UFC pioneer Royce Gracie has plenty of trademarks of the Gracie family heritage. The first ever Gracie family representative in the UFC octagon however takes after the family in more ways than just his fighting skills.
Back in 2001, Royce’s father Grandmaster Helio Gracie uttered a whole lot of sexist gems to Playboy. Some of his best comments were:
PLAYBOY: What do you think about feminine independence?
HELIO: Wait a minute [Helio gets up a comes back with a briefcase from which he takes out a manuscript and begins to read]: “For me it is easy to diagnose the men who prefer independent women: pimps [cafetões], effeminate, lazy men and individuals with weak and cowardly personalities, are the ones who want to be taken care of by women rather than taking care of women. Nature did not create men and women by mistake, but for each one to do his or her part. The man takes care of the woman and the woman takes care of the children, who will be the men of tomorrow [returns the paper to the briefcase]. The problem with men’s values nowadays is that women, poor things, have no other option than to try to be independent.
and also there’s a slew of other ones:
Do you think sex is bad?
HELIO: I have nothing but approval for sex and love between two people who want to do it.. But sex for the sake of sex is an unnecessary expenditure of energy. The worst things is to have sex without fulfilling nature’s purpose. In other words, sex is the instrument of procreation. I had a sister who was a nun [Mary, 85 years old] who lived in the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, in São Paulo. That infuriated me. I would have preferred that she had been a bum. To complete her mission on earth as a women. What does it serve to be a virgin? A women with breasts, ovaries, who was born normally, should have children. Not to do it goes against nature.
PLAYBOY: How many times have you had sex in your life?
HELIO: [Pauses]. Look, I was a world champion who did it only a little. In my estimation, I could have had sex with all of the women in Brazil. But I never had relations with more than 10 women. And I only did it with women who accepted the idea of having children.
PLAYBOY: So to check, then did you depend on condoms?
HELIO: [Emphatically]. My God! I never used condoms. There is no women in the world with whom I would ever use condoms. Not even if she was the last women on earth. I would rather die without doing it. My kids also don’t use them and I have 28 grandkids.
PLAYBOY: I mean, are you and your sons immune to AIDS?
HELIO: [Indignantly]. This business of AIDS is for those who are involved in depravity and filth. None of my kids pretend to be Don Juans {Exasperated]. Those who fear AIDS are those who have sex with anyone. And those know have sex with just anyone, are in my opinion, nothing more than dogs.
PLAYBOY: Have you ever been unable to get it up? [O senhor ja broxou alguma vez?]
HELIO: No, that has never happened.
So it’s no surprise Royce Gracie has quite a similar view on women and an apparent disgust for women in MMA in particular.
When prompted about women in mma on his recent interview with Joe Buck at Undeniable he replied:
“Nope, I’m not a big fan of it,” Gracie said when asked for his opinion on women’s mixed martial arts. “I like the woman feminine. I don’t like to get home and get beat up.
“But hey, it’s a free country. They can do whatever they want.”
This type of a response is especially interesting given how often Royce integrates self defense as part of his seminars and well a lot of other things.
Over on the bloodyelbow site they didn’t take too kindly to Royce Gracie stereotyping women and railed him for his definition of feminine and especially saying that he doesn’t like to “get home and get beat up ” which is in general just ignorant. They put it best saying:
That’s quite a leap in one sentence from stereotyping women to stereotyping MMA fighters. If someone spends the day fighting in a gym, he or she is going to do the same at home? Haven’t we spent a couple of decades trying to convince the general public that MMA fighters are usually intense competitors in the cage but kind, warm-hearted people at home?
If we’re going to paint all MMA fighters as domestic abusers, we might as well go back to the days of the sport being labeled “human cockfighting.”
