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There are few athletes in any sport – check that, few athletes in all sports combined – that can be truly revered as either the first legitimate superstar, or the rare talent that subsequently revolutionized the game.

Basketball had Wilt Chamberlain, then Michael Jordan. Hockey had Rocket Richard and Gordie Howe, then Wayne Gretzky. Baseball had the Babe. Boxing had Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis, then Muhammad Ali. Soccer had Pele. And so it goes through the sports, where you can grasp one, two, or maybe a small handful of stars that shaped the sport and set the standard that future generations would strive to meet.

So, too, is the case with mixed martial arts. The sport, as a competitive athletic business, was built largely on the shoulders of one man. He came from a family of Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioners, and possibly because he was the most photogenic, he was the one selected as the marketing centerpiece for UFC 1, the primitive early-1990’s predecessor to present day mixed martial arts. To this day, Brazilian jiu jitsu is considered synonymous with Gracie jiu jitsu. It was largely on the back of, and behind the face of, Royce Gracie that the sport we now know as mixed martial arts became possible.

And the man has constantly walked the line between hero and villain, idol and heel, sportsman and thug, making it all the more difficult to predict how history will ultimately judge the father of modern MMA. He is without question a UFC hall of famer, a mixed martial arts hall of famer, and indeed a world sports hall of famer by the strictest of athletic criteria anyone could set up. But so is Ty Cobb. So is Pete Rose. So is Mike Tyson. And with this in mind, we examine the legacy, good and bad, of one of the most accomplished and influential athletes the world has ever known.

THE EARLY UFC EVENTS

UFC 1 and most of the events immediately succeeding it were largely a brilliant marketing scheme to illustrate to the world the martial arts supremacy of Gracie jiu jitsu. UFC 1 could have been taken directly out of a 1980s Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, complete with a cross-discipline fighting tournament, ridiculous mismatches and circus freak competitors.

Enter Royce Gracie, a slim and unimposing practitioner of some obscure South American martial art, the apparent underdog to everyone else in the contest. Sure enough, Gracie more or less breezed his way through a series of larger opponents on his way to capturing the first UFC championship (on a road that went through another of the smaller and more skilled fighters, Ken Shamrock). The audience was baffled as to how this slight man was able to take larger men to the ground and smother them with leverage and their own body weight. An instant underground legend was born.

Sure enough, at all UFC events following the first one, Royce Gracie was considered the favorite, regardless of his opponent’s size. Fans simply waited to see how long it would take him to submit his opponent, whether it was a sumo wrestler, kickboxer, or circus bear. Gracie showed the kind of fighting courage that wins the hearts of fans at UFC by taking a prolonged beating from the hulking and supplement-aided Kimo Leopoldo before finally sinking in an armlock. He withdrew from the tournament before the beginning of his next match.

THE NATURE OF A LEGACY

But even in the early UFC events, some tendencies began to show in Gracie’s character and fighting style, tendencies that may have been hardly noteworthy at the time, but certainly tarnish some of his victories in light of the unparalleled camaraderie and sportsmanship that characterize mixed martial arts today. In the semifinals of UFC 2, Gracie secured a standing armlock on Jason DeLucia, who began to tap furiously on Gracie’s leg. Never mind that refereeing was quite primitive at this stage and the inside-the-octagon official appeared to have forgotten what a tap out was. The standing armbar went to the ground where DeLucia continued to frantically tap both Gracie and the mat, with Royce continuing to pull on the arm until, eventually, inevitably, he popped the elbow.

“So what?” you might say. “This is mixed martial arts. Get over it.”

Sure enough, this is MMA, and everyone who has been trained in elementary jiu jitsu is a little bit curious as to what will really happen if they don’t let go of their arm bar or heel hook when their opponent taps. But this was an instance where Gracie’s intention was clear. And it always stood out to me because the Gracie family had long professed a practice of not inflicting unnecessary pain or damage on an opponent. The victory here was secure. Yet Gracie had decided that he was blowing out that arm come hell or high water.

Was he the first or the last man to utilize such a tactic? No, of course not. And in his defense, the rules of MMA were far less comprehensive than they are today. But Renato “Babalu” Sobral holding a choke after his opponent had tapped recently got him kicked right out of the UFC. And the worst that could have happened there was that his opponent might black out and lose bladder control. He certainly wouldn’t be laid up in the hospital with the potential for permanent arm damage.

Was Royce Gracie the devil for this armbar? Certainly not, but we like our heroes to be heroic. It only meant that there was room for greater sportsmanship, greater respect in the ring, nicer guys, better role models. By being vindictive and callous, Gracie in no way detracted from his dominance in the octagon. But he left a character niche open that could later be filled by other heroes, and this helped create the demand for fan favorites like Randy “Captain America” Couture and Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira. There was a void yet to be filled by champions who would spare their opponent once victory at hand.

The following video is an early propaganda piece from the Gracie family, marketing their brand of jiu jitsu. It undoubtedly shows their techniques to be effective as Royce Gracie manhandles Jason DeLucia in a separate match from their UFC confrontation. But once again, the predatory “cat and mouse” game belies, to a degree, the insincerity of the martial arts code professed under the Gracie banner. Make no mistake, the techniques were revolutionary. But Gracie was, by making sure he displayed his dominance in a quasi-sadistic manner, ensuring that his legacy of greatness would be one based on sheer dominance rather than character and sportsmanship.

Still, Gracie was wise and he picked his spots. He made sure that he did his losing overseas, beyond the view of the western underground that had idolized him for his unprecedented destruction of larger and stronger men. Most of the people who buy UFC pay-per-views to this day have probably never heard the name Kazushi Sakuraba, and certainly wouldn’t be able to tell you that he is known as The Gracie Hunter for the manner in which he ran through the legendary family in professional fights. The same fans are also likely unaware of the aging Gracie’s brief (and penalized) foray into steroids as he attempted to stay competitive. The mere notion seems to be an irreconcilable conflict with the manner in which Gracie used his superior skill to neutralize his opponents’ superior strength. But that is a discussion for another day.

And so, years later, when Royce Gracie returned to the UFC to face welterweight champion Matt Hughes, he was billed as undefeated in the octagon, with the innuendo being that the legend had yet to be defeated. Sure enough, Gracie proclaimed that he himself wss mixed martial arts and brought a confidence into the octagon that crossed the line into arrogance, actually making the fans identify with Hughes, a man himself regarded by many fans as excessively arrogant.

THE FINAL CHAPTER, SO FAR…

Mixed martial arts had changed in Gracie’s absence from the UFC. The fighters were now legitimate masters in cross-discipline training. It was no longer one type of fighting against another to determine which was best. It was a matter of which fighter was the most well-versed in various disciplines. And so it was that Matt Hughes, accomplished in wrestling, jiu jitsu and more, essentially had his way with Royce Gracie.

As phenomenal as Gracie had been in his discipline, mastery of one fighting system alone was an outdated model for fighting. To his credit, in another display of Gracie heart and tenacity, he withstood a prolonged and extreme armbar. Despite having the armbar sunk in and fully extended, Hughes had to abandon the submission because it was clear that Gracie was not going to tap to anything short The Passion of the Christ.

Gracie had once again displayed his heart, but his day as a dominant fighter was done. What was left now was his legacy, and these are the pieces of the puzzle that will eventually fall into place. The sport continues to evolve rapidly. Matt Hughes himself, as little as five years ago considered the new age multidisciplinary fighter, has now become eclipsed by even more well-rounded renaissance men such as Georges St. Pierre. In time, St. Pierre’s style will be considered old school and primitive.

For what it is worth, I will always remember Royce Gracie as a man who fearlessly took on opponents that physically dwarfed him, a frightening prospect for virtually any man. And I will remember him as a fighter that cut through his opponents with expertise and precision unmatched in his day. But I will also remember him as fully aware of his own greatness, subscribing wholeheartedly to his own legend, and sometimes feeling during his fights like I was watching a child pull the wings off a fly. Regardless, any fan of mixed martial arts is forever indebted to the man, his family and their brand of combat.