While the UFC doesn’t believe jiu-jitsu is a good draw for pay per view money Bellator all but disproved that. Past weekend’s Bellator 198 was one of the biggest gates ever featuring the likes of: Frank Mir, Rafael Lovato Jr, Neiman Gracie, Dillon Danis and even less known submission artists.
Royce Gracie meanwhile had one key bit of advice for Neiman Gracie – patience.
“I told him, ‘Don’t get frustrated if you don’t win in the first round,’” Gracie said. “It’s three rounds. Win one round at a time. If you happen to have a chance to finish early, good. If not, the guy is a tough opponent. He knows what he’s doing. He’s a good grappler, too. He knows what you want to do. So win one round at a time.”
“He wants to fight for the title; I say fight whomever the promotion puts in front of you,” Gracie said. “Don’t worry about titles, don’t worry about – it will come. You’ve just got to fight one fight at a time, it doesn’t matter, whomever.
“Like he did in the fight. I think he took a hit and he composed himself very well. Didn’t panic. Same thing with (Dillon) Danis, he took a hit and, OK, he composed himself. Didn’t panic. So that’s the good strategy, that’s the right strategy.”
Further Royce went on to call the event a huge success.
“A lot of people complain, ‘Oh, the rules favor the standup. Oh, the rules favor the grapplers’– no, the rules are even for both of them,” Gracie said. “In a night like tonight, the standup guys are going to say, ‘The rules favored the grapplers.’
“But then, next week, it’s a bunch of knockouts, and then the grapplers are going to say, ‘Well, the rules favor the standup guys.’ It’s not that it favors one of the other; it’s a strategy game.”
“OK, hold on: We already proved that Gracie jiu-jitsu is the best self-defense style out there,” Gracie said. “That’s why my family created this. It was more of a quest that my family had to find out which style is the best. We proved that, without jiu-jitsu, all those guys, the stand-up guys would lose much faster. They have to know jiu-jitsu.”
