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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

RIO DE JANEIRO — Kyra Gracie won three ADCC gold medals and five IBJJF World Championship titles between 2004 and 2011, but being victorious on the mat was only possible because she had the guts to fight for her right to enter a gym in the first place.

The granddaughter of Robson Gracie, she grew up alongside her uncles Ralph, Ryan, and Renzo Gracie in a conservative family in Rio de Janeiro, and witnessed plenty of uncles and cousins try to convince her that martial arts were just for men.

“The best spot on the couch back home was for the champion. Who chose the food? The champion. If there was any debate in the family about anything, the champion had the final word,” Gracie said during a recent talk at WebSummit in Rio de Janeiro. “I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to become a champion to have a voice here too. I’ll follow these footsteps.’”

The young Gracie started training at young age and decided to start an “amateur career” at 11 years old. She enjoyed the taste of victory.

“Winning made me really happy,” Gracie said. “I was a very shy girl, and that was when this feeling flourished inside of me. ‘I can do it too,’ you know? I discovered myself as the woman I am today, evolving in areas I needed to evolve, my weaknesses.”

Carlos and Helio Gracie, the founders of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, had a master plan to turn the martial arts into a global business, and that included raising 30 children. They flew all around the world winning challenges against members of other martial arts, and later helped to found the UFC, but women had no role in their martial arts empire.

“I had to fight to be able to fight, because when I decided to become a fighter, my family said, ‘Kyra, forget about it, women aren’t supposed to do this, go do something else. We’ll protect you,’” Gracie said. “It was always like that. ‘You have many uncles and cousins, we’ll protect you.’ When you live in a place where they repeat that over and over again, you end up believing in it. I was that person that believed that only men could go somewhere in fighting.

“There was a point where my mother had to quit doing jiu-jitsu. She got to blue belt and then had to stop. She was prohibited from training by my uncles because that wasn’t the ideal path for a woman. And when I saw my mom quitting, I thought, ‘Damn, do I have to stop too? But I like it so much. What do I do now?’ But I was so young, 12, 13 years of age, and they thought I would eventually quit along the way.”

Gracie didn’t quit. Instead, she began collecting gold medals in the CBJJ Brazilian Nationals and IBJJF Pans in colored belts from ages 13 to 18 before making history as a black belt.

“To look back at this entire process ever since I started as an athlete, it was always very hard,” Gracie said. “Women weren’t valued within the family. First they are prohibited [from training], and then if you win, it’s like, ‘Cool.’ But if a man wins, ‘Wow, that’s awesome, he should represent the family. The great champion.’ There wasn’t much incentive. And then you go to competitions. While men made $ 50,000 as champions back then, women made $ 2,000. That didn’t even pay for my supplements.

“[While it] demotivates you, I started using it as fuel. ‘I’ll prove them wrong.’ You train so much and have no recognition, no money. When I was going to teach seminars, I would hear, ‘But you’re a woman, we’ll charge less [for fees]. You’re a woman, not many people want to attend it.’ The environment still is very sexist and you have to break so many barriers.”

The first woman in the Gracie family to become a jiu-jitsu black belt and the first woman ever inducted to the ADCC Hall of Fame, Kyra retired as a grappler in 2004, and flirted with the idea of transitioning to MMA, but never did. Instead, she became a successful gym owner, with nearly 1,000 students in two branches of Gracie Kore in Rio de Janeiro.

“I’m the only woman to run a jiu-jitsu school in Brazil,” Gracie said. “I’m glad I continued, because when you have a woman in a place of power, regardless of the area, you inspire other women. I see a many women train jiu-jitsu now, I see their daughters train jiu-jitsu. Girls that are self-confident, that look you in the eye and know how to speak. That’s more important than jiu-jitsu, because that gives you self-confidence.”

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UFC 302 Countdown previews the return of the number one pound-for-pound king, Islam Makhachev, as he defends his lightweight title against former interim champion, Dustin Poirier.

UFC 302 takes place at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on June 1.  The lightweight title bout headlines the fight card.  Makhachev (25-1) enters his third title defense riding a 13-fight winning streak.  Poirier (30-8, 1 NC) is coming off a knockout win over Benoit Saint Denis in his last outing.  

UFC 302 Countdown: Makhachev vs. Poirier   

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UFC

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts

Urijah Faber still got it.

Faber competed in a combat jiu-jitsu match against grappling veteran Jeff Glover in his A-1 Combat event on Saturday night at Visalia Convention Center in Visalia, Calif. The match headlined A-1 Combat 21.

The longtime WEC and UFC competitor showed his skillset throughout the bout, including opportunistic moments to land open hand strikes before securing a nasty rear-naked choke in the opening round.

Check out the finish below.

View other highlights from Faber’s return match in the videos below.

The match served as Faber’s first competitive bout since competing at the Combat Jiu-Jitsu Worlds in December 2022, where he was submitted via armbar, and the third grappling match total since his most recent UFC appearance.

Competing at UFC 245 in December 2019, Faber was knocked out by then-future bantamweight champion Petr Yan in the third round. “The California Kid” knocked out Ricky Simon in 46 seconds five months prior at UFC Sacramento in his return after coming out of retirement.

Faber is currently incredibly busy as a coach, promoter, manager, and business owner, but has not officially retired from a UFC return in the future.

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Run It Back
| BJPenn.com

UFC

The UFC’s new fight gloves debut at UFC 302, and the lightweight champion has mixed feelings about the complete re-design.

UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev has mixed emotions about the new fight gloves being debuted at UFC 302.

Makhachev is set to defend his title against Dustin Poirier in New Jersey on June 1st, and the event will mark the debut of a new glove the UFC has been working on for months. The re-design was revealed during UFC 300 fight week, and now Makhachev will wear the first golden pair of gloves as befits the champ.

But Islam has some not-so-complimentary thoughts about the new equipment after receiving a pair to train in.

“The new gloves are very stiff,” he said in an interview with Sport 24. “They will cause more cuts, as the previous UFC gloves were softer. These are stiffer. They don’t let you fully open your hand just to make sure the fingers don’t extend straight forward.”

Many fans had hoped the new design would gently curve a fighter’s fingers down to lessen the chance of eye pokes. Now we have Makhachev suggesting these gloves do that too much! He’s also not the first fighter to note that there seems to be extra fabric around the finger holes that could cause more cuts.

“But overall they are pretty much the same,” he concluded. “I am going to frame them next to the belt as the first golden gloves in the UFC. I believe that means a lot.”

We’ll see how the new gloves work out at UFC 302, but we’re not going into this blind. At the end of 2023 the gloves were being tested in training by many UFC fighters, and thus far there’s been nothing but positive reviews regarding the re-design.

But if we witness a bad cut during Makhachev vs. Poirier … well, to say that would cause some drama would be an understatement.

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MMA: Mixed Martial Arts