Respect for Rickson Gracie and what he has done for Jiu-Jitsu is universal in the BJJ community.
Everyone is grateful for his contributions to the Gentle Art – including Craig Jones.
Jones emphasized that Rickson was, among other things, also a trendsetter.
That he was doing things which are nowadays sort of mainstream – especially in the martial arts communities:
Rickson Gracie was doing cold baths before podcasts were even invented.
He was doing breath work before Wim Hof.And really, what I most respect him for is that he was doing yoga before yoga pants were even invented, or even culturally accepted to be out and about it [yoga].
Jones is also sad that the match between Rickson and Japanese MMA legend Kazushi Sakuraba never took place:
Rickson was, kind of, an undefeated legend of the Gracie family. Sadly, he never faced Sakuraba.
Sakuraba was able to take out a few of the [Gracie] family members. But that match never came about.I believe that, at the time, negotiations were going down and that Rickson suffered a family tragedy.
And they couldn’t put it [the match] together.But that could have been – in the ’90s or the early 2000s – the biggest MMA fight you could have possibly imagined.
