Quote Originally Posted by moonlight19
Gracie is one of those rare athletes that you never want to bet against.

He's Royce Gracie for christsake. He invented the modern sport of MMA. It was he that showed everyone out there that they had to come to his world of Gracie JJ or be vanquished.

Hughes is a stud though. Even still I think Gracie has the advantage on the ground.

What a great fight.

Dana White really knows how to run it over there. Always the best and most interesting matchups. They should make him the Czar of boxing and maybe we'd see great fights all the time instead of once a year at best.
He may of showed that a good ground game can likely win you the fight, but as far as incorporating other things with his ground skills royce has been extremely lazy. And not just lazy but not naturally talented in that department AT ALL. In fact I just watched Royce in a video have an unsanctioned MMA fight w/ a kung fu black belt... I've never seen royce throw so many punches w/ the intent of hurting the other guy, he landed a large number of those punches and the guy didn't have to defend any of it, he could take it right on the chin and not be in any danger. Royce hits like a girl and doesn't have a choice in the matter.. I'm sure hughes knows this will allow him to really bloody the balding Gracie up

Vitor belfort had it right when he said he fights the best, Royce and Rickson don't. I think a part of this match is people are realizing Royce and Rickson had alot of people they should of fight and conciously didn't. I mean my god, Frank Shamrock, Randy Couture, Wanderlei Silva, Quinton Jackson, Don Frye, Kazushi Sakaraba, Tank Abbot, Vitor Belfort, Guy Mezger, Bas Rutten...for the life of me I can't understand why the gracies never met these guys at one point or another.