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By Charles Jay

The other day I was having a conversation with the estimable publisher of MMA Memories, Larry Goldberg, and I made the suggestion that perhaps we should post some poll question to the readers about hypothetical “fantasy” fights. After all, coming largely from the world of boxing, I am used to all the discussion about who would win between Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis, Roberto Duran and Benny Leonard, Floyd Mayweather and Sugar Ray Leonard. It proves nothing, but it provides for some lively conversation anyway. And I figure the more conversation we can produce, the better it can be for the site and for the overall dialogue.

And so my hypothetical was, who would win, in their respective “primes,” between Royce Gracie, who fought at 175 pounds, and some of the outstanding UFC welterweights of the present and recent past, like Matt Hughes, BJ Penn and Georges St. Pierre. Larry’s response was that Gracie and Hughes have already fought, and Hughes stopped Gracie in one round. My retort, obviously, is that I wasn’t talking about a 40-year-old Gracie, with three fights in the previous six years, but the Royce Gracie that was literally the scourge of the UFC, with wins in the first and second tournaments, as well as the fourth.

Larry makes a good point when he tells me that fighters like Hughes and Penn have advanced the game so far in the years since Gracie’s title reign that it doesn’t make sense to partake in that kind of comparison. But this works right into my own point, which is that Gracie was the fighter who started that ball rolling; his performances in mixed martial arts competition set the example for everyone to follow, and that must be taken into consideration.

I am admittedly getting my feet weight when it comes to the MMA world.

But I would think that if it wasn’t for Royce Gracie and the style of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu he employed, the UFC may not have progressed very far. And you may never have heard of a Matt Hughes or a BJ Penn or a Georges St. Pierre. Not that they wouldn’t be competing at SOMETHING, but it probably wouldn’t be on this big a stage.

The most instructive conversation I ever had along the lines of these kinds of generational comparisons was with the late, legendary boxing historian, Hank Kaplan. I had been enlisted by a nationwide radio show to compile a list of the top ten fighters in each weight division, and was consulting with Hank on some of my selections. To my surprise, he explained to me that he didn’t himself engage in very much of that, because of the most important factor - the evolution of the athlete. Yes, we know that Ali was faster than Jack Johnson. Yes, we know that an NFL linebacker at 6′3″ and 240 pounds can run faster today than a 5′11″, 185-pound NFL halfback did 30 years ago. And the NBA actually has 7-foot small forwards, for heaven’s sake.

But Hank pointed out that in addition to all the other physical improvements along the lines of nutrition and training technology, there was also that matter of each generation of athletes observing, learning, and in general, taking something from the generation before, and using that to build on what has already been done. In other words, each succeeding generation has something going for it that the previous generations, who weren’t operating with as much of a blueprint, did not.

Since the evolution of MMA has moved pretty quickly, I think we can apply this to Royce Gracie, because we have to consider him to have preceded Hughes and Penn and St. Pierre by at least one generation, relatively speaking. Not much was known about mixed martial arts, or shoot-fighting, or vale tudo, or whatever you want to call it, before Gracie exposed it to a lot of North Americans. And whether they would admit to it or not, the fighters of today, many of whom were very young when the UFC started, built on that. So it is unfair to Gracie to say, “Well, look at a Matt Hughes or BJ Penn now and compare that to what Gracie looked like in the Octagon,” simply BECAUSE of the progress that has been made. It is essential to look at them relative to the competition that was out there, and the way they dominated over it.

That’s where I truly think Gracie scores a lot of points. In the early days of the UFC, it was an “all-comers” type of thing, without designated weight divisions. And Gracie, at 175 pounds, found himself competing against fighters much bigger than he was. He submitted 220-pound Ken Shamrock in the very first UFC, then later did the same to 260-pound Dan Severn and 250-pound Remco Parodel, as well as 225-pound kick-boxer Patrick Smith. He did it not with brute strength but the brilliance of his technique. Now, you might say that fighters of today have more at their disposal and may have brought more to the table to combat Gracie. But can anyone really say that Shamrock got so much better after his pair of fights with Gracie, or that he was in his peak around that time? Couldn’t the same be said for Smith? In this group, only Severn was in an early stage of his MMA development, but with his wrestling background, he was hardly a stiff.

Maybe all of this is unfair to Hughes, Penn and St. Pierre, and maybe it isn’t. Fighters in one weight division always have the opportunity to move up to a higher weight class to compete against the best. But very few fighters have even competed for a title in two different weight classes (Penn, obviously, is a notable exception). But how many welterweights could move up and fight heavyweights on even terms? Not many. How many have you seen?

Put in its proper perspective, Gracie’s feat is simply amazing. I think he is the type who stands up across all generational boundaries. If the term “pound-for-pound” hadn’t already existed, I would think it was created with him in mind.

What do YOU think?