Royce Gracie recently named his choice for ‘best fighter ever’ while taking part in an interview with Talk Sport and his answer was pretty surprising. Not only did he choose not to pick a UFC fighter, but he didn’t pick anyone who has been active in any combat sport over the last few decades. He didn’t take much time at all to think of his answer either and he knew immediately that he was going to pick his father, Helio Gracie. Although Helio Gracie was in his athletic prime long before major promotions like the UFC came into existence, he still had several fights under a range of slightly different rulesets.
Helio Gracie fought many times between 1932 and 1967 but only 19 of those fights have been recorded and well-sourced. His official record stood at 9-2-8 as he always fought without the use of any points systems or judges to render a verdict if it reached the end of the allotted time. Royce Gracie was clear about his thoughts on his father’s status as the ‘best fighter ever’ in his mind:
“He was way ahead. My father was way ahead of everybody, not as a fighter but as a self-defence style.”
It wasn’t just judges that weren’t used back in those days either, and Royce and Helio Gracie actually have one thing in common in this respect. All of Helio’s fights were arranged without the use of weight classes, similarly to how Royce Gracie competed back at UFC 1. That meant that Helio was often the smaller man in his fights and obviously this goes in his favor when considering his accomplishments:
“You put a smaller guy and he defends himself against somebody who is bigger and stronger.”
It wasn’t just weight classes though, those fights that were early precursors to modern MMA often used even less rules than UFC 1. For Royce Gracie, the fact that Helio fought without the presence of the majority of the rules that make up modern MMA is a large part of why he rates him so highly:
“You see it’s not the same way of fighting. You take all the rules out. No time limit, no gloves, no weight divisions, fighting three or four fights in one night.”
There are several legendary fighters like Khabib Nurmagomedov or Anderson Silva, or even Royce Gracie himself. But when it comes down to it, Royce Gracie knows exactly who he thinks the ‘best fighter ever’ was:
“It was my father; he was ahead of everybody.”
