Kron Gracie recently opened up about the most recent loss of his professional MMA career, when he dropped a unanimous decision to Charles Jourdain at UFC 288. It was only the second time that Gracie had lost a fight, although it was also his second loss in a row. He originally amassed a perfect 4-0 record across the regional MMA circuit and RIZIN FF, before a successful UFC debut in 2019 brought him to 5-0. Although he had an excellent start to his MMA career, things quickly went downhill from there and he ended up losing a decision to Cub Swanson in his very next fight.
Kron stepped away from the sport for a little while at that point, and he didn’t compete for almost four years after suffering his first professional MMA loss. When he returned to the cage, there was naturally a lot of interest around how he would perform after spending so long honing his skills. It wasn’t a good performance and he was open about that immediately after that fight was over. That was a little over a year ago now and Kron didn’t want to spend anywhere near as much time sitting on the sidelines, so he booked his return against Bryce Mitchell at UFC 310.
In an interview during the build-up for the fight with Mitchell, Kron Gracie reflected on his last loss in the UFC:
“I feel like it was a really bad performance. I felt a lot of pressure from the jiu-jitsu community and a lot of people in my family, with everybody kind of saying, ‘You should just use jiu-jitsu, and I don’t need to box, and I don’t need to strike.’ It was the first time in my life where I kind of listened to people and tried to do something to please a bunch of people around me.”
He’s been open about the fact that certain members of his family don’t appreciate the complexity of modern MMA, but now he revealed that it effected him in the preparation for that fight:
“I was under strict orders to not punch, so that was a bad idea.”
The full interview with Kron Gracie where he sheds some light on his most recent UFC loss was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAFighting:
