Kron Gracie has officially closed the door on one of the defining traits of his combat identity: pulling guard.

For most MMA fighters, that statement would be meaningless – hardly anyone in modern MMA uses guard pulls at all.
But Kron is not a typical fighter, but a high-level BJJ specialist.

But after the disastrous result at UFC 310, where Bryce Mitchell caught a guard pull attempt and slammed him into a knockout, Kron says he’s learned the hard way that some habits don’t translate well under MMA’s unforgiving spotlight:

I mean, I was fighting a top guy, obviously.

He was in the top 15, and I knew it was going to be a tough fight, but I was very confident and I was doing well, and I had a lot of confidence in my guard and pulling guard, and I just made a mistake and I paid for it.

So I feel like that’s just kind of the name of the game.

Sometimes you zig and you should have zagged, and then you get cracked and so that’s what happened.

Though the knockout happened nearly a year ago, Kron explained that the long layoff wasn’t part of some planned break:

(From an) actual technical point of view, there were some technical mistakes I made and that’s why I paid the price.
But this is the fight business, and I know the the game is dangerous, and that’s what it is.

So it’s nothing new to me, or nothing I’m shocked about, it didn’t really change anything in my mind.

It just kind of took a long time for me to get another fight, so I didn’t try to take this year off…
I was trying to get back in fighting, trying to get motivated to get on another card and continue.

Kron was released from the UFC afterward:

Just generally, (if) you’re fighting a top guy, if you win or lose, you should be able to stay in the game.
But I think the way that I fought, the way I pulled guard, and the way that it happened, a lot of fans were disappointed and I lost a lot of stock in that transition.

So, I think that’s kind of like as a fan and as a business, the UFC is a business, it makes sense for them to be like: “Well, you lost a lot of fans, go get your fans back, go get some wins and see what happens.”

That release forced Gracie to rethink not only his style but his priorities:

It’s a business.

If pulling guard is going to be that much of a detriment to the ability to keep fighting, and the ability to make money, then f**k it, I won’t pull guard ever again.

And I already made that decision that I’m done with pulling guard.

I always do really well from pulling guard, and it was something that I had in my back pocket, but I feel like now, not only for myself, I have to try to get on top.

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