies don’t give up. Isn’t throwing in the towel giving up?
“There are no excuses,” Rorion answered honestly. “Sakuraba is the winner. You shouldn’t mix courage with stubbornness. Even though he would have done it, it was not right to ask Royce to continue beyond that point.”
Japanese wrestling is the best, is that not proven now?
“I can’t agree with that,” Rorion said. “This fight doesn’t mean jiu-jitsu is inferior. With jiu-jitsu, even a weak man can defeat a strong man, if he has learned the technique. We would prefer to focus on bringing that technique, jiu-jitsu, to Japan, rather than focus on some [sect] of the fans who hate the Gracies.”
Perhaps a sense of valor could have found a foothold that night if only Rorion had not said the Gracies wanted to bring a Japanese martial art to Japan. As it was, the clumsy wording was taken by Japanese national media as a doubling down on the Gracie’s original sin.
Even Royce paying glowing tribute to Sakuraba — “He was the best fighter in the tournament, he should be the winner” — did nothing to abate the triumphalism.
Didn’t you start this? You Gracies? Didn’t you bring these angry feelings on yourselves? Didn’t you insist on special rules halfway through the tournament?
On and on it went, not just that night but in impromptu press conferences in the Hilton lobby the next morning, and in the Japanese and MMA media for weeks and then months.
There was a moment, though — the first sign of what peace could be like after the war.
Twenty minutes after their fight, in the narrow corridors that catacomb underneath the Tokyo Dome, the two camps found themselves passing in opposite directions. As he drew level with Sakuraba, Helio Gracie looked Sakuraba in the eye, nodded, and patted the man who’d just crippled his son on the back.
“That small gesture humbled me,” says Sakuraba, “Helio Gracie was man of giant honor.”
Royce Gracie ultimately lost his 90-minute battle with Sakuraba.
(Gregg DeGuire via Getty Images)
Once back over the Pacific, the Gracies tried to turn a calamity into a controversy. But claims that Sakuraba was somehow a significantly bigger man, that the referee was biased, and other absurdities were laughed off.
Even though the Gracies had now lost twice to the Japanese catch wrestler, and perhaps because of the way the Japanese media had behaved, little respect could be squeezed out of Rickson.
“Sakuraba has technique and is mentally strong, but I don’t see anything that impresses me,” he said at the time. “Every match Sakuraba has won, he never made the victory, others let him slip through their fingers. He is very slippery. He deserves all his victories but, in my heart, I really think Sakuraba is lucky all the time. The Gracies will return.”
There was no surrender, then.
The war was still on.
And PRIDE, naturally, was overjoyed at the prospect of Sakuraba vs. the Gracies, part three.
Instead of fighting in PRIDE, Rickson had done his reputation little good by taking on Pancrase’s Masakatsu Funaki in May 2000, who by then was semi-retired and losing more big fights than he won, in an upstart promotion. Rickson insisted he was done with PRIDE.
PRIDE officials, then, approached Renzo Gracie.
Of all the Gracies, Renzo’s style was perfect for mixed martial arts. An ADCC champion already, his submissions and submission defense were impeccable, plus he was a creative and quick striker. There was something else, too, an attitude he fought with. An anger. Even while Renzo shadowboxed, his fists, knees, elbows and feet seemed to stab out with the fury of a prison yard knife.
And so Sakuraba vs. Renzo Gracie was set to headline PRIDE FC 10 on Aug. 27, 2000, held at the Seibu Dome in Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan. Renzo carried a 9-1-1 MMA record into the ring, along with a stellar Brazilian jiu-jitsu record that included domination at the 1998 ADCCs.
“This was supposed to be my fight all along,” recalls Renzo. “I’d wanted this fight before Sakuraba fought Royce, before he fought Royler. It was always supposed to come down to myself and Sakuraba.”
Renzo Gracie (right) throws a punch at UFC legend Matt Hughes.
(REUTERS / Reuters)
Renzo, grandson of Carlos Gracie — one of the original Gracies who learned the art from “Count Koma” Maeda — was born March 11, 1967, into the first family of modern martial arts. Like many within the clan, he began training as a toddler. But, almost from the start, Renzo was slightly askew from the rest.
“I was weak as a kid, so I started lifting weights, changed my diet,” he says. “I was doing that different [from other Gracies], so I also started doing boxing, wrestling, judo. Anything to become a better fighter.”
Like many of his kinsmen before him, Renzo put his fighting philosophy to the test on the streets, beaches and nightclubs of Brazil’s beachside towns. As a young man, he’d train all day, go straight to the clubs for a tussle or two, then sleep on the beach, bathe in the ocean as the sun arose and return to the dojo after breakfast.
“My blood has always run at a different speed,” he admits. “I got that wildness from my father. My father, Robson, was the wild one in the family when he was young. When I heard stories and whispers about what my father had done while he was a younger man, I understood where my temperament came from.”
Robson Gracie’s anti-authoritarian streak extended far beyond the mats. When Brazil’s military overthrew the country’s elected government in 1964, Robson was part of an underground resistance effort. He was captured, arrested and tortured. As Helio Gracie desperately worked his political connections to locate and free his brother, Robson was being injected with burning chemicals, subjected to extreme heat, cold and electrocution.
Yet, Robson held out for days, and, when he could take no more, attempted to end his own life by smashing his head against the walls of his cell.
“My dad was my hero,” Renzo says, “the strongest, bravest man I know. He said with torture, you could elevate yourself past the pain, for a while.
“I heard the biggest boasts from fighters over the years. Tough guy talk like, ‘I would rather my leg break than submit,’ and bulls*** like that. I always kept quiet when I heard those boasts. After what may father told me about that kind of pain, I never said a thing.”
As far as MMA went, Renzo’s coming-out party in the U.S. came in a pay-per-view tournament called the World Combat Championships, held on Oct. 17, 1995, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the 165-pound fighter thrashed three far larger men, including Ben Spijkers, a three-time Olympian judoka, and James Warring, the former IBF world cruiserweight boxing champion.
This was supposed to be my fight all along. I’d wanted this fight before Sakuraba fought Royce, before he fought Royler. It was always supposed to come down to myself and Sakuraba.
He also soundly beat UFC tournament champion Oleg Taktarov in 1996 and UFC heavyweight champion Maurice Smith in 1999. His only loss was a larcenous hometown decision to Japan’s Kiyoshi Tamura.
“I beat the crap out of him,” Renzo still maintains. “Watch that fight — you can smell that bulls*** though the screen.”
Before heading to Japan 25 summers ago, Renzo was asked by a U.S. reporter if he was worried about fighting in front of 40,000 fans who all wanted him to lose.
To understand the depths of his amusement at the question, you must know what happened on Sept. 27, 1997, when Renzo took on Luta Livre rival Eugenio Tadeu in Rio.
The war between jiu-jitsu and Luta Livre — Brazil’s other submission fighting art — had raged for decades and hundreds of Luta Livre attended the standing-room only event. The rival gangs — for that is exactly what they were — we already in violent moods before Renzo walked to the makeshift cage.
“The promoter told me the Luta Livre guys were out of control and they were all standing on the stage where the cage was,” Renzo recalls. “They didn’t think it was a good idea for me to fight that night — but I wanted to beat the s*** out of that guy.”
The fight quickly spiraled out of control of the referee, who wore a sweater and acid-washed jeans.
“Whenever my head was close to the fence, the crowd could kick me through the fence,” Renzo recalls with amusement. “They couldn’t kick full power, but it was enough that I felt it when they kicked my head. And they were insulting me the whole time, spitting at me, calling me a dog and this other s***.”
Then, a Luta Livre fighter climbed halfway over the fence, all the better to hurl his spittle and insults.
“I pretended I was looking at my opponent,” says Renzo, “but turned and punched that guy between his eyes.”
The fight was broadcast live in Brazil on SPORTV, and VHS recordings rocketed around the world within weeks. The grainy footage — which this writer paid for back in 2002 — shows the man dropping to the arena floor, only to be met with a dust storm of fists that wouldn’t look out of place in a “Looney Tunes” cartoon.
“My brothers were waiting for him,” Renzo remembers with unrestrained delight. “They’d seen what the [crowd] were doing and had come around to that side of the cage. Everyone who’d been standing on the cage talking s*** and kicking me got a real f***ing lesson.
“We had a full riot — with tables and chairs flying everywhere — all on live TV. What can I say? It was a crazy experience. What a night to be young and alive. What a night to be a Gracie.”
So faced with the question of whether he was intimidated by the prospect of fighting Sakuraba in the Gracie rival’s homeland, Renzo was blunt: “The thought of fighting in front of nice stadium filled with polite Japanese businessmen didn’t have me s****ing my pants, no.”
Renzo Gracie (right) had already faced a slew of big-name opponents by the time he crossed Sakuraba in 2000.
(Brian Bahr via Getty Images)
It is astonishing to recall in today’s era of absentee UFC champions that Sakuraba walked to the ring to face Renzo just 118 days since his herculean efforts against Royce in the grand prix.
With the night air at the Seibu Dome moist and the canvas slippery, Renzo Gracie, cast in the role of Japan’s final boss, surged forward at Sakuraba.
“Renzo is the last of the black ships,” Weekly Pro Wrestling had proclaimed in the build to the bout — Japanese shorthand for a powerful foreign force arriving to upend the old order, born from Commodore Perry’s steam warships forcing the country open in 1853.
Although he wasn’t a one-punch finisher, all of Renzo’s punches hurt, and where he landed one, he would almost certainly fire away with more. He was prone to throwing himself off balance, but his reflexes were so razored, he was back on the offensive before his opponent could take advantage.
Variation of attacks was also key to Renzo’s strategy. His rapid-fire footwork, at times, resembled a schoolboy playing hopscotch and he’d wing in punches from the oddest of angles.
“I wanted Sakuraba thinking, ‘What the hell’s he doing next?’” he says. “I needed him to be reacting to my attacks, not focusing on his. I needed to keep him from reaching into his bag of magic tricks.”
It worked. “Renzo was difficult to predict,” Sakuraba admits.
The fight, with two 10-minute rounds, was to be judged as a whole.
Almost everyone at ringside on the night and most who’ve seen the fight since agree — Renzo was 30 seconds away from avenging his two cousins’ losses and hunting the feared “Gracie Hunter.”
Then they collided and Sakuraba went for a standing kimura. Like drunken dancers, they whirled around and crashed to the canvas. Sakuraba wrenched the arm.
Renzo’s mind emptied. The dreaded moment was here.
SNAP!
Renzo’s elbow flew apart.
With 17 seconds left, Sakurada had slain another Gracie with Kimura’s fabled technique.
“I was winning the fight,” Renzo says. “I was celebrating in my head, ‘Renzo, you did it. Renzo, you beat this man for the Gracies.’ What a lesson. What a life lesson.”
After putting his arm in a sling, Renzo visited Sakuraba’s locker room a half-hour after the fight. There, the torchbearers for two of the proudest traditions in combat sports sat against the white and blue Seibu Lions lockers, each with an arm around the other.
There was a feeling that the war, which had waged and waned over decades, was over.
They swapped jokes and compliments.
“Renzo-san, did you really have to kick my legs so hard?” teased Sakuraba.
“My brother,” came the reply, “if I knew you were about to to break my arm, I’d have f***ing kicked you harder.”
Renzo had a Japanese doctor place his arm in a cast so he could fly home to New York. A month later, he was on a surfing holiday in Australia, as happy and content as any man in the world.
“When the time came, I did what my father could do,” Renzo says. “I looked agony in the face and told it ‘No, f*** you!’ Like my dad, my hero, I refused to be an animal screaming in a trap. I elevated myself.”
It’s then that Gracie looks me in the eye.
“I’m older now, brother. I can’t do what I once did. And when I get very old, I’ll s*** in my pants and not be able to take care of myself, just like everyone else. But when I die, when it comes, the last thing I will think about is that I know who the f*** I am.
“I am Renzo Gracie. And I am a f***ing man.”
Renzo Gracie continued to fight on after his devastating loss to Sakuraba.
(Brian Bahr via Getty Images)
Sakuraba vs. Renzo Gracie was the final meaningful, nation-stopping battle in the generations-long war between Japan and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Sure, Sakuraba vs. Gracie skirmishes continued for years, but never to the pomp and infamy of the original trilogy. Sakuraba’s powers diminished. PRIDE died and its belongings sold to the UFC. The world moved on to the point that a 2007 rematch between Sakuraba and Royce, which took place at a strange, sparsely-attended event in Los Angeles, came and went unnoticed.
(Royce kept a controversial decision win despite testing positive for steroids after the match.)
It was only later the world learned that, back in 2000, while Sakuraba marked time by easily handling a much-too-green Ryan Gracie four months after the Renzo saga, PRIDE officials had made progress toward the only fourth fight in the rivalry that would have mattered. Rickson accepted an offer north of $2.7 million (he claims $5 million) for a bout to be contested over two 10-minute rounds. Only a few particulars needed to be agreed to before the match would be announced for the spring of 2001.
Kazushi Sakuraba and Royce Gracie (right) had a forgettable rematch in 2007, seven years after their 90-minute epic in Japan.
(Bob Riha Jr via Getty Images)
However, tragedy wrecked the final dream match forever.
The heartbreaking death of Rickson’s son, Rockson, in December 2000 ended the family champion’s interest in competing, training, and, even for a time, living.
“Over roughly five years I went through the deepest of mourning and grief,” Rickson said in 2013. “Fighting and even training meant nothing to me. I was devastated by my son’s passing. For a long time, I really wanted to jump into a lake with 200 [kilograms] on my chest.”
Eventually, the champion fought past his grief, noting that his son’s passing taught him tomorrow is not promised to anyone, so we must live life for today.
The Japanese media arranged for Rickson to sit down with Sakuraba a decade ago. Helio was gone, having passed in 2009 at age 95, and Rickson was now the elder statesman.
Finally, speaking for the clan, he extended Sakuraba respect.
“Sakuraba was not a destroyer, but he didn’t need to be,” he said. “Instead, he was very smart and very tough. He was not afraid of getting beat up, and he had a way of messing up his opponent’s confidence.
“He beat so many Gracies. In 100 years, he was our worst competitor.”
Kazushi Sakuraba and Renzo Gracie rematched years later as well, in 2014, for a friendly grappling match with Metamoris. It ended, fittingly, in a draw.
(Chad Matthew Carlson via Getty Images)
Many believe Rickson was the greatest Gracie in 100 years too. And along with the respect for Sakuraba, also came a regret of standing on the sidelines and not facing the “The Gracie Hunter” himself.
“The most important fight I had to fight, the battle with Sakuraba, I did not fight it,” the Gracie champion acknowledged. “I have to live with that.”
Even before we reached the current era of inexperienced, pandemic-era UFC fans, it had become popular within MMA circles to downplay the Gracie’s towering place in combat sports. But Rickson, Royce, Renzo and many of their kinsmen do not need to forge their passports to martial arts greatness. Their achievements, willingness to fight for their respect, and their astonishing courage all speak for themselves.
“What an amazing family the Gracies are,” says Sakuraba. “They created for the world two great sports — BJJ and MMA — almost from nothing. Even beyond the entertainment [promotions] like PRIDE and UFC, I think of all the people who enjoy training [jiu-jitsu] all over the world every week because of the Gracies.
“I wondered once how many friendships have been made in BJJ dojos all over the world? I wonder how much fun, pride and purpose BJJ has given to so many? And this will happen for year after year [once] we are all gone.
“The Gracies? We should be very grateful to them.”
