“Rickson used to lose to blue belts”? Marcelo Alonso explains the two phases of Rickson Gracie
On VF Comunica, the journalist answers the video clips that circulate without context and tells how he shot one of Tatame’s best-selling covers, with Rickson in a swimming pool
Every now and then, a video clip starts circulating again with the same provocation: Rickson Gracie, the fighter his family presented as unbeatable, “used to lose to blue belts” in training. Journalist and photographer Marcelo Alonso, who followed Rickson’s generation up close, thinks the line only works when someone erases the dates.
“I’ve been seeing some very controversial clips, and they only exist because people don’t understand the order in which things happened,” he said, in an interview with Vitor Freitas for VF Comunica.
Rickson in the making
To explain, Alonso showed a photo of Roger Gracie as a blue belt and made the comparison. Nobody would use training sessions from that time to diminish the ten-time world champion. “Same thing with Rickson. In the ’80s he was still developing. Rolls was number one in the family,” he said, referring to Rolls Gracie.
The journalist recalls the first fight against Rei Zulu, in 1980, in Brasília, when Rickson was still skinny and far from the fighter he would become. “At that time, when he was still a brown belt, obviously there were people who caught him. He came out behind in training,” he said.
The Rickson with no second place
The second phase starts, by Alonso’s count, with the rematch against Zulu. “From the second fight with Zulu on, it’s a different Rickson. It’s the black belt Rickson, who walked into competitions and people started a countdown,” he said.
The period he marks runs from 1984 to 1995. “Unquestionably the biggest name in Jiu-Jitsu and in the Gracie family,” he said. When Alonso started covering the sport, in the early 1990s, there was no debate. “There was no second or third. One, two and three were Rickson.”
He says no current idol holds the same place, because today the public is split among several names. “He was the Pelé of the whole thing,” he said.
Jiu-Jitsu is one thing, MMA is another
Alonso makes a second distinction that the clips also tend to ignore. “The Rickson of Jiu-Jitsu and the Rickson of MMA are different things. MMA is a complex, complete sport,” he said. For him, judging the fighter means saying which of the two careers you are talking about.
The pool cover
How big Rickson was in that period shows in a behind-the-scenes story. During a Pan-American Championship in California, the two Brazilian fight magazines got a morning at his house, each with its own time slot. Tatame got the second one, and Alonso realized the midday light would ruin the photo he had in mind.
He stretched the conversation while he waited for the sun to drop. In the meantime, the doorbell rang and Rickson, who was heading to the shower, asked him to answer it. At the door was an 8-year-old Canadian boy, with his mother, who had traveled for a private lesson. “Shaking,” the journalist recalled.
The photo came later, with Rickson in the pool and the water at the height Alonso wanted. “I spent an hour with Rickson there. I shot about 20 of those until the water was where I wanted it,” he said. The issue, titled “In the temple of the samurai” and carrying an interview in which the fighter said he wasn’t impressed by Mark Coleman, who had been winning in the UFC, was one of the best-selling in the publication’s history.
Full video on YouTube
The full interview with Marcelo Alonso is on the VF Comunica YouTube channel (in Portuguese).
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