Brazil’s leading BJJ media Tatame magazine made a very interesting article about the biggest rivalries in the Gracie Family, which was translated by Gabriel Cunha for BJJEE.com. The article attempts to expose some of the historical manipulations done by some members of the Gracie family over the years. You can read the article in English here.
In the article, it is stipulated that Geo Omori who was one of the Japanese pioneers in Brazil (who trained with Maeda), had claimed that Carlos Gracie didn’t learn directly from Mitsuyo Maeda. Another interesting fact was that George Gracie was a much better fighter than his brothers Carlos or Helio. The article also alleges that Helio Gracie cheated his way into beating Kimura’s training partner Kato.
The article spurred some controversy in the BJJ community and the Valente brothers who are defenders of the Helio Gracie lineage came back with a response where they step by step attempted to dismantle the allegations.
Following these incidents, a new in depth article/biography of the Gracie family has been released. The article is entitled ‘One Hundred Years of Arm Bars’ and published by famous website grantland.com, which delivers an inside look at the Gracie family and attempts to uncover some family secrets. It was written David Samuels, an American non-fiction writer, best known for long-form journalism and essays. He is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and a contributor to The Atlantic and The New Yorker.
The biography is the result of Samuel’s long set of interviews with Gracie family members such as Rorion, Renzo, Reila and Roger. He also sat down with John Danaher.
Here are some interesting parts of the biography:
Rorion Gracie on his uncle’s Carlos Gracie’s involvement in Jiu-Jitsu in the later years of his life:
“Look, I loved my uncle Carlos,” Rórion told me. “He and my father were as close as the nail and the flesh of my thumb. But he spent the last 20 years managing the Gracie diet. I think he put on a gi twice for photographs.”
About Helio Gracie’s first wife not being able to bare children, and Helio having had children with other women:
His (Rorion’s) mother’s inability to have children, he told me, threatened her marriage to his father. “So Uncle Carlos comes to her and says, ‘Let me find a way you’re going to have kids. They’re not going to be your children.’” Hélio found a surrogate mother for the children he wanted and Carlos made Hélio’s wife promise she wouldn’t try to identify the woman. The surrogate first gave birth to Rórion, then to his brother Relson, and then, two years later, to Rickson.
The deception went beyond what might be understood today as the use of a surrogate, because Rórion knew his biological mother quite well. “I have to tell you that she worked at our house,” he continued. “She was my babysitter until I was 15 years old.”….
The mistress, who was the mother of Rórion’s brother Royce, had worked as a secretary at the Gracie Academy. She had eyes for Hélio, but she arranged to marry another man because she wanted children and thought it would be impossible to have them with Hélio, who already had a wife. “Then Uncle Carlos came and told her there was a way she could have children with the man she admired [Hélio],” Rórion said. “He worked out a deal with her family where she would get a house. This did not happen with my mother’s knowledge.
The article also covers Rorion’s reaction to the Renzo-Rener Gracie feud from a few years back:
When I asked Rórion about Renzo’s attacks, he merely shrugged. “If nothing else, they should acknowledge that if it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t have the easy lives they have,” he said. “They should light a candle for Rórion every fucking Christmas.”
About Roger Gracie’s relationship with his uncle Renzo:
Renzo had been Royce’s successor as the family representative in the UFC. Although Renzo was welcoming to Roger, including the young fighter in his training camps and advising him on how to make a living in professional MMA, Renzo was seen by many Gracies as more of a showman than a champion. He never won a title fight, and Roger estimates that his cousin was physically and mentally unprepared for at least 80 percent of his bouts. “I can tell you why he wasn’t ready,” he said. “I was with him daily. I saw him going to bed at four, five in the morning, having to wake up at eight to train.”
