JRE MMA Show #156 with Royce Gracie

Joe Rogan
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What's happening, my friend? Great to see you. Life is good in my world. Yeah, life is good in your world. It's always good to see you, man.

But it's, you know, I know you're you, and I know, you know, you just hoist. Gracie. You're the. You're who you are. But for most human beings, you are one of the most unusual people that's ever lived.

The original ultimate fighter, the number one, the guy. The reason why this whole thing is so big. You're the fucking man. Is because of my father. Yes, I'm a product of his work, for sure.

For sure. But for most people, our introduction to brazilian jiu jitsu was you in UFC one. You know, we didn't. You know, I grew up in martial arts, but we didn't know about brazilian jiu jitsu until UFC one in 1993. Yeah, that one.

Royce Gracie
Jordan had a vision. So back then, we used to teach in the garage, private classes, one student at a time, and Jordan had the vision. How can we spread out throughout the world? Is, once America find out, we gotta put it on tv. Once America find out, the whole world will find out.

Joe Rogan
The world found out so quick. I have never seen a martial art spread through the country like brazilian jiu jitsu did in the 1990s. A lot of people thought the graces are arrogant. They were trying to put down the other martial arts, but it was not. It was like.

Royce Gracie
It was like a put up or shut up. Yeah. Karate against kung fu. Everybody claims that their style is the best. There's only one way to find out, and we're willing to try to find out.

We're not saying that we're the best. We're just like, hey, you say you're the best, I'm the best. There's only one way to find out. Well, the thing is, you guys had already tried it in dojos. You'd already gone to gyms.

Joe Rogan
You'd already had challenge matches. Gracie in action videos were an eye opening video for a lot of martial arts 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 an armbar. But again, that was in Brazil.

Royce Gracie
A lot of that happened in Brazil. When we came to America, it was a different level. It was okay, this guy is the world champion in karate, the number one boxer, the number one kickboxer. Well, let's see if our stuff work against them. And they're bigger, too.

Joe Rogan
When you grew up with this, I mean, you started jiu jitsu when you were very, very young. So when you grew up with this, when was the first time you saw one of those challenge matches? It was Higgs on fighting Zulu. Oh, wow. I was so.

Royce Gracie
I was young. I couldn't get into the stadium, so I watched it through a crack on the door. It's like, outside the stadium, because you had. There was an age to being there, I think was like 16, and I was like 15, I think, when he fought, or 14 when he fought. So Roy Le Guardian, because he did a demonstration, I guess, before, but I had to stay outside, and I was looking through the crack, could barely see it.

Joe Rogan
Wow. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Even before that, there's a black and white video of Horion, hailstone, holish, and some of the students fighting against karate guys on the tile. And that's when I was there.

Royce Gracie
I was present on that day, but I always heard stories of the family fighting and, yeah, we got to fight this guy on the beach and the guy show 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. I was like, I wanna be one of them. I wanna do this. So there was always rumors about why you were chosen to be the representative for the first UFC.

Joe Rogan
What's the actual truth behind it? Like, why did they choose you? Dude, it was gonna be on national tv, it looks. Imagine if they put an ugly bra that was ugly. They all could have done the same thing.

Royce Gracie
My cousins, they all could have done the same thing, but come on, by the looks.

No, no. I think. I think my father, in the hoarding, knew I was gonna obey my father's order. It was like, do not hurt your opponents. The other brothers and cousins, all of them, bigger, smaller, they could have done the same thing.

It was very raw back then. It was one style against another. But I think my father knew I was a little more calm personality.

I was going to obey his orders, and his order was like, do not hurt your opponents. Now, why was that so important to him? To show the true art of jiu jitsu. If a cousin gets in there, picked the guy up with the elbow across the opponent's face, he would have been impressive. Oh, my God.

You shock everybody, but wouldn't show the technique. And my father and Horden were concerned about showing the technique of just what we can do by dominating somebody bigger, stronger, without having to hurt them. That's so amazing that you guys had so much confidence in jiu jitsu that they wanted you to not hurt someone. That's the conversation I remember having with my father was like, but, dad, the guy says, bare knuckle, they're gonna hit me. He's like, don't worry.

They will never hit you. They're not gonna touch you. Don't worry. That's how much confidence he had. Wow.

He's not gonna. Don't take me wrong. My mother's order was totally different. My mother was like, your father doesn't know what he's talking about. I wanna see some blood.

Send him to the hospital. Mom was a mean one. That's crazy. Dad was like, no, no, don't hurt your opponent. They're not gonna touch you.

Don't worry. They're not gonna. Nothing's gonna happen. You're gonna dominate. Mom was like, I wanna see some blood.

Send him to the hospital. It's so your family is. It's so unusual, because I have always said that your family, your father, Carlos, everyone, that the whole family, it's the most important family in the history of martial arts. There's no family in the history of martial arts has had the same impact that the gracies have had. I think that jiu jitsu landed with them for a purpose.

They are from the north of Brazil. Persistence, people, and the vision that they had of having a lot of kids. Uncle Khadri had 21 kids. Eleven boys, ten girls. My father had nine kids.

Damn, that's seven boys, two girls. So it could have beat all girls, and you just wouldn't be what it is today. It is kind of crazy because your father was so unusual, had such an unusual mindset, and the fact that he had had those early matches, like the matches with Kimura and, you know, all those santana, all those different early matches that a lot of people don't even know about, that you could see online. It was, they want to test themselves. So Kimura haven't lost.

Not just not lost, but nobody lasts more than three minutes with him. And my father's like, okay, I want to try heavier, younger, Val, demo, santana, heavier, younger. They fought for like 3 hours and 40 minutes, one round straight. Wow. So it's.

Yeah, they just. They want to put it to the test. That was the main thing. They want to see what they can do. But my father always said it wasn't on.

How can he beat the opponents? He always told me, don't walk in to win. Walk in. Not to lose. If you don't lose, the question is how you're going to beat him.

He makes a mistake. But the mentality was always not to lose. So always be defensively minded. We're giving the weight advantage to the opponents. So if I don't lose, we're going to.

He always used to explain that way, we're going to play a ping pong game. So every time you put the ball on my side of the table, it doesn't matter where you put that ball, I'll put it back on the center of you. I'll catch that ball, put it back on the center of the table. What am I doing? Playing the perfect defense game.

When am I gonna lose? Never. So when I'm gonna win now we have changed the question. When you miss the table, did I win? No, you're the one who made a mistake.

You lost. If you're not, we're gonna play forever if you don't make a mistake. So it was a very defensive art. It's not a very aggressive. I've heard Helson describe jiu jitsu in that way.

Joe Rogan
He said, jiu jitsu is, I do this, and then you do that, and then I do this, and then you do that forever. Until somebody make a mistake. Until somebody make a mistake. It's like, I could have made a mistake, too, but if I don't make a mistake, if you don't make a mistake, we're gonna play forever. You know how it is.

Royce Gracie
Yes, we're gonna play. Yeah, tell somebody gets to tired or make a mistake or. Yep. It was also. It was perfect for you to be in it, because in the first UFC, you were, what did you weigh?

Joe Rogan
About 176 pounds? 178. 178. Crazy. And you were in there against gigantic guys like, what did chemo weigh?

Royce Gracie
200. 5250. Roided to the gills. No testing. Carrying a wooden cross into the octagon, that was crazy.

He was a raw. He was probably one of the strongest guy I fought. He was huge. Kim was raw. Strength, not the most technical, but he was pure strength.

And I messed up on that one because I tried to match strength with him. He got me tired, so I tried. I heard he was very strong, and I tried to match. Here's him walking in with the cross. I remember everybody's like, what the hell is going on here?

Joe Rogan
Taekwondo. I was like. I was like, go ahead, carry that cross. It was solid wood, by the way. That was heavy, I'm sure.

Probably a good warm up. And there's you. How old were you then? That was his third UFC I was 27. Wow, look at his eyes, man.

Royce Gracie
It's like, yep. Yeah. Just jacked. Full of juice. Enormous Jesus tattooing his stomach.

Joe Rogan
The early days, my man. What is it like when you watch knuckles? And sometimes I think what my father was thinking on putting Iraq. Cause I never had a fight before. That was your first fight was UFC one.

Royce Gracie
UFC one was the first. Wow. I had to say. How many fights you had? I said 51.

Those tournament matches when I was a kid competing tournaments, professional fights. Never on the street. Never. Wow, that's crazy. I got jumped on the street once when I was, like, 14 years old.

Cause I want to be a fighter like my brothers. Never had a fight. I heard all of them fighting, so I was like, 1415 years old. I went to a very bad neighborhood. My bike, got my bike stolen, my nose broken.

Got jumped for, like, five guys daytime took my bike. But I was. I came home and I was like, okay, I had a fight. I got my ass kicked, so I. Can be one of them.

I want to be one of my cousins, one of my brothers, man. I want to be part of that. Crazy. Never had a fight. Just like, ah.

Joe Rogan
When you first fought, did you have striking training at all? Yes, very little. I had students showing me some stuff. So that's crazy. More for me to know what's coming on me then for me to use.

Right. So it's more for me to know how they move. Yeah. So it wasn't like I'm gonna learn striking, to learn boxing, to fight against a boxer. It was more for me to know what's coming, how they're gonna move, when they're getting ready to throw a kick a punch, or for me to understand their movements.

Yeah, Hickson's talked about that the same way. He said he didn't learn kickboxing to be a kickboxer. He just learned kickboxing to understand what they're doing, the distance, the timing, distance. That's management. Distance management.

Royce Gracie
That's very important. Some guys, you see, plant their feet and just exchange firepower. You can go either way. So I like more of a Lyotu style hit. And don't get hit.

Get away. When 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? Crazy. I think my father was crazy to put me in there, man. Well, no one had.

Joe Rogan
No one had ever done it before on television. Never been in America, at least. It had never been a thing. And then to all of a sudden have this. No time limit.

Royce Gracie
No time limit, no gloves, no rules, no everything. No body, and no eye gouging. Yeah. You could punch the nuts. Everything.

Yeah. But if you do a gouge or bite, like Gerard Godou, 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. There's no. Okay, you're gonna get disqualified.

Joe Rogan
Right. It's like, don't do it again, sir.

It's so crazy. But then from that moment from UFC, won, brazilian jiu jitsu exploded across the country. Exploded. Grace Academy double sides. After the first UFC.

Royce Gracie
After the second UFC, we double again. Wow, this is in Torrance. Torrance, yeah. I started at Hickson's place, and then I went to Carlson Gracie's place. Cause I didn't know any better.

Joe Rogan
It was closer. It was closer to me. It was on Hawthorne. As that was when Vitor was making his debut in the UFC, back when they were calling him Victor Gracie. Yes.

It was UFC twelve. And I remember the feeling of the first class, the feeling of how humiliated you are when you don't know jiu jitsu. And you spar with someone who knows jiu jitsu. It'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, 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. And you've been doing martial arts for a long time already.

So I had a completely distorted idea of my ability to fight. Completely distorted. And I remember my first class, I was like, oh, boy. Now I know. It's like, back in the garage days, there was always a student that brings a family friend or a family of member or coach from different styles of martial art, and they will come in and they will come in to fight us.

Royce Gracie
But we, Gordon and I would be like, okay, we're gonna control and turn him into a student. So we take the guy down, mount, and pretty much talk to him, maybe choke, maybe armbar, let it go. Not hurting. And the guy will go home and goes, oh, man, can I sign up? Can I learn?

Joe Rogan
Right, because of the fact that you didn't hurt them, you could convert them into a student. If you beat the fuck out of them and just broke their face, they. Would never come back. Yeah. So we were more concerned about gaining a student than trying to beat them up.

Royce Gracie
But they were coming to fight. We were converting them. Wow. Was it. Your father that was the mastermind behind doing it that way.

I think that was horion. Cause I was like my second father. I came live with him. I was 17 going on 18. I came to America to live with Horion.

Joe Rogan
So Horion was a lawyer. Very smart, very calculated. Teaching back in the garage. Days teaching every day. Private classes, half an hour.

Royce Gracie
Private classes. Place looked like a crack house. Half an hour, there's a person coming and leaving. Come and go. Come.

The neighbor's like, what are they doing over there? Yeah, it's amazing what started in that garage, if you really think about it. But it's also amazing, like, his vision that he had so much belief in jiu jitsu that he knew that he just. It wasn't like it had to be developed. It was already there.

Joe Rogan
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, so. And that's what happened.

Royce Gracie
Put on tv. Sack on UFC. Yeah. People coming from everywhere, those applications coming from different part of the world. It's crazy.

Joe Rogan
It's. There's never been. I mean, other than one thing that happened. Like Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee movies. People saw Bruce Lee movies.

They all wanted to learn martial arts, but other than that. But that was movies, right? So that was like, you wanted to do this thing that wasn't real. Like, this guy was fighting ten people. They were all coming out of one at a time, but it wasn't real.

Watching you in UFC one, it was like so many people had this light bulb moment. Right. I thought. A lot of people thought it was fixed. It was like, no, there's no way this thing's for real.

Royce Gracie
Even though Taylor Tully lost a tooth by Gerard go aheadot got kicking in the face right off, bro. The first fight, it's like. But a lot of people thought, yeah, second UFC, still. People like, eh, I think the fourth one is when people said, okay, this thing's for real. Martial artists knew right away, yes.

Joe Rogan
In the martial arts community, right away, I didn't see UFC one first. I saw UFC two. That was the first one that I saw because UFC won, for whatever reason. I think it was some licensing thing. It wasn't available as a DVD or a VCR tape.

Royce Gracie
Yes. So the vhs tape, when it was released, and you could get it in a store. A friend of mine had told me about it, and I had just moved to California. It was 94, and I got ahold of UFC two, and I watched it in my apartment. I remember going, oh, my goodness.

Joe Rogan
Like, it just changed my mind about fighting. You know, fighting for me was always stand up fighting. I mean, I wrestled a little bit in high school, but fighting for me was kickboxing. So when I saw that, I was like, wow. I remember everybody, like all my friends that were into martial arts, everybody was scrambling to try to find a jiu jitsu school.

Like, there had never been a moment like that where one martial art had emerged with such force.

Royce Gracie
I had a lot of wrestlers and judo guys that came up to me as like, man, thanks for putting us on the map. Going back to the old black Bell magazines, inside karate, inside kung fu, those all stand up martial arts? Yeah, those. They wouldn't consider wrestling judo part of martial art. That's not.

It's all stand up. We used to share a gym back when I lived in Boston. There was a guy that I used to work out with, and he had a gym that he would share with the judo class. So on one side there was a judo guy, and the other side was a kickboxers. And I remember thinking, like, what are these guys doing?

Joe Rogan
What a waste of time. Practicing, throwing each other around. Like, what's the point? You know? And no one knew.

It's so interesting that everyone. See, 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? What would happen if a boxer fought a wrestler? And everybody had an opinion. But until UFC one came around, no one really knew.

It was just theoretical. I always maintain that since 93 to today, martial arts have evolved more over the last 30 years than they have over the last 30,000 years. Everybody had, like, what would happen? Yeah, but nobody would challenge the other one. Nobody wanted to step on anybody's toes.

Well, nobody was willing to take the chance. You know, what if I lose? Or what if I don't want to bother? I don't want to beat the other guy, too, because if I beat him, he's going to feel bad. There was a lot of data.

Royce Gracie
Yep. We're like, hey, we're willing to find out. Yeah, well, thank God you did that. I mean, thank God it came along, because who knows where martial arts would be today if that hadn't happened? It would.

Still people thinking the death touches all that shit. I'll touch you right here on the shoulder, and a week from now, you are paralyzed. Like, grab your collarbone, you go to sleep. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
There was a lot of that stupid shit. There's still that stupid shit out there. There's still a lot of people out there that believe that stuff. It's crazy, isn't it? But, hey, UFC came along.

Yeah, but most people know the world. Most people know now. I mean, now if you want to fight, you have to know jiu jitsu. You have to, because there's no if, ands, or buts about it. If you take jiu jitsu away, it goes back to the old style stand up karate against kung fu.

Royce Gracie
Jujitsu is the bond between the striking arts and the grappling arts and all of them. I 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. You have to at least know what someone's doing. You can't.

Joe Rogan
You can't compete without understanding it because you'll get caught. You gotta know. Yeah. Not just. Not just on the grappling part, but on the stand up part.

Royce Gracie
You have to know how to defend yourself. It's like, it's not just come up and start to hit the opponent. No, no, no. I got to manage distance. I got to know when I'm too close and he's going to hit me, so I got to play defense all around.

Joe Rogan
What is it like for you, having been there for UFC One, to see what it is today, to see, like, UFC 300, which was just insane, this thing where millions of people are watching it around the world, it's this huge phenomenon. It's like the most exciting sport in the world now. And to know you were the original, you're Number one. There's only going to be one original ultimate fighter. That's you.

Royce Gracie
I don't look at that way. I don't look at that way. I look as a. As a. Yeah, I was part of it.

Joe Rogan
You were the part of it. If 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, maybe. Or what if I lost? Right? What if you lost?

Yeah. So I said the idea. I said, I'm not part of the history. I am the history. You are the history.

Yeah. YoU were the original representative of Jiu Jitsu, and 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 Jiu jItsu, I always tell people, is the only martial art that delivers as advertised, because if you're a kickboxer and you're a small guy and another guy's a kickboxer, but he's like 250 pounds. Like, you don't stand the chance. You're fucked. You're fucked up.

He's gonna hit you. Yeah. Lightweight boxer against a heavyweight doesn't stand. A chance in a chance. But jujitsu, if you are really good and that guy doesn't know he's doing, you're gonna fucking kill him.

He doesn't have a chance. Or even if he knows what he's doing. Yeah. Lightweight. Yeah.

Royce Gracie
The lightweight have a chance. Oh, yeah. To survive and play defense and end up choking or on board the bigger. Opponent, which is why absolutes in jiu jitsu matches are so interesting. When you watch a small guy beat.

A big guy, win the heavyweight championship, it's like, crazy. It's a lightweight. Yeah. No, it's the only martial art that really delivers as advertised, where technique triumphs over everything. And that's what my father and uncle Carlos, their brothers, always tried to show people, that you don't have to be the biggest, the strongest, the fastest.

You just gotta know what you're doing. My father used to say, give me the right leverage and I'll lift the world with one hand. Just gotta have the right setup. Well, that was also the brilliant thing about jiu jitsu and your father. So your father was a smaller guy.

Joe Rogan
He weighed like 147 pounds or something? About 445. Yes. Crazy, crazy. And challenge everybody.

Royce Gracie
Wrestlers that came from go boxers who go to vacation in Brazil. He would be at the airport waiting for the guy. The old Joe Lewis really went to Brazil.

And went to Brazil. And my father challenged him. Wow. Horno had a letter that was given to my father saying, joe Louis box against anybody, boxing against boxing, not in an MMA match. My father was like, 145 pounds.

Joe Louis was 200, 2200 pounds, the heavyweight champion at the time. Wow. The old man was crazy. Imagine if he took that on, if he was willing to do that. That would have been exciting.

But back then, there was no the Internet. Yeah. So a lot of people probably wouldn't find out. Right. Would be very smart and would be.

Didn't happen. Yeah. No one would understand. Right, right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
You'd have to set that up. You'd have to set that up. Bring a camera crew and the whole deal. Yeah. What, what was it about your father that had this mentality, that had this desire to, to challenge himself and prove Jujitsu's effectiveness.

Royce Gracie
I think he was being smaller, being pick on it, and once he learned he had that power, he learned Jujitsu. He got that power with him. So he want to show others and he wasn't. I would say as a fighter, he always says, if I fell on top of the opponent, I would be nice. I would have choked him out.

I'll subdue him, use submission, make him tap technique. If he was on top of me, I would have beat him up. He used to say, hit him. Get off me. Get off me.

He should have listened. He should have got off me in the first punch. He will tie you up and beat you from the bottom. Well, that was one of the more interesting things about Jiu Jitsu, because of what your father did, was because your father was smaller, he developed much more technique off of his back. Because in these other styles of judo and japanese jiu jItsu, it wasn't really emphasizing fighting off of your back.

Yeah, he was playing defense. So he always said, tie your opponent up, and if you have to beat him up from the bar, but if you get on top, there's no reason to beat him up. You under control, you control the fight, you just subdue him.

Well, it was a lot of defense. It's InteresTInG now, a mean defense, I would say very mean defense. Yeah. But it's interesting now when you see the rules, the rules are set up much MOre for strikers and for wrestlers. Because I've been talking about this LAtelY, like, say if you're a JuJItsu guy and you're fighting in the first round and rounds are five minutes long, and you take the guy down, four minutes and 30 seconds, you only have 30 seconds to work.

Joe Rogan
I feel like a fight should be even if you're going to make it rounds, the fight is the fight. I don't think someone should be able to get up. I don't think you should stand people up, ever. I think once a guy takes you down, that's the fight is on the ground. Then if it's boring for the audience, tough shit.

If you're on the bottom, get up. And if you can't get up, tough shit. And if the round ends and then the new round begins, I think they should start you right back in the same place. I think goes to. They're on the same weight division.

Royce Gracie
Back then there was no weight division. Right. But since the, it's so I don't, I would say. I would say the fight doesn't favor one person, one style or another. It doesn't favor it, but it gives a distinct advantage if you let a person stand up that didn't stand up.

Joe Rogan
So if you start the second round, say if you take me down with four 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, and then we start. But now we start standing up. But I didn't earn that stand up. I just gotta stand up because of the time. I feel like the fight should be a fight.

So if a fight is five rounds, that's a 25 minutes fight. And I think whatever position that you're in at the end of that first round, you should begin in the second round. That's what I think. Cause I'm in favor of doing one round straight through. Well, that would be wild too.

I think one round and maybe even no time on that. No time limit is not good for the tv. No, no, but good for the Internet. 115 minutes round. Ooh.

Royce Gracie
Yeah, it's like, that's it. 115 straight through, go straight. No, no. Rounds start 15 minutes later, we stop. They should try that.

And if, hey, if nobody wins another five minutes or ten minutes. Right? Overtime round, you see? Overtime. Well, I think pride had good rules.

Joe Rogan
A ten minute first round was better. I think ten minutes is better. Especially if someone, like, works really hard again. Four minutes, 30 seconds. You finally take the guy down.

Now you're on top, and now you're trying to set things up, but the bell rings, and then you start standing up again. Yeah, I started standing up again, but then, yeah, I think you put a ten minute round, 15 minutes. One round, straight through, man. But I think the problem is they've stopped changing the rules. The rules are the rules now.

And they've kind of, like, solidified them and established them. But I don't think the rules are right. I think if a guy takes you down, you should have to earn a stand up. You have to get back up to your feet. So if the fight ends with one.

Royce Gracie
Mounted on top of the outlet or on the back. Yeah. If that's the end of the round, you start from the same position. I think they should show it up on the screen, what the position was, and then everybody agrees. Okay, so he had an overhook.

Joe Rogan
He had half guard go. Or how about, like they. They play football, american football. If the fight, five minute finish, and the guys on the mountain position, you gotta let it go until they break away. Yeah.

Royce Gracie
So you're gonna go and tell somebody. Score. Yeah, so I like that. It's like if the positioned up on such an advantage, advantage position, that was something to think about it. Yeah, it's something to think about if we want to make things more realistic.

Like this around and I'm on your back about to choke you, or with the guillotine or the choke where armbar is cotton. Okay. The bell doesn't ring until you get away and get up. Then we'll take a break. Yeah, that's not bad either.

Joe Rogan
I just think that having a fight start, if you start, you start standing up. But I think round to round, you should resume the position, whatever you were in in the previous round. I think that's the only thing that makes sense. Cause otherwise, you didn't earn a stand up. 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.

Cause you didn't get out of that, so. And now if the guy's a kickboxer now, he goes, oh, shit, I almost got caught. And now you start that next round standing up, he has an advantage. Cause now he's standing up. Yeah, but he didn't earn that stand up.

You earned the takedown. You got him down. You got in a superior position. You were about to finish him. I like it.

Yeah, I think it makes more sense. I like it. No one's gonna listen to me, though, especially me. They'll go, you're biased towards jiu jitsu. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am.

But I'm not, though. But I'm not, though, because I feel like, I mean, if it was the other way, if, you know, 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. But if was a kick, if was a switch around. Just playing devil's advocate over here. Okay?

Royce Gracie
The kickboxer or the stand up guy hit, almost knock him out. Bell rings, saved by the bell. Right? How do we restart that one? Well, you restarted standing.

Joe Rogan
It's still standing. I mean, the round, you have the minute rest, but you're still standing. The kickbox is still. Let it go, let it go. The clock goes until, hey, either he recover, getting a clinch, and whoo.

Yeah, well, got away. The right way to do it then is one round, 115 minutes round or 125 minutes round in a championship fight. That's the right way to do it. That would 15, 30 seconds. 32nd minute round.

Royce Gracie
Minute break. Yeah. And then ten minutes. That's not bad. Yeah.

First round, 15. Yeah. Woo. That'd be crazy. It'll be an early night.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. I mean, how many finishes would there be? There'd be a lot more finishes, I think so. I wonder how people have to work. On the endurance too.

Oh, yeah. Cause a lot of guys I see, they finish the fight, one is fresh, the other one is done for the night. But then the one that's fresh lost because he doesn't have that quick twitch, that fast twitch muscle and the one that explode everything on the first round, the second 3rd round, that's it. This guy's ready to go for five, six, but his time is over. Right.

It's a, that's an interesting thing too, right? It's a matter of what people don't understand that don't, that just watch it and don't do martial arts is that it's really just about pacing yourself too. Knowing when to hit the gas, when to back up, knowing that you have to fight for five rounds and knowing like, when to push. Like some fighters, they'll, they'll back off in, you know, in the beginning because they, they know that a guy's going to come out fast and hard and they're just gonna wait. Okay, he's slowing down.

Now I start to press. Now I start to put on the. Gas and it becomes a mental too. Like Harden 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. But if I drop you off and say goodbye, find your way home now you gotta pick a direction, start swimming.

Yeah. Most people drowned before an hour. Yeah, true. Right. Mental.

Royce Gracie
Yeah, it's a lot of mental. There's no round to save you. Yeah. Yeah. That's the most interesting thing about the early UFCs is that it was just no time limit.

Joe Rogan
Just, here we go. This, like Dan Severn on top of me for 15 minutes. I beat him on the final 16 minutes. Yeah, but 15 minutes, if it was today, he would have won. He was on top of the decision.

Royce Gracie
He took me down, got on top, would have won the decision. I remember that day. I remember when you caught him in that triangle. Most people didn't even know what was going on. They were like, what is he doing?

Joe Rogan
What the hell's happening here? What is going on? Nowadays, everybody would be going, oh, the audiences are so educated now. That was a perfect example of playing defense right there. I totally played defense against him.

Royce Gracie
Just frustrate the opponent until he made a mistake. I tried a triangle early on in the fight, but he was able to get out. To get out. And then I defend, defend, defend, defend. He couldn't do anything.

I can see him getting frustrated, like he didn't know how he was going to win. He's like, I can feel that there's no way I can't beat this guy. Right, because you were so good defensively, just playing defense. He couldn't hit me. Couldn't.

He tried, you see? But I knew he doesn't have any finishing holds. He didn't know any finishing holds. He was just trying to put pressure. Okay, yeah, I'll take it.

No problem.

Joe Rogan
It was also the GI. The gee was so smart, too, to fight with the GI on, because guys would just grab that GI. When you would close the distance and get ahold of them, they would grab your gee. Instinctively, I prefer them to grab a lot of Brazilians who are like, man, but then they grab. They make it harder for you?

Royce Gracie
No, I prefer them to put their hands on me. Yeah. Cause I know where their hands are. At least if they are not punching me, if they have nothing to grab, they're gonna be swinging on me. Right.

Go ahead, grab my Gi all day long. I don't mind. Well, guys who weren't even grapplers would grab your GI. I remember watching. It's human instinct.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, human instinct. Yeah. And also, you have all that friction. It's so good to hold on to guys when you have the ghee, and I dried them. Use the ghee to my father.

Royce Gracie
Use the ghee to dry the guys. Cause if they be slippery. Mm hmm. It's not like today they put oil on their body. Oh, yeah, they definitely do.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, they definitely do. Kickboxes all put Vaseline all over. That's to warm up the tiger bond to warm up. That thing's slippery, man. Oh, yeah.

Guys take baths in baby oil. They would lie down in a bathtub and put water and put baby oil in the water and just soak themselves in baby oil. So even if they're dry, then is the moment they start to sweat. They just, like, WHOOP, like holding onto a salmon slip right out of your fingers. It's easy.

Royce Gracie
Good old days. Good old days. No rules. And then they slowly started implementing rules. They slowly started implementing weight classes and then mandating gloves and then taking away shoes.

I understand. I understand. It had to be. It became a show. Let's say, yeah.

So on the beginning was a style against a style. Yeah. Today is more of a. I would look at it more as, like, as an athlete against an athlete. Yes.

Joe Rogan
Now it's a sport. It's a real sport, and it's still a sport that there's still a lot of rules that I don't agree with. Like, I don't agree with no knees to the head on the ground. I think that's ridiculous. I think that doesn't make sense.

Cause they're very effective. Like, don't be in a position where you get kneed in the head. Like, don't be in that. Don't stay in a turtle. Like, when guys just stay in a turtle and a guy's got ahold of him, man, that's a terrible place to be in the street.

Oh, my God. If 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. But in the UFC, you can't even do anything. That seems to me to be crazy. And they tried to make it, I think, to last long.

Royce Gracie
The fights. Well, I think it's less brutal, too. And the idea is that, like, you can't defend yourself against knees to the head of ground, but you can obviously pry. Did them? Yeah, I can elbow the back of the head.

Joe Rogan
Right. The back of the head from the back. If you have the back mount. Remember when Henzo, when your cousin fought Stryker, that guy in, was it world combat league? Oh, my God, he got his back and just, boom, boom.

Just fucked him up. Like, you didn't even need to put the choke in. Like, you couldn't do anything. You just flattened out with your face on the mat and the guy's pounding the back of your head. You just tap.

Royce Gracie
So they're kind of trying to elude, put a little bit of. To protect the fighter. Yes, I understand. I understand, too. I don't agree with it.

Joe Rogan
I don't agree with it either. Also, it's weird that you can't hit the back of the head because the back of the head gets hit a lot, a lot accidentally, especially with head kicks. Like, a lot of times head kicks wrap around the back of your head and it's totally legal. Like, 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.

It wraps right around the back of the head. It's okay, that's okay. And that's a legal ko. Yeah. Which 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. Yeah, it's, I would say let it go. Yeah, let it go. The old days, that would be good to see.

You gotta protect the back of your head. The back of your head's vulnerable. If you're in a situation where a guy can punch the back of your head, you should be blocking the back of your head. And if now we can punch the front of your head, now you got to block the front of your head. Turn the face into a point.

Royce Gracie
You have to turn your back. You have to do. This is, we're talking about the sport of effective fighting, and it's very effective to punch someone in the back of the head. And they say it's more dangerous, but, I mean, we're talking about a very dangerous sport. It's effective to punch the temple.

Joe Rogan
That's okay. That's fucking vulnerable. That's a thin little piece of bone. Four. Yeah.

Royce Gracie
Yeah. They're just to protect your fingers. That's all. It just helps you hit harder. Yep.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. It just protects you from cuts a little bit. A little bit, you know. But still, the cast that they put underneath. Mm hmm.

Royce Gracie
All that taping and the gloves just to protect your hands. So don't break your hands. Exactly. Yeah. Do you think that they should be bare knuckle?

I think you should go back to the old ways. Just try out one time. One time. Right. One time would be great.

No time limit. No weight division. Why doesn't someone do that? Why doesn't someone do that? Someone should do.

Joe Rogan
I mean, I don't know about the weight limit thing. Guys are too good now. The problem is guys are too good. But if there's no weight division, if there's no way division, it cannot have time limit. Right.

Royce Gracie
So if you take the weight, you gotta take the time. Right. Right. Like my father say, I'll give you the weight division, you gotta give me time. Right.

So some of the light weights over here, man, the, they will fight the heavyweights also with no time limit. Most of these guys, well, if they're jujitsu guys, but also a lot of these guys are not really. That's the other thing is the weight cutting. Like Kamaru Usman is a great example. He was the 170 pound champion, one of the greatest ever.

Joe Rogan
Never weighed 170 pounds. He weighed 170 pounds for about five minutes. Walk around 200. Yeah. Easy jacked.

Royce Gracie
All of them. Everybody. Everybody. You can't fight one. I mean, except for BJ Penn.

Joe Rogan
BJ Penn was the last guy who fought at 170. He probably weighed, like, 165 when he beat Matt Hughes, you know, and he didn't. Just didn't cut any weight at all. He just weighed what he weighed and just went in and went after it. But again, jiu jitsu guy, you know?

Royce Gracie
But everybody have to know jiu jitsu today. Yeah. Some are more proficient than the others. Yes. But everybody have to know.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. You have to know what's going on. You have to. Yeah. Everybody have to know a little bit.

Royce Gracie
Yes. Kickboxing, boxing, the karate. Everybody have to know a little bit of everything. Yeah. It's a different sport.

Joe Rogan
It's totally different. Would it be fun to do once see who can sign up for it? Yeah. Yeah. No time limit, no weight class, no gloves.

Yeah. Old school. I think they should take away the cage. I think the cage helps people, too, because it helps people stand back up. It helps you if you get a guy down and you get a guy down in an open room, like, say, a basketball court, like, there's nothing to help him get back up.

Royce Gracie
Okay, hold on. Time out over here. Now. You brought some memories over here. Yeah.

First, UFC. It was John Mullers, the producer for Conan the Destroyer, the father of Dirty Harry, the Clint Eastwood. He's in charge of creating the cage. But before the cage, they come up with some ideas they present to me. I was like, wait a minute, hold on.

They're like, how about if we make a round ring with a pit underneath with a pit around it with sharks? I was like, hold on, hold on. Imagine if I fight a sumo wrestler and just bump me off and fall off. The shocks, you eat you. It's like, yeah, yeah.

We should put piranhas because you're from Brazil. What? The ideas they had. How about, like, a bowl? And people try to get off, but you can't because it'd be slippery.

You can't climb off the walls. But then they didn't have the angles for the camera. And how about putting up. They tried with the octagon, but with barbed wires. Oh, God.

I was like, dude, imagine if I got somebody big and just push me against and hang me on top. Oh, yeah, that's right. Let's make it electrical fence. I was like, really? The ideas they had, man's.

I was like, the fire fight. Everybody I'm gonna fight is gonna be bigger than me. The guy pushed me against the fence. Fry me against the fence. Come on.

Joe Rogan
Really crazy. I keep vetoing the ideas, man. They had all kind of crazy ideas. God, imagine if they went through with those. That's so ridiculous.

I've been saying for a while that they should do like. If you could watch a basketball game. Basketball games on this massive court. Why can't there be a fight on a basketball court? Just flat mats, no walls, so everyone.

Royce Gracie
Can see everything that's going on, even a basketball. The guys will go to the edge. Yeah, but you have a warning track. So you have a warning track of like 15ft on each side. Let's make that bow.

The ball. That's not a bad idea. The bow, so the guy can climb off. It's like with the wall, the edges. Have you seen karate combat?

Joe Rogan
How karate combat's doing it? No, karate combat is doing it like that, where they have a flat surface and it's on the edges. There's mats that go to the edges, like at an angle. In the angle, people cannot climb out. They kind of go up against it, but then they get pushed and then they fall down.

They fall down because it's. It's like. I think a wall is actually better than the angle because it's just too easy to fall. Like, as. Like someone's pushing you up against that thing is a slope.

It's hard to like as someone's. You're. Yeah. So if you see how they do it. See how they have that.

Royce Gracie
Yes. See the angle. So I don't. 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. Oh, you came back.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. You can't back up. Yeah, you can't back up. I think it would be better if it was like a basketball court. Just a flat mat and a basketball court and there's a warning track.

So if you know you're in the red zone, you have to get out of that red zone. And if you keep retreating to the red zone, maybe they take a point away from you, like, maybe you have to. It's a lot of room. A basketball court is a big space. There's plenty of room.

You start in the center and then that's how you fight. I just try to eliminate all the factors that aren't another human, like 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. Like, if that was just flat, no wall.

You're not getting up now. You have to go under hooks. You have to de path. You have to do something to try to reverse the position. You try to get back up on your feet.

You have to earn a stand up. Much more difficult than if you're just using the wall to help you stand back up.

Royce Gracie
Shark. Piranhas shocked. Piranhas. Electrical fence. God.

Joe Rogan
I remember the first UFC I worked was UFC twelve, and this was when I was on a television show. I was on this television show called News Radio. It was a sitcom, and so I was hired to go do the post fight interviews, and I remember the people that I was working with on this sitcom, like, what are you doing? Like, why are you being involved in this? This is brutal.

And I was telling them, I was like, no, no, no. This is gonna be the biggest sport in the world. They're like, you're out of your fucking mind. Like, you're crazy. No one's gonna like this.

This is insanity. Like, you're going to watch people fight in a Cage. And I'm like, that was one of. The challenges that Horden had, and a lot of people did. Not believing on him.

Royce Gracie
He was like, people are like, man, you cannot fight on the streets. How are you gonna put this on live tv? Right? That was one of the challenges that the horror figured out. Pay per view.

Joe Rogan
He must be happy now watching it, right? Oh, yeah. Like, look, I was right. Baby. Yeah.

Look at his baby now. His baby's on ESPN. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy.

Royce Gracie
Yeah. National tv. When was the last time Horian went to a UFC? I don't know. Does he still watch them?

I think so. I think he's just watching. So I talked to him once in a while, and once a month we talk. It must be crazy for him to see this thing that was his idea, just branch off and become this huge. All over the world.

It's not. Is he mad that he didn't get a piece? No, because it's sold for. He never told me. He never talked to me about that boy.

Joe Rogan
They should have cut him in. But they should have cut him in. Yeah. You know, you think about it. Like, if anybody deserves a piece, that.

Royce Gracie
Guy deserves a piece for the vision that he. Yes. If it wasn't for his vision and the way they decided to go about doing it. Also, your father. Your father's vision for you.

Joe Rogan
Like, don't hurt him. Just use jiu jitsu. Show everybody. Cause that's one of the things that made it so appealing. It wasn't that.

It was just so brutal that the guy who won wasn't brutal. The guy who won was just better technical. That's why I think the first, 2nd, 3rd UFC until I didn't finish on the third UFC, and first and second people were like, there's no way he's the smallest one. Beat everybody without hurting them. I don't know.

Royce Gracie
Everybody thought I was like, yeah, a lot of people are like, the non martial artist people. Yes. Martial art people knew. It was like, uh. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan
Martial arts people. We gotta learn this. Well, everybody who took jiu jitsu knew right away, like. Cause it was. It was so eye opening.

Like, like I said before my first classes, like, the ideas that you had in your head of how competent you are versus the reality that you're confronted with. And you saw that in all the gracian action tapes, too. Like, these guys, they wanted to do it again. Like, how did you do that? Let's try it again.

No way. And then, WHOOP. Take down again. WHOOP. Armbar.

Royce Gracie
Like Gerard Gordo, after the first UFC, he went back to Holland and prepared Rem ko Pahdu to beat me. Remk Padu, judo player knew some stand up. When I beat Remko pardu, they went back to Holland. They're like, okay, we have to learn this jiu jitsu thing. We have to learn this.

Joe Rogan
Remember when Remko Pardue fought Orlando vital? Yes. And he got him inside control, and he just elbowed him unconscious. And everybody's like, oh, wow, that was crazy. Because Orlando Viet was scary.

Yeah, scary. Lightweight. Very good kickboxer. Yeah. Nasty, nasty.

Muay Thai and Remco pardu just, WHOOP, took him down. Elbows. Boom, boom, boom. And then stopped. He stopped, he stopped.

Royce Gracie
He's out. He was it. That's wrap. Such an educational moment for martial arts again. Martial arts has changed so much since 1993.

Joe Rogan
People's understanding of martial arts, just the general public, what they know. If you see street fights today, guys go to the ground all the time. You see street fights today, guys get guys in heel hooks. It's crazy. Street fights.

Royce Gracie
Yep. You know, here it is. Here's Remco boom boom. The first one, he was already out. Rent was like, 260 pounds.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, he was a big dude, but it was just like no one understood what was going on. No one understood anything. That's the same take down that he tried to do to me, but I ended up on his back. Yeah. And I knew he was gonna do that take down, trap the arm, roll over.

Mm hmm. So I end up on his back, and that's when I choke him. Such a strange time for martial arts, really, if you really stop and think about it, such a strange time, because 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. Now we have new understanding. Now we have, okay, now we get it.

Now we get it. You know, and then you see it evolve to what it is now, you know, where you see these guys, like Alex Pajada, the cake boxer who comes in, and now he's got his style. And I think today is more of a lot of strategy, too, because both fighters are practicing the stand up and the grappling. They do jujitsu, they do wrestling. Everybody does kickboxing, karate.

Royce Gracie
Everybody practices. All of them. So it's a question of who have the best strategy. Yeah. Who has the best strategy.

Joe Rogan
And then there's people like Pereira, who has a unique skill set, like, scary kickboxer, dangerous. He just hits you once you're unconscious. You know, he's like, that guy presents a very unique challenge. Like, if you don't grab him and you don't get him to the ground, you are fucked, because if you're standing up with him at any moment, that guy's going to set you up, move, and boom, like we did with Jamal Hill. And that last.

Royce Gracie
Yes. All it takes is one shot from that guy, you know? Like, so these guys, now that everyone has their own unique skill set, and it's so interesting seeing how that skillset matches up with another guy's skillset, like, with Perjeda. I want to see what happens if he fights against, like, an elite wrestler. A really good, really good at takedowns, who knows jujitsu, you know?

Joe Rogan
And we haven't seen that yet, but. He trains a lot of grappling. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We just got his black belt from Glover.

Royce Gracie
From Glover. Yeah. Yeah. Which is huge. Good.

Joe Rogan
And Glover says he's, like, very good. On the ground, Glover himself. Toughers. People don't know how good Glover is because Glover could not fight in the US for six years because of visa issues during his prime. Like, during his prime, Glover was stuck in Brazil.

He couldn't come to America because everybody knew about. Glover was the boogeyman. Like, everybody talked about Glover. Glover was the guy that, like, out of all the elite guys that weren't in the UFC, Glover was the number one guy that everybody talked about. He was so good when he was younger.

By the time he got to the UFC, he was already, like, 36 years old. He won the title. I think he was 41 or 42 when he won the light heavyweight title. And Alex trains with him, so. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Royce Gracie
It's a good combination. Oh, perfect, perfect, perfect combination. Yeah. I mean, this is. It's an amazing, exciting time for the sport.

Joe Rogan
You know, it really is. And it's good. There's still a lot of countries, a lot of places that are against, so we still can open up more doors. What countries are against MMA? A lot of european countries.

It's starting to make its way. Like, this guy's from France just. Just now, last year, I think, starting France and Spain. Well, France has some great guys, too now, though, you know, Cyril Gahn and Cedric Doomay, who fights for PFL, who's a elite kickboxer. It's.

It's just. And then you got. Of course, you got those guys from Dagestan. That's an interesting element, too. Those russian wrestlers.

Royce Gracie
I don't think just because of their wrestling. I think it's because of their discipline. And I tell a lot of people that those guys don't think about anything else. Just train. They're disciplined about it.

Joe Rogan
Very religious, very disciplined, very focused. Yeah, there's no. The girlfriend or wife. They're not thinking about any of that. No partying?

Royce Gracie
There's no partying. That's all they do. Get up, train, sleep, eat, train. So, yeah, they don't think about anything else. They're just more.

I think they're more disciplined than this side of the world. Yeah. I was watching this interview with Khabib, where he was talking 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'll never. They won't be special. But 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.

Yeah, I totally believe on that. It's the discipline. Yeah. It's not because they're better wrestlers or. Nah, because they're bad strikers.

You find very good wrestlers everywhere in America, top wrestlers in the world over here. Olympics. Yeah. See, but I think the discipline is what's missing. A lot of people, they don't take Sunday offs, right, right.

Oh, it's Sunday. We're gonna rest. No, no, not for them. Not for those guys. What was training like for you?

Joe Rogan
Like during UFC one.

Royce Gracie
Training, I never really party, so I understand because I'm on that philosophy. I would say good. Before, like a month, two months before the fights, a month before the fight, when I was fighting Japan, when I went to fight in Japan, a month before the fight, I would have moved out of the house. So don't have to deal with the kids, with the woman, nothing. So a month before, and Hori would come over and have a talk with me and my father and it's like, okay, there's no babysitting, there's no hanging out with the kids.

Yep. None of that. Just spartan training. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. And I understand.

I was like, okay, I'm a soldier, man. You tell me to do it, I'll do it. There's not a doubt. You see, they say do it, done. So you cannot hang around with the kids and babysitting.

The kids are little, they all grown now, but it's like, nope, okay, I can cut it off. Not a problem. And a lot of discipline on that. Say goodbye to the family. You gotta go train.

You gotta go spend a month away. And what was a day's training like? Did you do any strength and conditioning back then? Or was it all just jiu jitsu training and position training and drills? It was a lot of, in that order.

You have to know what you're doing. That's how I learned from my family. You have to have endurance, then becomes power. Yes, I did a lot of strength and conditioning, but a lot of endurance. Endurance was before the strength and strength.

So even till today, it's like, it's knowledge. If you don't know how to fight, you have no business in the cage. But then you know how to fight and you have a lot of power, but you can't last more than two minutes. Uh oh, you're in trouble. Yeah.

So you have to know what you're doing. You have to have endurance to last at least the first round. Five minutes then becomes power. And what kind of endurance training would you do? Oh, endurance.

Everything from running to swimming to strength. Coach and I one time got up and it's like, okay, the guy, he used to be the strength coach for strength coach for USC, for the Rams. When they were in LA, James Mann went for a 40, 1 mile run, 41 miles. One day, seven, 7 hours later, I told him, stop. My calves are both cramped up, man.

I can't take it. I can stab. That seems crazy. Yeah. So 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. I was like, sure, let's do it. I figured out was across Tampa Bay, it's like 3 hours later.

Joe Rogan
3 hours of swimming. I made it. But my God, Jesus Christ, I was having frostbite on my fingers. It was January, cold, very cold water. Brazilians are not made for cold weather.

Royce Gracie
It was not the distance. It was not, I can make it. It was not carrying like extra 40, 50 pounds of weight behind dragging behind us. No, it was the cold water that got to me. I was like, but I did it.

Got the other side. Did you train for that or did you just do it? I assume about maybe a dozen times. I thought we're just gonna go to the beach and just hang out. Swim on the beach.

Yeah, cold water. Okay. Yeah, come in, come out. No, 3 hours. By the time they said across Tampa bay, I was like, sh, now I cannot back down, man, I gotta do it.

So went to a pool, swimming a nice warm pool. Dozen times, maybe a dozen times just. To get ready for that. Yep. Oh fuck.

It was pretty much just on heart, man.

We climb up cactus to clouds. That's in Palm Springs. Strength coach is like, yeah, let's go for a hike, dude. It's like cactus of clouds. It's bad.

We did it. We got up there. How long did that take? All day. All day.

Left like 03:00. 04:00 in the morning. We started, finished by 04:00 in the afternoon. 304:00 in the afternoon. Cactus to clouds, 21 miles.

Joe Rogan
Difficulty class one two highly strenuous 10,400ft change of elevation. Jesus Christ. Yep. Yeah, yeah. I always did endurance and stuff.

So with fighting, if you don't have endurance, you don't have anything. Sakurab and I, we fought for hour and 45. 45? Yeah. Yeah.

Royce Gracie
It was six rounds of 15 minutes. The two minute rest I think was two minute rest in between rounds. 15 minutes rest for 215. Crazy. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
Is that the longest fight you had? Yes. 945. That's the second longest fight in history. What's the longest fight in history?

Royce Gracie
My father. Oh wow. 340. Wow. 342 or something like this.

Yep. Fighting. But he was one round. Yeah, I was six rounds of 15 minutes. What was the longest fight in the UFC?

Joe Rogan
That was one round.

Royce Gracie
I think. Dense ever. And I. Oh, wow. No.

Kesham Rock and I. One round of it was 30 minutes on the UFC five. We did it. One round of 30 minutes. What about other organizations?

Joe Rogan
Remember when Marillo Bustamante fought Tom Erickson? Tom Erickson, yes. That was another one. That was crazy, because Marillo 185, and Tom Erickson was 300 pounds. He was fucking very good wrestler.

Powerful guy, too. People forgot about Tom Erickson. He was a very good wrestler. He was a scary motherfucker. Big.

They would call him the big cat because he moved like a cat, but he's 300 pounds. That was on. The wrestlers were taking over and trying to fight against the showing. The Brazilians. That was nothing.

Royce Gracie
So they had the head of the heavyweights. It was Tom Erickson. Kerr Coleman. Yep. Royce Alger, too.

Joe Rogan
He entered into the UFC. And ensign. Anyway. Armbar. Yep.

Broke his arm. And all those guys went to Brazil to fight in Brazil. Mm hmm. Yeah. Kevin Randleman.

Mm hmm. Randleman. Mark Kerr. Yep. Chuck Liddell.

Royce Gracie
They fought Fab Goujel, and Chuck Liddell fought Pele. Yep. Remember when they used to have the ring with the. The netting underneath the bottom ropes? People can't slip out.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. Crazy. It'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. Like, back then, trying to watch a match was very hard to do.

You had to find a tape, you know? Yeah. I remember people saying, yes, man, you fought in America. We had to wait a week or two weeks until somebody bring the tape over the VHS. They had to bring it.

Royce Gracie
Not even send. They have to somebody come over here, record it, and then take it back to Brazil and make copies and pass around to people. Well, it's also like, people had to understand where the level was at, too, because if you didn't watch it, you didn't understand where the level was at. I remember there was a match between Hickson and Hegan. There's a jujitsu match in Hickson and Egan, and at the time, was like the highest level jiu jitsu black belt match we had ever seen.

Joe Rogan
And we're watching Hickson and Hegan going after him, like, oh, my God. They were both studs. Studs. Hegan was not easy, man. He was so good.

Royce Gracie
He was a stud. Oh, my God. And watching those guys go at it in their prime, it's like you get to see that level and you gotta watch a tape if you were gonna see that. Yep. Cause, you know, we weren't in Brazil, so we'd have to.

Joe Rogan
Someone has to film it. They have to get it over to us. Yeah. Crazy. How come Hickson never fought in the UFC?

Was there ever a moment where it almost came over? I think because I was fighting there in the UFC. If not, it was tournament back then, so if both of us fought, we end up facing each other. It's like, ah, so I think he just. That's why he decided to go to Japan.

But when you. When you stopped fighting in the UFC, was ever a moment where they were trying to get Hixon to come over. I don't know if they approach him, but he was already. He was successful in Japan. Yeah.

Royce Gracie
And they kept him busy over there. Yeah. So Higgs was beating up the heavyweights in Japan. Yeah, he was beating up everybody over there. That's the thing that unfortunately, in America, people weren't aware of, like Japan Valley, Tudo, and all the different.

Joe Rogan
And then the original pride, you know, when he fought Takata and he fought all those guys over there. And Funaki, the first valetudo. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's.

Fortunately we have choke the documentary, so people get a chance to see it from that. Hicks was a beast, man. Oh, my God. Yeah, well, that was the crazy thing when you were winning the UFC. You were telling everybody, hey, my brother's even better than me.

Royce Gracie
And everybody was by a hundred times, not by a little bit. That's crazy. Why was he so much better?

I don't think was just physique. It was the way he moved, put his weight, the way the position himself. So it was all position. Wasn't. People say, well, because he was stronger, he was more athletic.

Nah, he wasn't, because I don't think he ever used strength against me when we're training. It was not like, okay, I'm stronger than you, I'm gonna just rely on strength. It was just body weight, just the knowing position. Knowing. So he just had a special talent.

Yeah, I would say a special talent, yes. But that was so confusing for us. Cause we would hear, like, what, his brother's better than him. Like, how is this possible? Love by little bits, but a lot.

Joe Rogan
It's crazy. But Hoyla, too. Yeah, and Hoyla was lighter weight than me. But you, like you said, sparring with Hoyle, he's like a grab, you know, salmon, he's all over the place, it's like, ah. And he's little man.

It's like, well, he was the most successful in tournaments, right? Yes. He used to win the open weight divisions and fighting all the heavyweights. And Hoylo's a beast, man. What a family you have.

I mean, what a family. All of them. Bunch of studs. All of them. Everyone.

Henzo. Including the girls. Sure. Yeah. Look at Kira.

Yeah, now, sure, sure. Look at Kira. Look at even the ones that are not involved on teaching, dude, they're vicious.

It's just so incredible that this one family produced so many champions. There's never been anything like it in all of combat sports. Never been anything even remotely close. There's no even second place that you could bring up. Oh, well, you know, there was a few times where two brothers were really good at fighting, you know, but it's never been anything like.

Royce Gracie
Bunch of brothers and cousins. Yeah, everybody. Uncles. Yeah, everybody. Yep.

Joe Rogan
I mean, when you heard the name Gracie, everybody's like, oh, shit, it's gonna be a problem. Like, I think it was Hansel that said, once Hanselman's another beast on the family. Said, we are not a family. We're a factory of fighters. Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, so many. Hayin Hanzo. I mean, just so many. So many.

It's just really incredible when you really stop and think about it and the. Amount of people that we all created, that came, that learned from us at one point. Yeah, it's extraordinary. It really is. When you watch Jiu jitsu now, you know, do you.

Do you watch jujitsu? Like, no. Gi Jutsu? Do you watch these guys?

Like, Gordon Ryan? I'm not big in tournament. Gordon Ryan is awesome, man. That's his belt up there.

Royce Gracie
We met up with a friend of ours, Derek. We met up with him. We were teaching him in Chicago. And he. Very respectful.

Gordon Ryan came up like, man, can we roll a little bit? I was like, sure, let's roll. It wasn't too long ago, maybe a year ago. Less than a year ago. And the guy's a beast, man.

It's like. I was like, I know of him. Yeah. So he's very respectful. We're going very light, and he's going easy on me.

And I was like, okay, go ahead, catch me. And he wouldn't really. And he turned around, and I can feel him giving to me. It's like, no, you take me without talking. And I was like, there's no way I'm gonna take.

Cause it wouldn't be believable. There's no way I can tap him. And I'm okay. And I give it to him back something, and he's like, pretend he doesn't see it. He gives something back to me.

That's the point that I started laughing. I was like, dude, really? I'm giving the arm and he's giving me the neck and I'm giving the triumphant. He's giving me this. We're like, both give each other.

Very respectful, man. That's funny. We talk about discipline. That guy works out 365 days a year. There's no Christmas.

Joe Rogan
Christmas, fuck you, your birthday, fuck you. Every day. They train every day. I told him, people misunderstanding what he's saying. He's challenging people.

Royce Gracie
I said, that's good. Yeah. That'S what my family did. You say, you're good? I say, I'm good.

There's only one way to find out. Yeah. And I told him, keep doing it because they'll push people. You see? Yep.

That's training. We're going so light. He's going so easy on me, and I'm giving to him, go ahead, catch me. And he like, put the hand and doesn't catch. I was like, really?

And then he'll give me something. I was like, okay, you talk.

Joe Rogan
Nice and smooth and slow. But that's the thing that he's capable of rolling like that because he's so fucking strong, but he doesn't use it, you know, it's just all technique and movement, you know, and understanding. And obviously he came from Henzo school. You know, John Donagher taught him, and Donagher came from Henzo. You know, it's like it's all that.

Royce Gracie
Same lineage, but there's a lot of good talent. People over there, out there right now. Oh, my God, it's incredible. Like, the level of just jiu jitsu now is so high, you know, Mikey Musumechi and, you know, the Rutolo brothers and all these different guys out there. There's just so much somebody level that trains with him, with Gordon Ryan.

I can't remember his name right now, man. But I heard the kid says, I'm gonna catch you on the left arm, and he catch you on the left arm. It's like, I'm gonna catch the right foot and he catch you and he tells you how long in timing. It's like, wow, that's impressive to be able to pull such a thing. It's not easy.

Joe Rogan
No. Well, that's what guys do when they get past the level of everybody else, right? They just start challenging themselves by giving themselves one thing they're gonna try to do. And I ask people around, people say, yep, which guy is this training partner. For guard Gene Carlo?

Who is it? Do you know which guy it is? I can't remember the name. He's one of the guys that trained with Gordon Ryan. And he's on that level.

Well, there's very high level guys now. I mean, it's just. It's so uncle. But it's also iron sharpens iron. You know, these guys are so good now.

And everybody's competing with guys that are so good. Like, you go to Abu Dhabi and you watch the level. It's just so. They've been doing little kids too. So, yeah, people in the beginning thought, well, the graces are good because they keep in secret.

Royce Gracie
No, no, we just stick to it. We just start as a young age and we grew up on this. Well, this is the thing that Gordon always says. He says, my jiu jitsu is ten years advanced of everybody. So it does.

Joe Rogan
I can show you everything I'm doing. It doesn't matter. You're not going to catch me because I'm in the gym 365 days a year. Discipline. Discipline boils down to discipline, what he eats.

Royce Gracie
And. Yep, it's. John Donaher talks about Kaizen. Kaizen 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.

Joe Rogan
That's what they do. And 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 in a year. You add that times 52. 52 weeks. You keep going over and over and over again.

After ten years, I have extra years of training on you. When you think about it that way, it's really the way to do it. If 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. And we go back to Dagestan's, same thing.

Royce Gracie
That's all they do. There's no Sundays for them. Yeah, there's no, today's my birthday, today's it's holiday. No, there's no holidays for them. No, it's just discipline.

Joe Rogan
If you're not getting better, you're getting worse. So you gotta have discipline. That's what I tell everybody. You gotta have discipline. You can be the most talented person.

Royce Gracie
Without discipline, you're not gonna stay on top forever. Yeah. You know, Mike Tyson said that. He said, discipline, without discipline, you're nothing. And he said, and discipline is doing things that you hate to do, but doing them like you love it.

Yep. Yeah. I just love it to do it. Anyways. It is a lot.

Joe Rogan
I mean, that's the thing about jiu jitsu, too. It's so funny. There's so much fun to do. Even when you're losing. It's fun.

Royce Gracie
I love a challenge, man. Let's go for a swim across Tampa Bay. Okay, fine. Let's run 41 miles. Climb climbing cactus, the clouds.

Okay, no problem. Speaking of challenges, you recently got into bow hunting. How did that start? How did you get into that? I know you met John Dudley, and I know you did John Dudley's podcast.

Joe Rogan
Cause I listened to you with John Dudley, and John Dudley taught me. So he's an amazing coach. Amazing. When I first met him, he came up to me. I was shooting the black rifle, coffee, and the challenge.

Royce Gracie
I didn't know what I was doing. He came up to me, he's like, hey, come see me. I'll make your bowl. And I was like, what the fuck is this guy, man? He's like, fucking, I don't know.

Who is this? I was looking around, I asked around. They're like, he's the hoist grace of bow hunting. Yeah, he's the fucking man. So I went spend some time with him, show me some stuff.

Made build me a bow. Not like yours. Yours is. How many pounds to pull? I have a 90 pound bow.

90 pound? I cannot even carry that thing. Well, it's not 90 pounds. No, the weight. It's the pulling is 90 pounds.

I can even carry that ball. Mine is like 60. 60 is good enough, but if you could pull 90, it's better. Yeah, no, I don't have the. Well, the way I felt like, you know, people say that there's, like, this controversy in the bow hunting community where they said, you don't need 90 pounds.

Joe Rogan
70 pounds is all you ever need. And I'm like, okay, but 70 pounds for you is not 70 pounds for me. 70 pounds for me is easy. 90 pounds for me is not hard. So 90 pounds for you is almost impossible.

But 90 pounds for me is pretty easy. Like, there's a video of me pulling my 95 pound bow back. I just fucking pull it back because I lift a lot of weights. So if you lift a lot of weights and you have all this muscle, why not use it? Yep, I agree.

That's a lot more power. I was shooting with the 95 pound bow. I was shooting a 520 green arrow at 301ft/second when that thing fucking hits, man. That is going through everything. The amount of penetration you get with a bow like that is insane.

And that kind of power, it's like if you, that's better because if you hit bone going in, you're going to go through the bone. It's going to go through everything. You're not going to worry about penetration. You're not going to worry about lethality. It's going to be very lethal.

Royce Gracie
So you wouldn't use, I wish I had those muscles. It's like a boy, 90 pounds. Start lifting weights. Let's go. Start lifting weights.

Joe Rogan
I do a lot of rows, a lot of chin ups, but if you could, you know, if you could do that and it's not hard, I always say pull the thing back that you could. Like, I shoot, I have an 80 pound bow that I practice with and I'll shoot that bow for 3 hours. I'll be out my yard for 3 hours just shooting hundreds of arrows, man. I love, but it took forever. I love guns, any kind of weapons, swords, bows.

You've gone a terran tactical too, right? Yep. Yeah, that's great, right? And that place. Great.

Royce Gracie
He's awesome. He's, he's awesome parents. Amazing. Good teacher too. Oh, amazing teacher.

He knows how to push you to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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. Well, he's like da ding ding ding ding ding. 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, you know.

But I got into bow hunting. A bow in general not too long ago. I would say four or five years ago, I started to play with it. And then when did you think about hunting? Oh, I've been hunting for a while.

I keep that quiet. Yes, you keep that quiet because of Brazil? No, because Brazil has a very anti hunting attitude. Just Brazil. Sing family, the grazing family, a lot of them don't hunt, don't like hunting, and they give you a hard time.

Joe Rogan
And I'm like, you were telling me about your WhatsApp group chat. Yeah, they post a picture of somebody was eating some sushi and somebody post a picture in a brazilian barbecue place and they all started posting about eating and I post a picture holding an elk. There's no guns, there's no blood. Everybody give me a hard time, man. Crazy hypocrites.

Royce Gracie
Fucking give me a hard time. I give them an hour, and then I came back and said, there's a bunch of hypocrites. You all eat meat. Give me a hard time. So.

But then they start to, oh, but you just kill for the fun. No, I did not. The meat is at my house. The hides are my house, the heads of my house, and the leftovers, the guts that we don't eat, the other animals went to eat. So I had to educate a lot of them on that.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, that's the thing. Most people are just uneducated about it, and they have this stereotype view of hunting as being this cruel thing that people do for fun. No, I do it for the meat because I want to eat. It's the best meat. If I'm not going to eat, I don't kill it.

Royce Gracie
I'm not gonna shoot a cat. Of course I don't eat cats. Right, exactly. Yeah. People have asked me to do some hunts where they don't eat the meat.

Joe Rogan
I'm like, yeah, like, there's some, like, there's helicopter hog hunts. They do. They fly around the helicopter. They shoot wild pigs out of a helicopter. I'm like, I know you have to do it.

Royce Gracie
You can go back and get it. Well, you could, but I mean, how many of them you gonna get? Like one day they shot 250 of them. No, not that many. You're not gonna really butcher.

Joe Rogan
And some of them they donate to hunters for the hungry, which is a great organization that feeds a lot of homeless shelters and stuff. And they'll take that meat and bring it to a butcher shop and give it to hungry people. And it's very good meat. It's the best meat for you. But when you shoot out of a helicopter and shooting 250 pigs, you're not going to go and take those pigs.

Royce Gracie
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. We don't shoot, like 250. Oh, okay. A couple, four or five. You see, we go back, get the best ones.

Yeah, we cut it up and take the meat and, oh, wow, boar is delicious. Yeah. So good. And sometimes even, sometimes we even give out to churches and they take care of feed people. That's great.

Joe Rogan
Yeah, that's great. But wild game meat, man, it is the best meat in the world. When I eat it, I just like, whoa. But the feeling of you went there. Yes.

Royce Gracie
You got that meat. Yes. Yes. It's something that you brought home. You went.

You went hunting. And hunting, I tell people all the time, it's not catching. I would say 70% of the time, I come back home with nothing. So it's not every time that I go out that I come back with something. No, it's very difficult.

It's. I would say, for me, is about 70% of the time, and I come back home empty handed. Yeah. But it's like, okay, I was there for a whole day. Peace of mind.

There's no cell phones. There's nothing. There's nobody bothering me. It's difficult. You're in the woods.

Joe Rogan
You're hiking. Yeah. You need endurance. I mean, you need strong legs to get you around those mountains. I mean, the first time I ever went hunting, I got that mule deer with my friend Steve Ranella.

He took me hunting in Montana, and I was in really good shape, and I was like, you know, I do jiu jitsu every day. I'll be fine walking up these hills. And I was like, whoo. This is fucking hard. Like, I didn't think of it as a physical thing, but mountain hunting is very physical.

Like, you have to be fit. You have to be in shape. It's. I just got back from bear hunting in Idaho. And up and down the mountains.

Yeah. Hot sun. Yep. Yeah. Up and down the mountains.

Idaho. That is rugged terrain, too. Very rugged. Beautiful terrain, too. Last year, my first elk that I got with a bow shot, the elk with the bolt, 30 yard shot.

Royce Gracie
Got the elk loaded up, took her back to the house. We were taking the skin off and taking the skin and the hide and taking the meat, and I went to help the guys. 11:00 at night. There's three of us. I went to help my friend to.

To cut, because they have knives everywhere. So as soon as I start to lift the hide, put my finger, my hand on the wrong spot, the guy cut my finger to the bone. So it's like, okay. He's like, did I cut you? I was like, yep.

The knife touching the bone, we went to.

The other friend was like, hey, do you have a hospital nearby? He's like, hospital is 2 hours away. Got a veterinarian. Veterinarian. So he's like, no.

It's 11:00 at night. Everybody's asleep, man. So he's like, do you have superglue? He's like, no. He's like, you got a stapler.

Joe Rogan
Oh, so you stapled it? That is crazy. Oh, my God. Put four staples on my fingers. Wow.

That's crazy. But it worked. It worked. Wow. Day and a half later, I get home and my son decide to take it off.

Royce Gracie
I have to take the staples off. Look where he's using to take it off. A pair of pliers from the garage. From the motorcycle. Pick up the pliers.

There was no. I can't believe my. Still have my finger, man. We didn't clean anything. He just picked up the pliers and start to put the staples.

Joe Rogan
And how. How long after the injury was this that he was doing this? A day and a half later. Oh, okay. So it kind of healed up.

Royce Gracie
Cause that was when I got back to Florida. Yeah. Yeah. It's like I was in Montana. I got back to Florida.

My son is like, no, you're not going to the doctors. I can take this off. Are you living in Florida now? Yes. Where do you live?

Joe Rogan
What part of Florida? Sarasota. No kidding? When did you move there? I moved there about almost two years ago.

What made you decide to do that? I can see myself getting arrested if I was in California. Really? Oh, California. People so got so.

Royce Gracie
I love California. Don't take me wrong. I think California is the best state in the world, and I travel eight months of the year. I love California. But the people over there, man, they just get on your face.

It's like this. Like this. It's my right to be here. Okay. What are you gonna do about it?

It's like, dude, it's my right. Knock your teeth out. Oh, my God. He's violent. Call the cops.

Arrest him. People was, like, disrespectful. Got to a point. It got disrespectful. It got weird.

Joe Rogan
Right. It's. It's. It's hard, and I. And I love.

Royce Gracie
Don't take me. I totally. Again, I can't say enough how much I love California. It's the only place where you could be in the ocean and then in the mountains in an hour. And on the desert.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. And in the desert, you can surf. Ski, and spend the night in the desert. On the same climate is beautiful. And a lot of great people there, too, but they've lost their fucking minds.

Royce Gracie
But the people that they're there, man, it's like, in. In. So just, to me, it's just disrespectful. Yeah, disrespectful. And they've sort of.

Joe Rogan
They've emboldened a lot of really stupid people to act like idiots. Yeah. You know, and just the whole. The way they're dealing with the homeless situation is fucking insane. You know, they've.

They've. They've lost $24 billion that they can't account for. That was. Is that what the story is? There was some controversy about $24 billion missing that they were allocated towards the homeless crisis.

Royce Gracie
So, yeah, so I just. I was on the trip, and I called my son. I was like, dude, we got to get out of here. We got to get out. So all the kids are grown, so everybody's.

Different location. Yeah. So how'd you pick Florida? So here it is. California 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.

Joe Rogan
So they spent $24 billion, and they can't. They can't figure out what the fuck it did. God, it's ridiculous. And 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.

Royce Gracie
I would love to move back, but. It'S not gonna get better. Yeah, I have a long time. It's gonna. It's gonna take generations.

I used to joke with people and say I'm front line of resistance. But, yeah, he got to a point. It's like, none. Nah, it's too out of control. Well, it's also crazy things are happening.

Joe Rogan
Like, a guy got arrested because someone broke into his house, and he shot the guy, and they arrested him. Like, okay, you can't even defend yourself in your own home. Like, what is the fucking point? What's the point of the second amendment? What's the point of having a firearm?

Isn't it to protect your family? Are we supposed to assume that someone who is willing to break into your home violently, that that person's not gonna harm you? You gonna call the police? How long is the police gonna take to get there? What if you have a family?

What if you have children? What if you have a wife? You're supposed to just let this person break in your house? You can't do anything about it. It'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. I mean, they've lost their fucking minds. And 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. It's gonna take a long time. But I have hope.

Royce Gracie
But I have hope. Well, that's beautiful. I kind of. I got time. I got plenty of time.

I'm not going anywhere. I hope that you're right, but I don't have that much hope. I just see the. They're indoctrinated into this liberal ideology and they just believe that this is the only way to think and behave and until it bites them in the ass. I've met a lot of people there that I knew that were really hardcore liberals who've now completely turned around and now they're republican and now they've moved out.

Joe Rogan
They moved to Tennessee, they moved to Florida, they moved to Texas. And they're like, no, no, no. I see where this is going. But then it's like sometimes I keep thinking, what's the end game? What's the goal for the people that are doing this?

Well, the real question is, who's funding more power? It's not even necessarily more power. I mean, the real, the real money. Do you see? It's like, what's the end?

Royce Gracie
What's the goal? It's very confusing. But I think generally there are people genuinely, there are people that are funding this, that want to see western society collapse. Like, my daughter was going to school in University of Vermont. Beautiful over there, but she already had it.

She's moving to Tampa now. Really? She's like, to be closer to us. It's like, so people doing all these protests against american army. Against.

It's like, she's like, I have a son, one of my sons in the army. And she's like, no. So she put an army shirt. Sweatshirt and walk right through the protest. And other girls would come over and give her looks.

And she would just look at them and people would go, yeah, silence is violence. Flip them the finger. It's like, how about that for violence? Silence is. Violence is one of the dumbest fucking things.

Joe Rogan
Silence is not violence. Violence is violence. If you say silence is violence, you've never seen violence. Yeah. Unless someone's being quiet while they're beating the fuck out of you.

Silence is just silence. It's not violence. Violence is violence, you fucking idiots. My God. So she had her over there.

Royce Gracie
She spent one year. She's like, man, I can't put up with this anymore. The teacher was talking trash about. She's like, I didn't pay to hear the teacher and the political beliefs. Yeah, yeah.

So she'd get up and leave class. And, yeah, she's like, I had it. I'm done. I'm moving. I was like, all right, let's go.

Joe Rogan
It happens everywhere. I mean, it even happens here. You know, there's certain teachers that just feel that they have this ability to enforce their political beliefs on kids, and they'll be very angry at you. One kid got kicked out of school here because he had a make America great again hat on. Just whether or not you support Donald Trump, the sentiment behind making America great, that should be, everybody should be on board with that.

The idea that making America great in a hat is offensive to people, it's like, what? How? Help me out. It's not, you know, you're not saying anything bad. You're saying, make America great.

Wouldn't it be awesome if America was great? Who disagrees with that? How could you disagree with that? Great means everybody does well, your family does well. The streets are clean.

Everyone's safe. There's less crime, less violence, more jobs. That's great. Why would you be against that? How could you be against that?

And how could you think that that sentiment is affected, offensive? That's what's so twisted about the world that we're living in today. And that's why sometimes I keep thinking again, what's the end game? What is in for the. Whoever's behind all this?

Royce Gracie
More money, more power, more than what they have already. It's like, I don't know. To destroy society. For what? What's the purpose?

Joe Rogan
I don't know. That's why I keep thinking, I wish I knew. I wish it made sense. It doesn't make sense to me. I think it's, a lot of it is influenced by foreign governments.

I 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. And 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. But the way I sometimes get frustrated because it's like the way I think in the business of martial art business, if your school have 100 students or a thousand students, it doesn't make a difference to me. I prefer that you succeed and have a thousand students.

Yeah. What would be the goal for me to make you have no students? Do you see? It's like, I want you to go. Cause if you grow, I grow.

Right. But then it's like on the old society and people trying to destroy one country, trying to destroy the other for what? But you're thinking logically to have more power to have. It's also people are trapped in an ideology. They're trapped in this woke mindset.

You can call it woke, whatever you want to call it, but this ideology of what we're seeing with these young, ridiculous kids in universities today, it's like they're trapped in this way of thinking, and they don't think about the end game, first of all, because they're very young and they don't know anything and they want to rebel against society, which all young people want to do. They want to rebel against the people that are older and they want to think that they know better than the people that are older. And then eventually they get older, and as they get older, they start to realize, you know what I think the problem is? People are fucking lazy. You know, I think the problem is people don't have discipline.

You know, I think the problem is people don't plan for the future. People don't work hard. They don't like everybody should have the opportunity to work hard and get better and move ahead and try to try to better your life and better the life of your family. And if you think that way, you're going to have a good society. But if you think that society is evil and it's all colonists and we got to destroy it and take it all down and capitalism is evil, okay, what are you going to replace it with?

They didn't even thought this thing through. What are you going to replace it with? Communism. You ever been to a communist country? It's fucking hell.

And you know what happens in a communist country? You have to enforce it. How do you enforce it? With the military. And if nobody's armed but the military, now you have a dictatorship.

Now you have a brutal military dictatorship that decides what you can and can't do. That's what Cuba has decides for you. Yeah, that's what Venezuela has. No saying whatsoever. No say, no say.

That's what China has. That's what North Korea has. Like, good luck. Good luck with that. There's plenty of examples of that.

None of them are good. There's no examples of communism working anywhere where it's for the betterment of everybody. One thing that come into America from Brazil, it was a lot of like, in Brazil, they put you down a lot. I remember when I won the UFC, there's a thousand guys that will do better than him. This is nothing.

Royce Gracie
Everybody was like, man, it's not. A lot of people, like, his accomplishment is not that big of a deal. Different than America. They push you up. Yeah.

You see, they changed their mentality now in Brazil. Oh, really? But back then used to be like this. That's interesting that the mentality changed. Why did the mentality change in Brazil?

Don't know, but did change. I can see that now. People try to push you up now instead. But back then when I won, it was like, nah, it's no big deal. These are guys that will do much better than him.

And they came over and they got beat up over here badly. In the UFC, that's one thing that attract America. Culture was like, they're trying to always push you up. It seems like that change now. They're trying to push you down now in some places.

In some circles, yeah. But there's still quite a few people in America that still believe that. Oh, yeah. I think that's more prevalent here than anywhere else in the world. This attitude that we want people to succeed, to celebrate success.

But then this whole thing, what's going on right now, it's almost like they want to crash. It's like, why? It's usually losers. Losers who don't have anything going on, and they want other people to be losers as well. They don't want people to succeed.

Joe Rogan
And also they connect success with the worst examples of success. Like, they connect the idea of financial success with people being oppressed. Obviously, people being oppressed is terrible, but all financial success is not Oppression. That's ridiculous. Like, if you have a school, like, for example, if you have a Jujitsu gym, if you have a Jiu Jitsu academy and you have a thousand students, there's nothing oppressive about THat success.

That's all beneficial, beneficial to your students. It's beneficial to you, BeCause if you have a THOusand people, then you have a place that's run well, and you have staff. You have staff, you have people that are employed. There's. And also you have plenty of classes.

So I can get a class at 630 in the morning before I go to work. 06:30 a.m.. Class, I'm done by eight. I shower up, I'm in the office at nine. I feel good.

I got something done today, and I'm getting better at jiu jitsu. Like, whoo, this is amazing, you know? And 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, you're thinking about constantly improving.

That's not. There's nothing oppressive. And the person who runs that gym, they're making a good living and they feed their family and they have a nice house and the. Impressive. Yes, there's nothing oppressive about that success.

We're not talking about the success of, like, the military industrial complex or like, you know, the oil companies polluting the ocean. No, you're talking about. There's a lot of people that work hard and their success is not even remotely oppressive. So when people connect all capitalism to degradation of the environment and controlling of people and oppressing people, that's ridiculous. That's just a foolhardy way of looking at the world.

Royce Gracie
Yeah, it's a. Like I said, if your school have no students or a thousand students, I don't make any more money. Right. So. But I want you to have a thousand students.

It's like. Because if you have a thousand students, if I come to teach, if you. Don'T have any students, if you don't. Have any students, I'm not gonna come over. Exactly.

But I want you to succeed. Yeah, exactly. So I want to fill up your school. Are you primarily doing. You do, like, seminars now, do you?

Seminars? But I'm building a school in Sarasota. Oh, nice. Yeah, nice. I haven't had a school.

I used to teach with Horton until 2000. Then I stopped teaching at the school, at the academy. At the Gracie Academy and just went to do seminars. But now I'm building a school for my son and I. Oh, wow, that's great.

I love to travel to see the world, but I'm gonna build a building, a place. We've got a place, a location already. Just waiting for permits. Oh, that's great. Be my first headquarters.

Joe Rogan
That's great. That's gonna be awesome, boy. That's gonna be successful. And the locations. Awesome, boy.

Hoist Gracie school in Florida. Boof. That's gonna be big right away. I mean, I bet first day you'll be full. Yep.

Royce Gracie
We got a lot of students already just on the standby ready to go, waiting for us. Yes. How long do you think before you open? About good. Eight months.

Joe Rogan
Nice. We're just waiting for the final permits. And they start building. We're gonna tear down the building and then build up. The build up is fast.

Royce Gracie
Just a permit takes forever in soil. Florida. Yeah, it takes it forever. A lot of places. And how big is this?

Joe Rogan
Place gonna be. Big enough? Very big, yes. Yeah, we're talking three floors. Oh, wow.

So is it gonna be different things in there, like. Yeah. What is the plan? Do you want to give the full details? Not yet.

Not yet. Well, you let me know. Yeah, let me know when you're about to open. We'll let everybody. The location is awesome.

That's great. Five minutes from the beach. Oh, that's beautiful. That's exciting. That's very exciting.

That must be really exciting to look forward to something like that. Five minutes from the beach too. Beach in Florida. I'm letting my son, my son. No sharks on the sharks on the east coast, right?

Oh, are they? I'm on the west coast, on the Gulf. Aren't there sharks in the Gulf too? Sharks don't like Brazilians, man. No sharks for you.

Royce Gracie
But Brazilians, they. Look at the Brazilians. Nah, they like Italians. They don't like Brazilians. That's hilarious.

Joe Rogan
I don't think they can tell the difference between us, buddy. They look at me like, hold on, it's too many. Too many bones on this one, man. I'll choke on this one. Let me get that meaty one over there with all the muscles.

Royce Gracie
Look at that. That's a fucking shark. That's Sarasota. Jesus Christ. Hoist.

Joe Rogan
That's a shark in Sarasota. That's not a shark, that's a Pat. Oh, look, you can't read on the boat, man. We can't eat those fucking head. We can't feed those.

Jesus Christ. Swim with those across. Step up. What is that thing doing? Just pulling up to someone's boat.

Oh, my God. Saying hi, that's. Those are pets. Fuck sharks. Do you surf?

Royce Gracie
No, not as much like Hoyla. No. Hoyler surfs a lot. Is he in San Diego still.

A lot? He goes to Bali every year. Spend a month over there. Two sharks down there, bro. Yeah, a lot of sharks.

Where? San Diego? Yeah.

Joe Rogan
There 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. And my friend went swimming there the next day because he had to prepare for the swim that he was. The shock was already stomach full. So I don't know if I get full that easy. I think they keep eating and I don't think.

He probably told his friends, hey, I got a swimmer the other day. A lot of swimmers over here. Yeah. That scares the shit out of me. Sharks scare the shit out of me.

Royce Gracie
Oof. That's like bears, to me, are not as scary as sharks. If there's bears, you got a gun, you got bear spray, you know what you're doing? You're careful. I think you probably, you know, hey.

The bear is hunting you too. That's true. You could, you could. Well, it depends on what kind of bear too, right? If you run into a polar bear.

And they move so quiet, man. I know for such a bear, 200. Pounds, 250 pounds, you don't hear them coming right behind you. When you were bear hunting, were you using bow or rifle? This one was rifle.

I haven't done a bear bow hunting yet because that's a very close shot, man. Yeah. Mine, as far as I can go, is like 30, 35 is pushing for me. Yeah. So I'm not as proficient on the bow yet, so.

Joe Rogan
Yeah. Do you have a range in your yard where you could practice? No, I don't. Do you have a yard that's big? How big is your yard?

Royce Gracie
It's not that big. How far? Got a pool? Like, how much distance do you have that you could shoot in your yard? Ten.

Joe Rogan
Oh, ten yards? Yeah, 20. It's like, it says Florida, where I am, the yard's open. I see. So the next door neighbor, like, yeah.

Royce Gracie
Like, hey, hey, don't point that boat. Yeah. Even though it's Florida. Yeah, it's like, yeah. Is there an archery range near you?

Joe Rogan
No, I haven't found one yet. Yeah. So where do you go to practice. When I go, man? Oh, only when you hunt.

Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, that's why you can only shoot 30. Oh, sh. I'll get there and I'll practice shooting for like two days a day. Two days and practice.

Royce Gracie
Let's go. I joke, I jump first, and I figured out later.

Joe Rogan
That would freak me out because I have to practice when I go hunting. Like, say, like, if I'm like five weeks out, I'm shooting hundreds of arrows every day for five weeks. I wanna make sure because I've shot. Like, it's kinda like the swim. I swim about maybe ten times and then swim across Tampa Bay.

But I wanna feel confident, like, if I have a 75 yard shot on an elk, I wanna be confident that I can make that shot. 75? Yeah, I've shot an elk at 75 yards. Yeah, I've shot an elk at 80 yards. We saw some elk last year about, uh, 89 yards.

Royce Gracie
Balls, like, nah, it's. You finally came. 30 yards. If 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 a hundred and, you know you can make it, but you have to be like.

Joe Rogan
You know what it's like? It's like when I'm like a high level purple belt, brown belt in bow hunting, I'm not a black belt, I'm a white belt. Yeah, yeah. 30 yards is good for a white belt. White belt with one stripe.

Yeah. I found the Sarasota archers. Look at this. You can go to look at that. Send me that address.

Private club requiring membership. Hey, Sarasota Archers, won't you let in the goat horse? Gracie needs a place to practice. That's nice. Yeah, I'm sure they'll let you.

That'd be great. There you go. Now we got your spot. So now you just go there. Just.

You just. You only need a few hours a day. Just. You just need that muscle memory. You need that feel, that feel of the relaxed shoulder and just.

Just no anticipation of the shot pull through. To me, it's. I have to get that ingrained in my head, that technique. It 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, it's just I know exactly what to do. There's no questions.

Royce Gracie
Sometimes it's almost like shooting. I shoot quite a bit sometimes. Done some competition, and I see the guys studying and looking at the target and shoot us. Ready? And they're concentrating on the target.

When they say shoot is ready, I look away. So set, go. I look up and shoot it and just pick it up and find it. Yeah, but don't you think that because you fought so many times and because of all your years of jiu jitsu and all, like, things like shooting and things that involve technique and concentration, like, they come naturally? I think so, yeah, I think so too.

I think so. It's like a.

I'm very patient. I know how to control my breathing. I don't get excited. Right. You see, like, when I draw for the elk, it was a cow.

I draw. It was last day of hunting. Four days. Four days hunting that the elk, man, I drawn the cow. A bow showed up.

So I just turned fire on the bow. It was like, but I was gonna shoot a cow. I was like, I gotta take some meat home, man. It's been four days chasing nothing. Came close, and that cow came close, 30 yards.

And as soon as the cow got in front of me, I draw, and the bow came over. Just turn, just perfect shot. Bam. Done. What kind of broadheads are you using?

Oh, that was the local guy, the farmer where I was giving me the broadheads. I can't remember. Mechanical, or is it fixed? Broadhead. No mechanical.

Joe Rogan
Rage. Was it a rage? It was the blade. Yeah, probably rage. Yeah.

I like those. John Dudley has his own broadhead now. He made, like, a better version of a rage, like, a more durable, sharper version of rage. It's a g five is making them. It's called the t two.

It's a new mechanical that he designed, that John designed that. They're just, they're just starting to release now. I think they just started to sell them. But he's. He sent me some prototypes.

I like it a lot. It's a great project. Yeah. Yeah. The guy that farmed what I was, he supplied.

Royce Gracie
That was last year. So where was that? Montana. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Great falls. Mm hmm. Yes. A lot of elk in Montana. Montana is so beautiful.

And deer and got everything. Isn't it just so amazing being out there too, in the wild? Just. It's so peaceful. Even if I don't hunt, if I don't catch, I tell the guys when they take me out, they.

Sometimes I feel they're under pressure of catching someone's like, dude, if I don't catch anything, I'm happy. Yeah. Just being here, just a pursuit and knowing that, you know, sometimes you're gonna go home empty handed, it's difficult. It's a very difficult thing to do. That's what makes it good.

Like I said, 70% of the time, I come home with nothing. Yeah. But that's part of why it's fun, because it's hard to do. And some people don't understand that. They just want results.

But then when I eat, it's like, I got this. Yeah, I cooked some milk the other night, and as I was cooking it, I was thinking, like, yeah, I remember where I was. I remember where it was. 52 yards, shot down into a canyon. Perfect shot.

Joe Rogan
I watched the elk go 30 yards, pile up. I watched it die. I went up, quartered it, carried it out. We carried it over the mountain, got into a four x four, drove it back to the lodge, took it apart. I remember everything about it.

So, like, being there, I have photos. I have photos of the impact shot. I have photos of the animal. You know, it's like, in my mind, this meal is, like. Has a history.

Royce Gracie
And I taught all my kids, took them all. I didn't teach. I took them out, and local guys would teach them how to hunt. From a young age, all of them. That's great.

How to skin a deer. Yeah. How to stab a hog with a knife. Oh, Jesus, that's heavy. Stabbing the hog is wild.

Joe Rogan
That's good. The hog hunting with dogs. Dogs and a knife. The first time I took my daughter, asked her, she was maybe 1312, 13. I asked her, hey, do you want to go?

Royce Gracie
She's like, no, dad, I'm gonna stay on the atv. Okay. So I'm over there. I'm stabbing the hug, and when I back off, I look, and she had her knife open behind me, just waiting there. And I was like, oh, you decide to come?

She's like, nah, in case the hog got you, dad. I would jump on him and catch you, stab him for you. I was like, okay, you didn't want to do it, but you were backing me up. You're my backup. Nice.

Joe Rogan
That's nice. Well, my boys all did it from a young age. Everybody started. It's a good thing to learn. And it's also shooting best meat that you could ever eat.

The best meat. The best meat in terms of, like, the healthiness of it, how good it tastes. It's so good for you. And shooting, teaching them from a young age, they all respect the gun. They all respect the weapon.

Yeah. I think everybody should know how to shoot a gun. Worst case scenario, you should always know how to defend yourself. You should always know how to operate a gun. At least you should know gun safety.

You should understand. Yes. What the gun can do. Yes. So they all respect that.

Royce Gracie
They all know how to check, not to point. And from a young age, they all learn that at home. That's beautiful. It's very important. There's a lot of people that are scared of guns, and that's just because of ignorance.

Joe Rogan
They just don't understand. Yeah, yeah.

Royce Gracie
I love my guns, man.

Joe Rogan
The laws in Brazil are very different. Right. You can't just. You cannot buy guns very hard. I think the max you can get is a.

Royce Gracie
380 caliber. So a hunting rifle? No, no, no hunting rifles. Well, 380 is 380. The handgun.

Joe Rogan
Oh, oh, okay. The 380, small before. Small than a nine millimeter. A nine millimeter is considered to be a military weapon. Really?

Royce Gracie
So you can buy 9. Nothing above that. Wow. Shotgun if you own a farm. Yes.

But no hunting rifles. No, none of that. No. Two, two threes and ars. And that sucks.

Nope. It's very hard, man. Very hard. It's almost impossible to buy, but all the bad guys have it. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
Great. It's unbelievable. They got rpg's. Yeah. Grenades and.

Jesus Christ. But you cannot buy guns in Brazil very hard and take a long time. And the price is like, wow, $500 gun over here in America, over there will cost 2000. Wow. So when you come to America and you have this ability to just buy guns because of the second amendment, it's pretty nice.

Royce Gracie
Very nice. Yeah. Especially if you're in a place like Florida that's really supports the second amendment. Yeah. Not in California.

Joe Rogan
California is nuts. Well, 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, but you can't have it. If you shoot somebody, you're gonna go to jail. Yeah.

Royce Gracie
Even though you're inside your house. I know. And they walk in and they have guns, you shoot them, it's your fault. What's crazy is if you shoot them, you'll go to jail. But if they break into your house and they rob you and beat you up, they'll get right out.

Joe Rogan
If they get arrested, they'll put them right back out on the street. Yeah, it's insane. It's almost like it's designed to destroy society. Like, if you wanted to destroy society, that's how you would do it. Yeah, it's pretty fucked up.

Royce Gracie
And then I keep telling people, if America falls, I think the whole world will fall. The rest of the world will fall. Yeah. Maybe that's the plan, is where would you go? Right.

Joe Rogan
There's no place that has this kind of freedom. Leave America. Where would you go? It's like, it's. It's tough to take a place.

I used to think Australia, but then I saw how they handled the pandemic and was like, oh, fuck that. Well, that's what happens when no one has guns. Yep. The army just rolls in and tells you what to do and puts you in concentration camps because you have a cold like crazy. Where would you go?

Royce Gracie
It's like, that's the question I ask my kids and let them think for a little bit. And it's where in America you're gonna go? Cause outside, man, it's tough. Yeah, it's a tough world out there. Yeah.

Joe Rogan
Well, a person like yourself, that's been everywhere, you really kind of do understand that this is a special place. We're very fortunate to be here. That's why I defended. Yeah. Pro police.

Army. Me too. Yeah. I defend the cops and the army and. Yep.

Well, it's also from jiu jitsu. We know a lot of police officers. We know a lot of army people. We know a lot of military people, because they're always training. Yes.

Royce Gracie
And traveling the way I travel. I'm not home to defend my family, so who is going to defend them? Right. The police. So I'm.

I'm in favor of them. Yes. So I try to help them out as much as I can. Yeah. Who is going to defend?

Is it gonna be the police? The army? They're gonna defend if some crazy country decides to invade us, it's not gonna be the average Joe next to next door. They're gonna come over and, no, you gotta be Joe Rogan to get his bow and be rumble out there.

Shooting balls at nine yards, 100 yards. I hope you're like, I'll wait until they get a little closer.

Joe Rogan
That Sarasota Archers club. You practice your long range shots. They're too far. I'll wait a little bit. Well, 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. I'm glad we finally did it, man. And I appreciate you very much. And when the school open up in Florida, you got to come over.

Fuck, yeah. I will come. I will come. Choke me out once. Once.

Sounds good. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thanks for being here.

All right, bye, everybody.

JRE MMA Show #156 with Royce Gracie

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1: Early Life and Introduction to Martial Arts

2: Philosophy and Spread of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

3: Technical Insights and UFC 1 Experience

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