Most try to settle this through debate, but debating about martial arts is like playing checkers about basketball. One can point to boxers, point karate champions, or even martial arts actors as being the best fighters representing the best martial art, but that does little to answer the ultimate question of who would win in a no-rules, anything-goes, streetfight—the holy grail of all martial arts proving grounds?

People hold up the streetfight as the ultimate, yet the only streetfights you’re likely to see in real life will probably involve drunk and sloppy combatants or one-sided attacks by untrained fighters on DVD’s like “Bum Fights” or “Felony Fights.”

Someone could point to the UFC as the ultimate proving ground, but still some would argue that that’s loaded with rules too, and that the most effective techniques are banned from the sport. Therefore, the best-trained fighters in the deadliest martial arts would never be allowed to compete, and so the question goes still unanswered.

But what if there could be a true no-holds-barred tournament featuring the best fighters in the world to determine which system of self-defense was the best? Would that settle the debate once and for all?

What most people fail to realize is that the first UFC was a true no-holds-barred tournament. While the announcers may have informed the public of two “rules” (no biting or eye gouging) they weren’t true rules; they were merely restrictions. In other words, a fighter could have chosen to bite and eye gouge and still won the tournament. He would have been fined $1,000 from his winnings, to go to the victim of those violations, but he wouldn’t have been eliminated.

In fact, if you watch the final match of the tournament closely, you may notice Gerard Gordeau bite my brother Royce’s ear during the clinch that sent both fighters to the ground. Royce complained to Gordeau that he was cheating, which only caused him to chuckle and say, “So what, the ref can’t see it.” The bloody bite mark can be seen on Royce’s ear at the end of the fight.

The main reason I wanted there to be no rules, was not to make it more bloody for the fans, but to settle once and for all the age-old debate of the most effective system of self-defense system.

My business partner at the time, Art Davie, was surprised when I picked my younger brother, Royce, to be our representative in the tournament. Having trained at the newly opened Gracie Academy, Art knew, along with everyone else at the Academy, that my brother Rickson was the family champion.

Art was afraid that Royce, who was an easy-going and gentle guy, skinny and not muscular, didn’t stand as good a chance of winning the tournament as Rickson. And he was right; Rickson would have made short work of all the fighters, but I was concerned that his athleticism and aggressiveness would have overshadowed the techniques of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Rather than see the self-defense system as model of efficiency, they might have seen just a great athlete at work, and that’s what made Royce the logical choice.

Before Royce came into the public’s consciousness through the UFC, the image of the martial arts fighter was that of a muscle-bound gymnast. Bruce Lee, as talented as he was, was muscular and acrobatic. Jean-Claude Van Dame was a muscular gymnast, far from being an “everyman.” Even the fictional Kwan Chang Caine (of the TV show, “Kung Fu”) had fists hardened by heated steel and super-fast reflexes that allowed him to catch arrows in mid-flight.

Royce was just a skinny guy that the average person could relate to, using an effective system of self-defense that anyone could learn.

And even more important than Royce submitting three of the toughest martial artists in the world in one night, during UFC 1, and four tough fighters in UFC 2, is that he came through both tournaments unscathed.

The single most-important facet of the Gracie Combatives course we teach is showing our students how to survive a street attack without being hit. My father, grandmaster Helio Gracie’s, fighting philosophy, during his day as a no-holds-barred fighter, was to just try not to lose. When the bigger, tougher guy gets tried from trying to hurt you, you move in and finish him off—in a nice humane way, of course. Because we like to think the Gracie jiu-jitsu fighter is the good guy, defending himself, and not the aggressor attacking someone.
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Rorion Gracie is a contributing editor of Inside Kung-Fu. For more information go to www.GracieUniversity.com