Rigan Machado recently revealed that he had a decade-long undefeated run across well over 300 matches when he was still an active Jiu-Jitsu competitor. It’s virtually impossible to verify now of course, as Machado was most active at a time when nobody was tracking records other than the grapplers themselves. It’s very clear that he was an excellent competitor though, judging from the accounts of his training partners and his ADCC performances. He competed at four of the earliest editions of ADCC and even left with a bronze medal in 2000, despite already being 34 years old by the time it came around.
The majority of his competition appearances took place long before ADCC even began though. Machado isn’t the only grappler from that era who claims a large number of wins either, as Rickson Gracie has often said that he went undefeated for at least 400 matches during his career. Machado actually referenced this when he talked about his own record:
“In my generation, when they used to compete, the two guys who was considered to be the best was Rickson (Gracie) and me; and we controlled the sport at the time. Like I have almost 365 fights, no loss. I won for 10 years straight.”
Rigan Machado and Rickson Gracie even faced each other back then and although Machado didn’t leave undefeated, he still put on a great show. There aren’t many concrete records from the 80s and 90s of course, but there is some footage that has survived. It was common for BJJ black belts back then to compete under a range of different rulesets so footage exists of Machado submitting Judo black belts, and even facing Sambo competitors. He was a very skilled grappler in his prime and although winning hundreds of matches in a row might seem crazy today, he explained that it was partly to do with the number of opponents he could face each day:
“I have 19 fights in one day at the time… 19 fights in four divisions, I submit everybody.”
Machado also shared how he was able to be so consistent for hundreds of matches over so many years, and it’s all to do with how he was training:
”I trained three times a day. I trained morning, evening. I had the best camps, toughest guys, I tried to do four spars every day. I was mentally (and) physically ready to fight. People say ‘what’s your secret?’ I say I just spent time on the mat in sparring. 95% was sparring and 5% was techniques.”
The full interview with Rigan Machado where he discusses his decade-long undefeated run was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Jaxxon podcast:
