Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Rossen: At those early shows, sometimes people in the crowd would hold up signs saying, “Tyson vs. Gracie.” What would you think when you saw that?
Tyson: Yeah! That was so awesome. I love all kinds of fighting. To say I only love two guys putting on gloves and only punching, I would be a moron to say that.
Rossen: Did you ever seriously consider an offer to fight MMA when you were active as an athlete?
Tyson: Not really, because by the time it took off, I was already doing boxing. This is something you have to start when you’re 12 or 13. It has to be a passion. That’s the problem with boxing: There’s no passion. People want to be record producers, rappers. In MMA, you see that passion. Georges St-Pierre, this is all he wants to do. That’s why he’s so successful.
Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
Royce Gracie changed the face of MMA in the eyes of Mike Tyson.
Rossen: But back in those days, it wasn’t so refined. I know it’s a hypothetical, but what do you think would’ve happened if someone had put up enough money for you to fight Royce Gracie? He was a much smaller man.
Tyson: It doesn’t matter. If I hit him with a good punch, OK, but if he gets hold of me and in a position I’m not familiar with, I’m not going to win the fight. I would have to be equipped with grappling skills as well. Gracie changed the whole game around. To be involved in this kind of fight, you have to know that style right off the bat.
Everyone learned his style of fighting. Everything we have now is because of the Gracies taking it to the next level. Their name isn’t on it, but that’s what it is. It’s Gracie Fighting.
Rossen: Have you ever grappled?
Tyson: Never in my life, no. Unless I had a street fight where I had to grab someone and slam them. [Laughs]
Rossen: There’s always talk MMA is set to “replace” boxing. Do you think the two will continue to coexist?
Tyson: I think there’s room for both [MMA] and boxing, but boxing just has too many black eyes. It doesn’t have a good image. In MMA, even though people are fighting, they have a good image. Very few of them get into tragic troubles where they’re beating people up and stuff.
It can be tiresome listening to some of these boxing fans claim that good boxers would destroy the best mixed martial artists in a fight. Of course the boxers would prevail in a boxing match, but most of these fans don't understand how mma striking is different and how the threat of takedowns will make a mediocre striker with good wrestling all of a sudden a great striker, and vice-versa. Wasn't all of this settled in the early UFCs, when it was more style vs. style?
Also, Mike Tyson was on one of the TUFs. I think that GSP was the coach who brought him on.
Yeah, we have had MANY of those conversations around here. Hell I think it still comes up every now and then on some boxing boards pretty often.
Mike says he's been a fan since about UFC 3 or something. He gets it, most boxing fans have no idea what it's like to even get in a boxing ring, why would anyone think they would know anything about Mma.
I think a prime Tyson could knock Royce out before Royce could take it to the ground. But he would have to familiarize himself with at least some defense against a takedown.
Without leg strikes, mikes range is limited, Royce was a master of "the Gracie stomp", basically either a front push kick or a faked one into a clinch.
Even mike himself says no boxer has a chance in there with just boxing. And back then, no boxer cared to try to learn anything else.
There has been a long standing, public challenge by the Gracie family to boxing champs, mike knew about it, why is it nobody ever accepted?
Meh, that's no different than MMA fans who think that any style that's not Muay Thai or BJJ is worthless.
I would say, Bjj, Thai boxing, wrestling, a bit of judo, and a bit of boxing, anything is all but worthless, impractical, or already encompassed in the mentioned styles
Without leg strikes, mikes range is limited, Royce was a master of "the Gracie stomp", basically either a front push kick or a faked one into a clinch.
Even mike himself says no boxer has a chance in there with just boxing. And back then, no boxer cared to try to learn anything else.
There has been a long standing, public challenge by the Gracie family to boxing champs, mike knew about it, why is it nobody ever accepted?
Seeing as nobody in boxing really cared for MMA, especially in those early days, I doubt it's because they were scared, but probably out of ignorance of the art.
Honestly, I'm not much of a fan of the Gracies anyway. Arrogant family with delusions of invincibility. UFC was started with rules that favored BJJ in order to better promote it.
I think a prime Tyson could knock Royce out before Royce could take it to the ground. But he would have to familiarize himself with at least some defense against a takedown.
The moment that Tyson (or any other boxer) trains ground techniques in order to compete in mma, they themselves become a mixed martial artist. One dimensional fighters don't have a very long shelf life in mma anymore.
Seeing as nobody in boxing really cared for MMA, especially in those early days, I doubt it's because they were scared, but probably out of ignorance of the art.
Honestly, I'm not much of a fan of the Gracies anyway. Arrogant family with delusions of invincibility. UFC was started with rules that favored BJJ in order to better promote it.
Sanctioned competition is always going to have rules, and when you have rules some styles are going to have an advantage over others. Styles that are based on "dangerous" techniques are never going to be able to validate themselves in sanctioned competition, and their claims will have to remain theoretical. As far as the Gracies were concerned my understanding is that they were willing to take on anybody in order to validate the superiority of BJJ, and back in those days they knew very little (if anything ) about their opponents (they weren't all generic mma fighters).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
