Rickson Gracie claims that he’s undefeated in fighting with a record of 450-0.
Rickson Gracie undefeated
The Brazilian jiu-jitsu legend was recently interviewed by Trocação Franca to discuss his combat background. The 63-year-old hasn’t competed professionally in over 20 years, but never lost in either mixed martial arts (MMA) or jiu-jitsu.
In Gracie’s estimation, he holds at least a record of 450-0.
“Every seminar I did at the time, 100, 50, 40, 30, 20 seminars, at the end of the six-hour seminars, I’d submit everybody,” Gracie said. “I did a training [session]. ‘Who wants to train?’
“Everybody wanted to. I submitted everybody, one after the other. And every tournament I entered after I turned 18, weight class or openweight division, I submitted every match I had and never lost. I entered luta livre tournaments back when Rolles was excited about it, I never lost either.
“Sambo tournaments in Brazil and in the United States, I also never lost. Street fights against guys that were really tough, professionals, or street fights with surfers … fights with luta livre guys, jiu-jitsu tournaments, seminars, any other situation — every time I faced an opponent, he was submitted.
“I never won by points. And counting very superficially, it’s at least 450 fights, so I set that as my record.
“I never fought MMA in my life. I fought vale tudo. All my MMA fights had rounds, sometimes 10-minute, sometimes 15-minute, sometimes five-minute rounds, but an undetermined number of rounds until someone lost.
“There was no other rule to determine the winner. There was no judge to raise someone’s hand after a certain point. Someone would win a fight. And that’s not the MMA rule.
“That [450] number, I think it’s at least that. You can double that and it’s hard for people to deny. If you saw it, you saw it. If you haven’t, there’s no YouTube that goes back that much, unfortunately.”
In 1980, Gracie stepped into a Vale Tudo ring for the first time. During his fight against Casemiro Nascimento Martins, aka “Rei Zulu,” he submitted him with a rear-naked choke in Brasilia, Brazil. The two met again four years later, and Gracie came out on top, this time in Rio de Janeiro.
In the end, Gracie thinks that’s the one fighter he couldn’t connect with. Among Sakuraba’s next 12 fights, he lost seven of them to the elite of PRIDE, from Mirko Cro Cop to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira to Ricardo Arona. During this time, he did score a number of notable wins, including a submission win against Quinton Jackson and Kevin Randleman among them.
“He’s the only guy that I really felt stuck [in my throat] that I couldn’t fight, and it lost [meaning] before it happened,” Gracie said. “But it would have been a good fight because I was very confident about defeating him and he was very tough, very important at that moment, so it would have been a really interesting fight to watch, but it stayed for other dimensions.”
Gracie’s background is certainly impressive. Throughout the 80s, Gracie went undefeated in jiu-jitsu competition with a record of 8-0. When going into MMA in the early 80s, Gracie competed inside the cage for over 20 years, again undefeated with an 11-0 record.
2 thoughts on “Rickson Gracie Claims He’s Undefeated With a 450-0 Record”
Rickson lost to Ron Tripp during a SAMBO tournament via an uchimata throw. Course, Rickson head an excuse.
Rickson was never knocked out or submitted. Rickson is undefeated. With no time limit Rickson will finish anyone including Ron Tripp.