Erik Paulson revealed on a recent podcast that he believes he was pushed out of Rickson Gracie’s academy decades ago for reasons different from what he was told at the time.
Paulson explained that he had been training with Rickson while also competing as a bare knuckle athlete, an arrangement he says was cleared beforehand:
I got kicked out of Rickson’s because I was competed bare knuckle, but they okayed it.
But I find out later that I think there was… I think Rickson was concerned that I might go against Renzo.
He also recalled that Rickson himself had once floated the idea of Paulson entering the first UFC as a striker:
I was supposed to compete in the first UFC. I had my name in on there as a shooto athlete and everything and Rickson goes: “You want your picture up on the wall?”
And I go: “I do.”
By that point, Paulson was already competing professionally overseas, having become the first American to compete in Shooto in Japan roughly six months before the first UFC took place.
When he later pursued a UFC bout of his own, he was told the striker slot was already filled:
They said: “Well, we think we got a shooto athlete. His name is Ken Wayne Shamrock.”
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