by Art Davie
I absolutely loved watching the Gracies do their thing in the Challenges, but they were nothing like what Pat Jordan had colorfully described in his Playboy article. Although they were in fact real fights, I never saw so much as a bloodied nose or a split lip. The Gracies were so effective and so dominant with their jiu-jitsu, that these severe ass whippings were almost injury free. And there certainly wasn’t $100,000 or even $1 at stake.
I asked Rorion why Jordan had written about the $100,000, and he told me that it had something to do with Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, but wouldn’t expand.
My curiosity was too strong at this point to let this go, so I turned to Richard Bresler, who I figured might have the answer. Richard was a close friend and former roommate of Rorion’s, who I knew at the academy. He was a long-time student of the Gracies, dating back to the days of training in the garage in Redondo Beach. When I asked Richard he was happy to tell me the story, in which it turned out, he figured prominently.
According to Richard, sometime in the early 1980s, his brother Daniel was training at a local kickboxing school. The two brothers got to arguing about which was more effective: kickboxing or jiu-jitsu. They considered a personal battle to decide the issue, but soon, one of them proposed that they get their respective teachers to settle the argument.
Daniel’s kickboxing guru said that he’d never heard of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and dismissed Richard as a full-of-shit blow-hard. But Richard persisted, so the head guy told him to bring his instructor over, and they would see about all of this. Rorion was a bit shocked that Richard had set up a match for him without his consent, but being a Gracie, he of course went anyway. So Rorion and the kickboxer moved around for a little bit, until Rorion eventually got his range, took the guy down, and choked him out.
The head guy of this kickboxing school turned out to be a disciple of Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, a champion kickboxer, occasional actor, and all-around bad ass who had supposedly studied a number of martial arts including judo, taekwondo, white crane kung fu and aikido. His reputation was highly regarded at the time by virtually everyone who read Black Belt magazine. Benny “the Jet” had some grappling experience, but was primarily known for his striking skills. When he heard about this fight in which one of his kickboxers lost to some Brazilian guy, he was determined to set things straight.
So they set up a match—Rorion vs. Benny “the Jet”—and as Richard told it, Rorion choked his opponent out 10 straight times.
A few years later, Rorion got a call from a producer who said he wanted to film a mixed match fight, and was looking for an opponent to face Benny “the Jet.” The producer said, “I understand you are willing to fight other martial artists.”
Rorion then responded to the producer, “Yeah, but you should tell Benny that you called Rorion Gracie.”
But it looked as though Benny “the Jet” did in fact want a rematch, with the stakes now a lot higher, as this time it was going to be filmed. Rorion and Benny “the Jet” went around and around about money, and Benny “the Jet” eventually asked Rorion to put up $100,000 cash. In exchange, Benny “the Jet” was willing to put up his championship kickboxing belts, and nothing else. That killed the deal.
But even before they got to talking about money, there was a lot of wrangling about the rules and regulations. Benny “the Jet” apparently wanted time on the mat limited to 30 seconds. And there was the issue of where they would fight—in a boxing ring or on a mat? Would Rorion be allowed to wear his gi? Would they be bare-fisted, or would they wear gloves? What type of gloves? And what size would the gloves be? It went on and on and on.
As Richard told me this story, it rang incredibly true. Back in late 1989 and early 1990, when I was preparing my World’s Best Fighter pitch for Wisdom Imports, I, of course, studied the few public mixed match fights that I could find. And what I discovered was that they always got hung up on the details.
In 1963, “Judo” Gene LeBell, who was a two-time AAU champion in the sport that gave rise to his nickname, fought Milo Savage, a pro boxer with 105 bouts to his credit. It was supposed to be “Judo vs. Boxing,” but then the particulars started getting in the way.
LeBell wasn’t allowed to throw kicks. In exchange, Savage had to wear a judo gi jacket in the ring. The reason for this wardrobe request was to give LeBell familiar hand holds for his clinches, throws and chokes. Savage agreed, but insisted that he would be allowed to wear speed bag gloves, which were smaller and lighter than regulation boxing gloves, giving him a lot more pop in his punches.
Here is an advertisement for the 1963 bout, held in Salt Lake City, between “Judo” Gene LeBell and boxer Milo Savage.
The fight ended in the fourth round, when LeBell used his opponent’s gi jacket against him, gripping hard to execute a Harai goshi (sweeping hip throw), which dumped Savage on his ass. From there, LeBell applied a rear-naked choke, which put Savage into a very deep sleep.
An even more egregious example of a mixed match fight being negotiated to death occurred 13 years after the LeBell vs. Savage fight—this time with “Judo” Gene as the referee. The bout was boxing’s ruling World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali taking on Japanese pro wrestling icon Antonio Inoki in Tokyo.
Depending on which version of history you believe, it was either the ultimate “Boxer vs. Wrestler” match-up, or a poorly-choreographed work. Regardless, what the bout unquestionably turned out to be was Inoki lying on the mat for the better part of 15 rounds, kicking away at the standing Ali’s legs. Not even “Judo” Gene LeBell could save this debacle.
Under the agreed-upon rules, Inoki wasn’t allowed to takedown Ali, nor was he allowed to grapple with him under any circumstances. Inoki was permitted to kick, but only when he was on the canvas, or sliding towards it. “The Greatest of All-Time” wound up landing just six punches total over 45 minutes of “fighting” against his constantly grounded opponent. If this was a work, then Ali vs. Inoki was the most boring work ever. In the end, a draw was declared, leaving the sold-out crowd at the Budokan and a worldwide television audience utterly disgusted.
As part of the trans-national undercard to the Ali vs. Inoki bout, another “Boxer vs. Wrestler” bout took place—this one at Shea Stadium in New York. The boxer in this match was Chuck Wepner, who was known as the “Bayonne Bleeder,” and who claimed to be the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. Just like the cinematic Rocky, Wepner parlayed an undistinguished journeyman career into a fight for boxing’s World Heavyweight Championship, with a highly surprising result. While Rocky lost a 15-round, split decision to Apollo Creed, Wepner made it to the 15th round of his title fight versus Muhammad Ali, where he was stopped via technical knockout. But it was a huge moral victory for Wepner, and he parlayed his new found celebrity into a mixed match fight versus one of the true superstars of pro wrestling. Billed as “the eighth wonder of the world,” André René Roussimoff, better known as Andre the Giant, stood 7-foot-4, and weighed more than 450 lb.
Here is a poster from the United Kingdom for the 1976 match held in Tokyo between heavyweight boxing champ, Muhammad Ali and Japanese wrestling star, Antonio Inoki. Note the undercard featured pro wrestler Andre the Giant vs. boxer Chuck Wepner.
The historical consensus is that this fight was an outright work. Regardless of the legitimacy of the bout, the reality was that Wepner vs. Andre the Giant was sloppy and painfully dull. Real or fake, it stands as yet another example of rules and regulations getting in the way. Andre the Giant had to break his hold every time Wepner grabbed or even touched the ring ropes—which happened continuously throughout the match, to the dismay of the vocal New York crowd. Not once did Wepner land a clean punch. So, virtually no punching, and no grappling, at least until the end, when Andre the Giant threw Wepner over the top rope in the least exciting way imaginable, and won via third round count out.
My takeaway from all of these mixed match bouts: Getting two fighters of different backgrounds to agree to anything is like asking two pit bul
ls to decide how a steak should to be divided. Even in worked fights, nobody could seem to agree on anything.
The wrestling press in the U.S. was unanimous in their condemnation of the bout between Ali and Inoki in 1976. Note the referee: “Judo” Gene Lebell.
One of the many things I loved about the Gracie Challenges held in the backroom of the Academy, was that there was none of this negotiating bullshit. This was of course because fighters came to Torrance to fight the Gracies, not the other way around. If you wanted to haggle over the rules and the equipment and the dress code, then don’t bother showing up. It was the Gracie Challenge after all.
But I knew that if you put this in a neutral venue, and more importantly, held it in public—with paying crowds, television cameras, and media—then people would start to get nervous. Likely not the Gracies, but certainly their opponents.
It’s one thing to get your ass kicked with only a handful of people in attendance. It’s something else entirely when the whole world is watching.
As much as the Gracie Challenge had been mythologized into a gladiatorial fight to death for big stakes, I still really respected what it actually was, and what it stood for. As I was finding out, almost no one was willing to throw down, “any time, any place.” Be it Benny “the Jet” or Muhammad Ali, there were always stipulations and requests when a fighter was stepping out of his comfort zone. But not the Gracies. If you challenged them, no matter who you were, they’d fight you, and then see what happened. I felt that they deserved tremendous credit for this.
I knew that despite all of these potential and probable difficulties, there was something to the Gracie Challenge that could be taken to the next level. At its core, it was what I had envisioned all along for the World’s Best Fighter: Practitioners from a vast array of martial arts and combat sports all coming together to see who was the best of the best, with very few rules, no time limits and the absence of a scoring system. Real fighting—just like my role models from Pankration in the ancient Olympic Games.
But Rorion seemed cautious if not closed off to the idea of lending his name—and his family’s name—to such an event. It didn’t seem to matter who was asking him.
A big reason for this was the money itself. Who would pay the appearance fees for all of the fighters to compete? Even if it was winner-take-all, where would that cash prize come from? Rorion knew first-hand in his dealings with Benny “the Jet” on their failed attempt at a re-match, that money was always a critical, if not the deciding factor. Sure you could get any two idiots to beat the shit out of each other for free, but if you wanted world-class martial artists and fighters competing, then someone would have to pony up.
And I knew that if the Gracie Challenge/World’s Best Fighter was ever going to hit the big-time, the person who was going to have to pony up, or get an outside source to pony up, was going to have to be me.
CHAPTER 5
W.O.W. PROMOTIONS
AN INVASION OF ARMIES CAN BE RESISTED, BUT NOT AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME.
— VICTOR HUGO, ‘Histoire d’un crime,’ 1852
I kept asking myself why I was so eager to get Rorion and his fighting family involved in my long-simmering World’s Best Fighter idea. He wasn’t a superstar in the sports world. Many hard-core martial arts enthusiasts hadn’t even heard of him, let alone Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. And Rorion certainly wasn’t a guy who could bankroll the project. Whatever money Rorion had seemed to be distributed amongst his family and poured back into the Academy.
But the answer that I kept coming back to was credibility—and in the fighting world, I had none. I was still a white belt in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, despite all of my private sessions with Rorion, and I was a proverbial white belt in the world of combat sports. Outside of the Gracie Academy, nobody knew who I was. How would I be able to recruit fighters from across the spectrum of martial arts without any name recognition?
But if I had the Gracie moniker behind me, well, that was my foot in the door. And even if they hadn’t heard of Rorion, or Hélio, or Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, I could quickly explain their credentials. That would be my initial lever. From there, I would know what to do from my business experience in advertising, marketing and promotions. I just had to get that first domino to fall.
In late 1991, Rorion mentioned to me that he was going to put together a second Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action videotape. He’d created the first one in 1988 with the help of Eric Sherman, one of his students who was in the movie business. Eric’s dad was the noted motion picture director Vincent Sherman, who was a pretty big deal in post-World War II Hollywood, working with such major stars as Errol Flynn and Joan Crawford.
The first Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action was a one-hour grab bag of fights dating back to the 1950s. It included Hélio, Rickson, Rorion, and the legendary Rolls Gracie, who was actually the biological son of Hélio’s brother Carlos, but who was raised by Hélio as his own. (Young, blond Rolls died tragically in a hang-gliding accident in 1982.) The tape was a bit amateurish, with choppy editing, stock music, and Rorion’s accented monotone voice-over narration, but Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action was also mesmerizing. In essence, it was an infomercial for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, showing the family kicking ass.
Rorion sold the videos at the Academy and through mail order ads placed in various martial arts magazines. He marketed them through his company Brajitsu, Inc., and never tried to sell it to a broadcaster or major video distribution company. That just wasn’t his world.
“Do you have a database?” I asked Rorion.
“What’s that?”
“You know, like the names and addresses of people who have taken your seminars.”
“Oh yeah. Sure. Why Arturo?”
“Well, I know what to do with those names. How many names on that list?”
“Oh, about 25,000,” Rorion said matter-of-factly.
“Twenty-five thousand! Really? Holy shit!” I yelled. “What if I could show you a way to turn that list into $100,000 cash?”
My heart leapt in my chest. With a decent video product and a list of 25,000 “warm” names, plus what I had learned about direct mail at CDMG, this was a match made in heaven.
It was also the way in that I had been looking for that, despite all of my time at the Gracie Academy, and my legitimate friendship with Rorion, I had never been able to find. I knew that I possessed the formula to turn those names and tapes into cold, hard cash. And I felt that if I could put real money in Rorion’s pocket—which I had no doubt that I could—he’d in turn be open to lending the Gracie name and his personal credibility to the World’s Best Fighter.
The second Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in Action video was well under way, and I didn’t want Rorion to think that I was some Johnny-come-lately who would arrive at the last minute and take credit for all of the success. I knew he’d sell copies with his little ads in the martial arts magazines.
So instead I turned my attention towards a series of instructional tapes that Rorion was just completing called the Basics of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. I offered to write the entire direct mail campaign (a service that I had been charging clients $10,000 to $20,000), and get the artwork done as well. All for free, well almost. I only asked that Rorion pay for the printing costs, which I would get for him at a discount. It took a fair amount of explanation on my part to get him up to speed on direct-response advertising. Soon though, he began to nod, and I could tell that he was seriously thinking about that $100,000 as a realistic goal.
It was at this time that I could see that Rorion was becoming more and more consumed with the business of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, even above the jiu-jitsu itself. He was teaching fewer classes and spending less time on the mat, and he began with increasing frequency to pass me off to his younger brother, Royler, for my weekly private class.
Royler only spoke a handful of words in English, but it was enough for us to work out, and we quickly formed a friendly relationship. He was certainly a better communicator than Whitey Murphy from my boxing youth, who once smacked me on the back of the
head and said, “Look wop, do it my way.”
Royler was a really good and patient teacher, never rough or careless. But he remained a dangerous man nonetheless. I knew this from his dominating performances in the Gracie Challenge, and I found this out first-hand during one of our first sessions together. Royler gave me a “rib twister,” as the cartilage between two of my ribs got torqued. It wasn’t on purpose; there was nothing mean-spirited about it on Royler’s part. It just happened as we grappled. And it hurt like hell.
A few weeks later, Royler was teaching me how to defend against punches using Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Wearing boxing gloves, Royler caught me flush in the ribs with a solid right. The punch broke a rib on my left side, and I spent the next month taped up. Apart from the pain, it wasn’t that big of a deal to me, but I could see immediately that Royler felt terrible. He couldn’t have been nicer or more apologetic.
Be it Royler, Rorion or any of the Gracies, there were always constant little reminders that these guys really could hurt you very easily if they wanted to, and even if they didn’t.
I knew that I was in no way a natural when it came to jiu-jitsu and even basic grappling, but I was growing increasingly restless that I hadn’t progressed above white belt.
“Arturo be patient. All good things come in time,” was Rorion’s standard response to my questions about when my promotion to blue belt would finally come.
The Gracies were consummate professionals on absolutely everything when it came to their family’s fighting art, belt ranks included. They just didn’t give belt promotions because of a student’s good attendance or money spent, like so many other martial arts instructors in the U.S.
I understood and really respected this integrity, and kept working out as hard as I could in pursuit of a blue belt. One night, about 15 minutes into my private one-hour class with Royler, Rorion came into our little padded workout room. He was smiling and didn’t say a word. Rorion just gave a look to Royler, who nodded in reply, and then said to me, “Let’s go. Understand?”
