One of the members of the first family of mixed martial arts is gone….tragically. Ryan Gracie, brother of Renzo, cousin of Royce and Rorion Gracie, and grandson of the legendary MMA pioneer Carlos Gracie, was found dead inside a Sao Paulo prison on December 15. He was 33 years old.
Ryan was known as the “bad boy” of the storied Gracie clan, originators of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and not without justification. He was generally known as a raucous individual, who found himself in trouble in multiple occasions. He was once arrested for stabbing someone at a Rio de Janeiro nightclub, for example. And things got worse.
The unfortunate culmination of Ryan’s wild extracurricular activities came last Friday, when he was arrested for car theft and assault in Sao Paulo. It seems he had stolen a Toyota earlier in the afternoon, and physically assaulted at least two individuals, including a 78-year-old man. In the late afternoon, he accosted a motorcycle owner at a traffic light, wielding a knife, demanded that he get off the motorcycle, and proceeded with trying to steal the vehicle. But another motorcycle rider saw this, hit Ryan on the head with a crash helmet and subdued him.
The young Gracie was in a holding cell at a local precinct, awaiting processing, when at about 7 AM on Saturday morning, he was found dead in the cell. The death was allegedly from an overdose of drugs.
Ryan had been prescribed a number of medications by a psychiatrist, who apparently is being investigated for malpractice. Evidently he ingested some of this medication - presumably an excessive amount - and expired sometime in the early morning hours. He had already been given a toxicology test during processing and was determined to have marijuana and cocaine in his system.
Ryan Gracie was a mixed martial arts competitor who did not remotely approach the status of his more famous relatives, brother Renzo and cousins Royce and Rickson. He had seven MMA fights, all under the PRIDE banner in Japan, and won five of them, the last at Shockwave 2004. Perhaps his most notable fight was a loss to Kazushi Sakuraba in December 2000. He trained fighters as well, including jiu-jitsu champion Fabio Leopoldo.
Because Ryan was in police custody when the overdose occurred, the Gracie family will be filing a legal action against the state, as well as the doctor who was responsible for prescribing his medication.
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