Renzo Gracie - Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Is My Life: Why Nothing Is As Rewarding As Teaching Jiu-Jitsu

Full transcript: Renzo Gracie on London Real

2:07 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Renzo Gracie, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion, MMA fighter and founder of the Renzo Gracie Academy.

2:25 You are the grandson of Gracie jiu-jitsu founder Carlos Gracie, and began competing in vale tudo or no-rules fights in Brazil in 1992, and went on to compete at the Pride Fighting Championships in Japan and the UFC in America. In a career spanning 18 years you achieved victories against champions like Frank Shamrock, Carlos Newton, Maurice Smith and Oleg Taktarov, and became one of the most popular fighters in the sport. In 2018 you returned to the Octagon to defeat Yuki Kondo at the age of 51 in Legend Showdown, and are currently looking for your next fight.

2:59 You pioneered the growth of Brazilian jiu-jitsu in America by creating the Renzo Gracie Academy in New York City. You’ve trained legends including George St Pierre, Matt Serra, Ricardo Almeida and John Danaher, with your goal to continue passing on your knowledge to champions of the future. Renzo, welcome to London Real. It’s a pleasure. You just forgot one little detail.

3:20 You should have said the most handsome Gracie, you know. That’s true. You are pretty handsome. You’re handsome now. Renzo, I got to start off and tell you my jiu-jitsu story.

3:33 Can I tell you? Please. Okay, I’m excited to hear it. Okay, you’ve been to my academy a few times. Yeah, I didn’t have the opportunity to give you a hug.

3:41 Yeah, no. So I’ll tell you my story. So it starts in 2001. I was in New York City. I was living the New York City bright lights, big city lifestyle.

3:51 I lived on Houston between Avenue A, and I was partying. I was drinking. I was into drugs, and my life was going downhill. Renzo, I was almost 30 years old, and my life was a mess. And that year, it’s amazing how, it’s amazing how one thing drags the other.

4:07 Oh yeah, you don’t realize, it escalates in such a way that you feel not careful, you know. Yeah, and that’s what happened to me. I had a girlfriend for four years. We broke up that year. As you know, 9/11 happened that year, so the planes went into the Trade Center.

4:21 I was living not far, far away, and I overdosed from drugs that year. All right, I overdosed from heroin that year, and it was the lowest point in my life. Luckily I got out of New York City because I had to get out of that city, and I moved to London in January 2002. And about four months later, one of my good friends from New York called me up, and he said, Brian, you gotta try something, and I said, what? I said, what?

4:45 He said, it’s called jiu-jitsu. I’d never heard of it before. Nobody had really heard of it unless you really knew what was going on. And he said, you gotta try it. And, and, Renzo, I had never done any real physical activity in 10 years, since I was in high school, right?

4:59 I was all about my brain. You know, I studied engineering. I worked on Wall Street, all that stuff. And I googled it. Google was probably just invented, and I found a guy in London who was one of Hodge Gracie’s students, actually, and we started training one Saturday a week.

5:15 One Saturday a week, and I kid you not, Renzo, I trained every week for eight years. One Saturday became Saturday and Sunday. And jiu-jitsu gave me my life back. I was a shell of a man, and it built me up. It got everything back right in my life.

5:32 I got my blue belt, got my purple belt later from Hodge Gracie. I started training boxing, Thai boxing. It changed everything, and today I’m sober. I got a beautiful family. I’m doing this show, but Renzo, if it wasn’t, and my buddy was training, he was training at your academy in New York City.

5:49 John Danaher was his coach. He trained at the old place on 37th Street and 8th Avenue. And I’ll tell you the last part of the story is I went back to New York City a year later, and I wouldn’t go back to New York because I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to relapse, but I waited a year, and I came back to New York, and we went and we trained a private with John Danaher at your old studio above the methadone clinic on 37th Street. And that was my journey, man, and I’ve been, you know, off the drugs since then.

6:17 So I just want to thank you, man. You gave me, like, my life. Beautiful man, beautiful brother. This jiu-jitsu is an amazing tool to help people, to make them stronger. It’s a funny thing people say, but I’m physically, I don’t have, I don’t think that I’m fit for jiu-jitsu, you even if you’re a [expletive], doesn’t matter.

6:35 You’re going to be good. You know, I have the students. I have the two students that, they, they are handicapped. They don’t have the movements from the legs, and every time they are in New York, one of them fights a lot, competes a lot, and every time he’s in New York I go there, and I, I stay hours with them on the metro. Exchange knowledge, because they find leverages in things that I, for the fact that I have the movements of my legs, like I can never develop.

7:00 And I learn from them a lot. You know, they come back to teach me. You know, it’s insane. So in reality, you just described, you [expletive] so perfectly. It adapts to you.

7:09 It changes you. It’s an amazing tool to make you. You build your inner strength and make a better view. You know, it’s, it’s amazing, and I’m in awe that what you just described me is what I’ve been feeling since I was five years old. It’s incredible, and like you said, it gave me confidence.

7:29 It gave me everything. I taught my daughter jiu-jitsu, seven years old. We used to go every week, so she can choke me out now, and now my little boys are getting three and four, and they’re gonna be learning jiu-jitsu too. So, and like you said, anyone can learn it. Grandmas, younger people, older people.

7:44 And we’ll get into later how you teach, because that’s something special, but I want to start off with your story, because you know you’re a little bit older than me, not much. You grew up in Rio de Janeiro in the ’70s, right? And I remember an interview that you gave one time where you said my life was like the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue.” And if people, if people don’t know the song, it’s called “A Boy Named Sue,” and a Sue is a girl’s name, if people don’t know.

8:09 So if you’re a boy and you’re called Sue, you get beat up all the time. And Renzo had his last name, Gracie. And you’re in Rio de Janeiro, so I guess everybody looks at you and says, oh, this is the tough guy, this is the guy with the Gracie jiu-jitsu. What was it like growing up as a Gracie, and what was it like growing up in Rio de Janeiro in the ’70s? It was very different, especially in the ’80s.

8:33 On the 78th, I moved to Tobago, and when I moved there was a very desolate area, and I started seeing that my, my, my, the female relatives couldn’t go to the beach, because you’d have perverts there, doing things on the beach. You’d have people selling drugs. You and I was just a kid. I was 12. You know, so and then I went to surf in a spot.

8:55 They kicked me out. They didn’t let me surf there. I was saying that I didn’t know how to surf, I was going to hurt someone, get out of here. They kicked me out. I moved 500 yards down the, the beach, and I put a group of like 12, 13 kids that were that they were kicked out the same way as I did, and I start training.

9:14 We start surfing, and we start, I start teaching them jiu-jitsu. We’re together. Build a crew, of like, in the end we’re like 16, 17 kids, you know, like average 12 to 15 years old. And then one day I say, now it’s time for us to take over the good spot of surfing. So, and I remember this, this week I was in Brazil when there’s an older guy who he was a police officer back then.

9:41 He was actually a, a, a lifesaver on the beach, and then they turned them into a police officer. So he’s looking. He goes, hence why, Stewart. He just saw me there, you know, because I always go back to that trailer where, back then, I remember the guys that used to come and give me a hot dog. They say, hey, so you didn’t eat today?

9:57 Here, have a hot dog. You know, they always look after me, so every time I’m there I just went there again to have a hot dog, and I left 500 for them, you know, for the, and they are the kids of the parents who used to give you the hot dog. Wow, this is from Uncle Renzo here, you know. So and the father was there, and he looked, and he goes, hello, I still remember I’m, I was here, and I look, and I see a bunch of kids like 15, 17 kids walking they could barely carry the surfboards, and they came over, and I think, what the heck is this?

10:32 And you guys came and took over the spot. We put up a pirate flag there. We only allowed to surf there our friends and the good people. If you come and use drugs at the beach, we’d kick your butt. We clean.

10:45 I, I went to school with the kids from the, remember the movie City of God? Yeah, yeah, of course. We, I was in a public school, so we went to school together, and because of the situation they were, they made them out drug dealers, you know. They would sell the drugs, so I would go, I would go there and tell them, look, cannot have drug sales on this part. Anybody that comes to buy drugs from us, make sure that he cannot go across this street, otherwise we’re going to beat them up.

11:15 We don’t want this. The police love us. Everything, like, I was there. Now the police come just to, to, to hug me, you know. Just now they go, hello.

11:26 They put in a statue of me on that beach. They are very uncomfortable with this, because they normally put a statue of someone who died, never someone alive. I told them, maybe you guys wait a little, you know, you deserve to see this while you are alive. And with that I kept all the kids on my side. I end up opening a restaurant and bar that I run it, and it helped my family from I was 16 until I was 22.

11:54 You know, I used to sell 27 cags of beer at night. I used to, it was the number one bar in Rio. Today the whole street, it’s bars and party. It’s, this street was based on my restaurant, and with that I was able to run the, the, the, the, all my friends are on there. I’ll put them to help me work.

12:13 I gave them jobs, and I, you know, we changed a lot of lives, and, and one time we have my mother move out of the house. It was a big 10-bedroom house, so any kid that had a problem with drugs, with alcohol, would put them in a house with us. We teach them jiu-jitsu. We teach them how to eat the greasy diet, how to do it right. And recently I was in Houston doing a seminar, and I told the story, you know, I was telling about this house and that’s the house that you see the fights on.

12:41 It, the door was never locked, you know. It was never locked, and I was telling the story, one kid, one guy raised a hand and say, I know this is true, and I want to tell everybody that it’s real, true, what he’s saying. And then I say, how do you know? He goes, I was there. You don’t remember me, but I was there.

13:00 I was 12 years old, and I had a drug problem, and you put me in the house. I lived there for six months with you. I said, I can’t believe. He goes, I was one of the kids, you know. Wow, so it was an unbelievable childhood.

13:13 It was different. I was just there. Now last week I just came back from Brazil this week, and the police, when I, when I decide to leave, they say, no, please, we’re going to give you a salary and we pay all the expense of the house. You keep doing the job. They call it the crazy guy’s house, the crazy guy, because you kept order.

13:32 You guys kept order. Yes, and it would take care of the neighbors. There was no more people stealing in our neighborhood. There was no more perverts pulling over and bothering the woman, you know. There was no more drugs being sold.

13:46 It was, it was clear. It was not allowed from that point on, and we had the support of the police, of the, the, the citizens, you know. It was unbelievable. It was an unbelievable experience, and recently they decided to put a statue there of me, you know. Wow, they ask if I wanna, from the chest up or a whole body?

14:05 I said, we don’t do nothing half. If we’re gonna do it, I wanna give one side, and a surfboard on the other. Yeah, wow, and so what’s it like growing up in a family like the Gracies, where, you know, all of your grandparents and, and uncles, they all fight, you know, but you don’t have to fight, I guess, but then you guys all end up fighting anyway. So how does that work? That dynamic.

14:29 It’s, it’s a funny thing. First you have all the, like, while the kids are looking in these, comics, to find their heroes. I had all my heroes inside my house. Everybody that I admire, everybody that I saw competing, that I saw how hard they work. And you have to understand one thing.

14:45 I never thought I would be able to make money, and, and just with jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu back then, you couldn’t make a dime. I used to work the whole day, end up the month with maybe, maybe 800,900 you know. And I was the lucky one, and I really work hard, sometimes seven days a week, so I never thought I’d be able to make money. I was looking to maybe be a lawyer, working in different things.

15:09 I was buying, selling medical products from the United States and selling in Brazil, bringing to Brazil, because back then the Brazilians didn’t have access to those equipments. It was many different things, and, and, and I thought, I said, one day I’m going to be rich. It doesn’t matter what I work. I work hard, and I think money is the result of a good work to do in life, but I was lucky that I moved to New York, and I end up, I end up killing, so I didn’t do, I needed me to do nothing else.

15:36 You know, I, I lived today in a mansion, and have, thanks to jiu-jitsu, right? To be honest, I told you, to even took too long to grow. I really thought it took too long, because it’s such a exact, like, to say such an amazing tool to improve people’s lives, to change people’s lives, to give you confidence. You have a, I remember the first time they made it was not even Facebook or something else, the name before and MySpace. Yeah, they made MySpace, and they came to me, you need to put yourself.

16:05 I say, for what? All the network that I need is in here. It’s in, it’s inside our academy, you know, and I already have trouble to keep everybody’s name. So how come I’m gonna go, I don’t need a, a social media? It was a funny, a funny time, and we end up having 1500 students in my academy in New York, the one that you came up, that is on 30th Street.

16:26 Wow. Before that, on Metal, above the methadone clinic was the craziest time ever, you know. That was the first place that I could open myself, and I could afford to open after a few fights. I opened the place, and, and someone told me, but there’s a methadone clinic here. I say, what is the method?

16:43 And then I met the door, and I said, let me guess, like alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, or drug Anonymous, or whatever. He goes, yes. I said, don’t worry, we’re gonna fix them. But I never realized that in reality the drug level here was different from what I’ve seen in Brazil, because they had heroin. They had heavy drugs that I never heard of, you know, and to help them was extremely hard, and believe it to get, and I was angry because I couldn’t get nobody from that clinic.

17:12 Oh, to go to your brain with us, yes, and we could fix them, you know. Okay, I became friends with them all, but I couldn’t help them, couldn’t help them. Well, I want to definitely, I want to get to New York City for sure, but tell me more, a little bit about Rio. I mean, growing up it was a crazy time for you. You talked about getting stabbed, getting shot at and then actually getting shot, and then later you went into some of the fighting.

17:35 But like, what was it like back then, when we seen the movie City of God? I mean, was it that crazy? It was, it was, even though, the City of God, I would go there daily, almost, because my friends from school were from there, and my mother, I was made clear, doesn’t exist such a thing as social differences. If he’s your friend, he can be in the mud, and you’re there with him, and that’s how I, I was raised. I would go sleep in the favelas with them, on their house, as a guest.

18:03 They would put a blanket over something, and I would sleep right there, you know, and they would sleep in my house too, at the same time. That’s very Brazilian, right? Yes, and we made friends. Once the doors and the windows are closed, everywhere, everywhere is a bed. You look like you can’t sleep anywhere.

18:18 Is that a karaoke thing or a Brazilian thing? Is it? It is, I believe it’s a Brazilian thing. Brazilians think like that. Yeah, yeah, because in Rio there’s no place for me to sleep.

18:28 When they laugh, every couch, every floor, every carpet, every, it’s a bed. We’re waiting for you, you know, right? And so you spend time and you have a roof every time, because in Rio the favelas are right next to the really nice houses. They’re right next to, yeah, it’s everyone’s on top of each other, and it all, it all very close, because the mountain is very close to the ocean, right? So the, the, the world, people live around the, the ocean, and then there’s the mountains next, and normally the, the favelas expand in that direction.

19:00 You know, yeah, yeah. People don’t want to leave in the, in the hills, so this way they start building houses there, and they end up staying there. I actually went on a favela tour, which sounds like a horrible American tourist thing to do, but it was one of the best experiences of my life. And so we went to, I think it was, Rocinha favela right there. Yeah, I used to go there on my restaurant every.

19:21 What happened back then, all the supermarkets would close on Friday night. They would only open on Monday, so the only place that I could buy me chicken, eggs, and a bunch of other things was in the favelas. So I was there every weekend, because even though we bought, we had everything, we would sell out completely by Friday night. On Saturday at 8 o’clock in the morning I was in the favela, but I knew them all. They would pass by me carrying guns.

19:50 Hey guys. Well, the first time I was there, that I saw that myself, we were warned, and I don’t know, it, you know, it was crazy. I think there’s, and this, this favela, it’s right, it’s right in Rio. It’s just, it’s just north of Leblon, I think, and it’s like a hundred thousand people, maybe, and it’s more, it’s more, more, and we went into this, and it’s not what you think it is. So we got a tour, and they allowed us to walk in.

20:14 And there’s one of the favelas where I guess the drug dealers allow you to come in, and we went into someone’s house, and you look at their houses and you think it’s like a shanty house, but inside his house he had the big TV. He had the stereo system, and then I looked, and I saw the whole favela and you’ve got people living. You’ve got open sewers, and then the drug dealers would walk by, and everyone would kind of be like this, but it all kind of worked somehow.

20:36 It was something beautiful about it. It is, it’s different. It’s extremely different, but you see, the 99.9 percent of the people who live in favelas are very hard workers. People don’t realize that, they are honest. They’re hard workers, and then they want a good living, like all of us, you know, and they, they normally go on their house, and they work hard to buy a nice TV, to buy.

20:56 I remember my boxing coach live in the favela, and I brought him to on all my fights, on everything that I did. He used to work in an accounting office. The other day someone sent me a tape of him telling the story, you know, that someone sent me a video of him telling the story. Okay, and he was telling, the guy is filming him without him knowing. How I took him out of his job.

21:16 I said, you, you’re not made to work in the office. You’re going to work teaching boxing. Today he has a huge program. Is that, that’s not that’s not Claudio Coelho, is it? Of course.

21:28 Oh yeah, I trained with Claudio. I love him, and the program that he runs on the favela. I said, this is your call in life. Take these kids out of going to the pathway of drugs, make them fighters. They’re going to have a job like you did, and he ended up earning like 10 times more than he was actually earning when he was working in the accounting office, you know.

21:50 And then the best was this, to prove that I wasn’t wrong. The moment that he said, look, I want to try something. My teacher, my student, asked me to be teaching, and he’s going to get me a group of students. I do, I love to work here, but I, I want to try this. And his boss is saying, Claudio, please go, and we wish you all the success in the world, but know one thing, you can come back here.

22:16 You have a job at any time. You can come back and work with us. You know, that shows how great of a, of a so he is. You know, that’s amazing, that’s beautiful. I know him.

22:25 So a little, just briefly, I mean, I, I started like I said, train jiu-jitsu in London. I fell in love with it, and I didn’t make it to Rio until 2005, 2006. I trained at Gracie Barra in Barra da Tijuca. So I trained there, and then later I trained at the, Brazilian Top Team with Murilo Bustamante at the best, great picture too. I love it.

22:46 And it was at the, ah, Bay Bay right there, you know, by the lagoon favela next door, the project. Yeah, there’s one right there. And, and at that time the Brazilian Top Team was stacked with other people. It was like 2006 or seven maybe, and I walked in, and it was both Nogueira brothers, right? Bustamante, it was, Anderson Silva was actually training with them at the time.

23:10 It was a couple others were there, and I was like, oh, my Irish Sperry, everybody. Yes, very amazing team, amazing, and Pride Fighting Championships, which we’ll get into, because you fought there, that was bigger than the UFC back then. And then at the end of it, at the end of a week training with Murilo, he said, do you like boxing? I said, yeah. He said, I’m gonna introduce you to Claudio Coelho.

23:30 So I spent a week training with Claudio and the favelas, and it was amazing, but man, getting up there was tricky, because yeah, you got to go through, you, you went by the elevator, or you drove. The elevator was broken, because it was Christmas, so I had to walk up the stairwell in the dark. Man, that took some guts. So again, Claudio’s different. He’s amazing.

23:51 So yeah, great stories of Rio. Tell me how there’s that famous fight in Rio where you’re fighting in the cage, and then the whole arena gets into a fight. And the reason I ask you about that because maybe you can tell me how you got there in the first place, like why were you fighting there? There was also different fight camps in, in Rio, right? Like the Luta Livre and the jiu-jitsu guys.

24:13 What was, what was, what was going on there? The reason why I was, I was here in America, and I was having a problem with my partner, and I need money to, I need money to cover the lawyer’s expenses, to, to pay my, my, my green card things here, and to set up everything so I could be independent. So I booked a, a fight in Brazil, this one that you’re talking about. Yeah, a week later I had to fight in Japan, and a week later I had to fight in, so actually it was fifth, was a total of 15 days.

24:48 I did, I fought in three different countries, Brazil, Japan, and then Abu Dhabi. The immigrants, you know? Wow. And was and then I came back. I could cover everything, take care of everything, and got my freedom, and that’s when I went to open the school at 37th Street above the methadone clinic that you knew.

25:05 Wow. When I took this fight, I was going through a very hard time here. I took the fight. I come down I come down there, and when I get there, the person who was organizing the fight, I told him, if you’re going to hire security, has to be this company that belongs to a friend of mine, because they will be the only ones who can take care of this. If you want to save some money, he hired a different company, and right before the event begins, 200 people invaded the arena, and they surrounded the ring, and they are all livery guys from the gyms from the favelas, you know, and they have weapons.

25:45 They all, it was something tense. So the promoters say, hence, I cannot, and, and the guys will secure it now. What’s that? Happen? They’re almost fainting.

25:54 They, I don’t know what to do. How can I do this? So I’m in the locker room stretching, and the fighting is beginning, and then the guy goes, we’re afraid, we’re afraid for your, for your, for your health, because you may go in there, they may kill you, they may, link you, they may, I, I will pay you full and you don’t need to fight. Cancel this last fight. I start laughing and I say, I came here to fight.

26:21 I said, just put me and him in there and lock that cage, and let me deal with the rest. And it was a very tense fight, because every time my back would touch the fence they would kick me in the head, or they would kick my, my hands, you know, and I remember as I’m fighting I look at them and I say, I’m sorry, but you hit, you hit softer than my mom. My mom has have your hands than you. And I keep going. At one point I had my back.

26:47 Wanted someone cut me with a knife. Thank God it wasn’t a stab. They just sliced was a big cut in my shoulder. So you’re right, you’re in the cage in a no-rules fight, and somebody outside the cage is slashing you with a knife. There is, that is like 200 people around.

27:04 The crowd could not even see inside the cage, so every time I get near the cage I’ll get hit by one of them, and everything is going, I don’t care, and I’m laughing, but the fight is going, and this is a guy who keeps hitting me. He keeps falling and hitting me every time he has a chance. I was keeping an eye on him. At one point the ref pulls us apart, as we go apart he puts the head here and starts cursing at me right over my shoulder. So I’m looking at my opponent across the ring.

27:34 I walked back a couple of steps, and I clocked him right in the nose. You know, like, boom, I hit him. He falls. My brother Hoyler jumps on him and beats the crap out of him there, and then the whole fight begins. It was like 400 people fighting at the same time.

27:51 You know, at that moment the thing was so tense. There was people shooting bullets, flying everywhere. The lights fell. Almost, I stopped feeling the heat. I couldn’t believe, when I looked, the lights were very close to us.

28:04 Something happened outside, that the lights end up dropping. And I remember that that was so hard, that my father said, let’s get out of here, with my father inside there, my friend Sergey Nasser. So let’s get out of here, we’re going to carry out. I said, no, no, no, no, we only leave after he left. If he’s still in here, we keep going with the fight until it’s over, until someone wins.

28:27 And then my opponent left. He took off, you know. He had a broken foot. I believe he threw a kick and landed wrong, in my leg, and broke his foot. So they carry him out.

28:38 Once he left, then I walk out, and it was people shooting, people fighting everywhere. They broke the whole arena. It was an intense and beautiful day. I miss those days a lot, a lot. You know, I felt like I was in London.

28:56 So you love that chaos. That’s proper karaoke chaos. I felt alive. I felt alive. And so you talk.

29:04 Yeah, you’re talking about getting shot. I got shot at many times, many times, but thank God they didn’t have good aim. I was missing. There was one shot that went through my pants, the bottom of my pants, very close to my family jewels, and he hit my friend right behind me on the leg, on his chin, and broke his chin, you know, and I remember saying, how, I say he went through me and hit my friend behind, because it was so close. That the guy shot me.

29:31 I was very lucky many times, until one day, you know, in a fight inside a club, you know, one guy actually threw a shot and hit me on the leg. It broke my finger, you know, and I, I was, I was jumping, and I was able to get inside the woman’s bathroom. And when I got inside, it was bad. There was like 30 women in there, and I look at them and I say, ladies, there’s a crazy guy shooting everybody, and the door has no lock. So I say, if he gets in here, without that, so hold the door.

30:00 So it was 30 women holding the door. Nobody, when the police arrived, they couldn’t open the door. That kept me alive. Oh my gosh, that’s crazy. And that drove my mom and my dad crazy.

30:13 But and then and that fight that you were having in that cage, was no time limit, no rules, no gloves. It was actually, it was actually 15-minute rounds. I think it was three rounds, or 15 minutes, 45 minutes, so we did I think we did one round, and on the beginning of the second, that’s when the problem began. Okay, no, okay, in one round, and then the beginning of the second. That’s what the problem is.

30:38 That style of fighting was something that had been happening in Brazil, or Rio de Janeiro, for tens of tens of years. I mean, America hadn’t seen that, but you guys, that happened regularly. I mean, your grandfathers and your uncles would do these no-time-limit fights, and yes, that was Stan and I, was doing that. We always set up. We had a problem on the beach, we don’t fight in public.

30:59 Let’s go to the house, let’s go to the academy, and then we fought at the academy. That’s how all the problems were solved, and that’s how the first Gracie in Action VHS were made. It was when we got access to a camera. We stopped filming one, and, and we’re starting with some of the fights, and that’s what the product that you have on the Gracie in Action page is, and that’s where the Gracies would say, you want to fight? No problem, come to our academy, but we’re going to film it.

31:23 That’s what you would do. Yes, and whoever wins has the copyrights. That’s the agreement. Okay, all right, that’s our work. I tried to do one.

31:32 Now I went to Brazil to fight Walid on August 8th, right, and I couldn’t believe he deprived me of this new memory that I could carry in my soul until my grave. He didn’t show up. He chickened out. I couldn’t believe I mean, that’s that. So this is Walid, this man.

31:50 He’s, he’s, he’s kind of a legend in Brazil, right, for fighting the ugliest legend. So we’ll be Douglas Legend fighting the handsome one. He was recently in the corner, the corner of, against Anderson in the UFC. Okay, on that fight, because he’s the manager? Oh yeah, yeah, right.

32:10 So I just say, who the hell is that? Grim, the gremlin sitting next to us. There’s a gremlin running his mouth next to Brash. So you had a fight scheduled this year. You’re 53, is that right?

32:22 August 8. Yeah, 53. Yeah, and while he didn’t show up, he did a show. That doesn’t sound like him. What was his excuse?

32:29 It is, sounds like him. People don’t realize, you see, you have cherished one thing, when the dog barks too much, he doesn’t bite, you know. So it doesn’t sound like him, because he looks brave, but when the time comes, he made an excuse. In reality I, I, I put him in contact, because he said he wants to do it. He wants to fight in an event.

32:49 I put him in contact with one from my Asia. Yeah, so one wants to put up the fight, they start booking everything, setting up everything, next thing you see, he announces the fight in Rio a week before the fight that we are doing in Manila, at ONE, and, and Shaklee, the president and the CEO of ONE, was like, what is this? He was talking to me to set up the fight, he, and now he’s saying the fight is in Brazil, in a, you know, in a jungle, on a jungle fight, his event.

33:20 And that’s how he find a way to pull out. But it’s okay, I promise. I made one promise, and it doesn’t matter if we are in the Vatican, because old school, you know, I don’t look, I don’t have to steal one gray hair. But I’m 53, and I’m part of the old school. Whatever, I see him, I’ll beat him up.

33:39 We’re gonna get in a fight, whatever we are, you know, and then after we can have an acai juice, we can enjoy. But all the offenses that he did, he’s gonna have to pay for it. So next time you see him, it’s on. It doesn’t matter where I heard that. Gun, there was an interview you did back in the day, maybe it was in that movie Choke, or around that time, where you said, you know, this whole thing of scheduling a fight was new for you, because when you were in Rio the fight could happen at any time, and it’s different than having a fight that’s coming up at a certain time, and a lot of fighters aren’t used to that.

34:10 Yeah, and not only this, it’s very easy to get in a fight when you’re emotional. You get angry, you go in a fight, but when you book, that’s the problem with Walid. He cannot, in books, he starts, he starts getting afraid now. From the day of, he gets nervous. He gets anxious.

34:27 I don’t my last fight at 51 years old, I was actually sleeping. I was out in the locker room, and my brother comes to wake me up. I say, it’s time. He goes, no, that’s half an hour. I said, what’s wrong with you?

34:41 Finally, I’m taking a nap. You wake me up, you need to warm up. You need to, I say, warm up, I cross half of the globe. I’m warm for a month. Just call me when it’s time to walk out.

34:54 That’s it. I will, I will jog to the to my walk-in, and then I’ll be fine, and that’s exactly what, I have a picture of me sleeping and me being raised with victory, and the bold pictures, is half an hour, 40 minutes difference between both pictures. You know, the time between both teachers. I mean, Renzo, were you ever scared to fight, or was this your personality? No, it’s, it’s a funny thing.

35:20 It’s like we always say, if you’re afraid to use the restroom, you shouldn’t be, you shouldn’t like Italian food, you shouldn’t eat Italian food. So the reality, I trained my whole life, everything that I did, this, and I become a teacher that I passed this knowledge and this confidence, so if I was afraid I’ll be betraying the most sacred thing I have, that I’ve been giving to my students, the people around me. I can fight anytime, any day, anywhere, in any situation.

35:45 You know, I fought inside the water many times when I was surfing, and I had an armlock from the guard inside the water. That never failed. Never failed. I could get the guy in armlock, and I make him tap inside the water every time, and I never broke an arm. Even though they gave me reason to do it, I would make them give up.

36:04 In luck, if we keep fighting the next, I’m gonna get it again and I’ll break it, and they would agree, they let it go in the water. Skinny, in the water, so you’re holding your breath, you’re under, underwater, holding your breath, putting out. I was so, because it was so easy. There was no footing. Okay, I couldn’t defend.

36:21 So the moment that we grab, I grab the head, I spin. I get the arm. There’s no defense, so I would keep it, and then I bring my head out just enough, and we both were like, good. His eyes screaming, and I said, I’m gonna break it next time, because I was so skinny. They wouldn’t believe, they would come to surf.

36:39 They’re good athletes, and they look at a skinny little guy. I was probably 16, 17. I was like a hundred pounds, 105 you know. So they look at me like, what are you talking about? I said, look, there’s no surfing here.

36:53 You’re not behaving. You light a joint before you’re walking in here. You cannot surf here today. Out, you know. There’s kids.

37:00 Our family are on the beach, and you want to smoke your dog. And you have to understand, we had one guy in our team that smoked joint, smoke of marijuana. When he never, we never saw him smoking, and he never smoked in front of the kids. The other day I’m walking here in New York. There’s a guy, the guy likes a bong in the middle of the street.

37:20 Now, you know, I’m passing by. I kicked him right away. I couldn’t help see when there’s people passing by. Don’t do this. And he apologized, because you don’t understand.

37:34 You start allowing this to happen. Next you see there’s a rapist there. There’s a person who’s going to steal, and it’s not going to steal from you. It’s going to steal from your grandmother. It’s going to steal from your knees.

37:45 He’s going to steal from your nieces, from the children, the old people, your grandfather. You know, when you let that escalate, look what happened in New York. Now, yeah, it’s insane. You know, you can’t let that happen, and that’s a Gracie family thing, right? I mean, the Gracie family was always no drugs.

38:02 You know, the family is important. The diet, I mean, you, it was everything. Like, I couldn’t eat sugar. That was a birthday party we had, over 50 kids. Everything going, the cake is sitting there.

38:16 Suddenly that distracted, the cake disappears. Where’s the cake? Where’s the cake? We’ll go find in the garbage. My grandfather passed by.

38:23 You’re not poisoning the kids. The cake was gone, you know. Well, how we’re gonna sing happy birthday? Put a watermelon, cut in half, put the watermelon there, and that’s how we raise, like, because I like sweets so much, and I would never get money for sweets. I, I worked at, beginner, at eight or nine I was shining shoes.

38:47 I shined shoes to make the money so I could buy my sweets, you know, and then later, 11, 12, I collected tennis balls on a court. I would collect this ball so people could play in a club, you know, and so I could make money to give my mother a gift and to buy the sweets that I love, the ice cream, little sweets that I love so much. All right, so let’s talk about Japan and the Pride Fighting Championships. I went twice to Japan to watch a private fighting championship.

39:14 So I think I went for the Chuck Liddell, Rampage fight, and that’s why I was a beautiful one. I was dead. I was there. You were there? Okay, I was there.

39:21 I flew over there. I mean, nobody was speaking English. Like I only knew about it because I was getting the videotapes. I mean, and then I went back again when Murilo Bustamante fought Dan Henderson on a Bushido card, but you went over there early. You had a first of all, what was it like fighting in Japan for people that don’t know?

39:38 Pride was massive. Then it was bigger than the UFC. It was better than the UFC, let’s be honest. The production values were crazy, 10 times better, 100,000 fans, great fighters. Mirko Cro Cop, Fedor, you know, Sakuraba, the Gracies were in there, you know, Rampage.

39:57 I mean, amazing, those fights, classics, great Brazilian. I was in Japan 52 times. 52 times. 52 times. Yeah, and every single time was an unbelievable experience.

40:10 First, because I was educated, I was educated by my family with the concept of the beauty and the strength of the Japanese people, you know, and my dream was always to one day fight there, to bring back the amazing art that they brought to us in Brazil. My family was able to adapt and improve and make it so efficient. So even Japan had forgotten a little bit of the art that they taught us, you know, and my family gave continuity, and we were able to bring them back and to have the opportunity to do that.

40:43 The first event I did there that I fought was Pride One, and it was 75,000 people in the arena, you know, seventy-seven, seventy-two thousand people in the arena. It was fought on the Tokyo, on the Tokyo Stadium, which is an open stadium for baseball, a hundred and ten thousand. So if a show there had less than 35, 40,000, it was considered a failure, you know. Every show was a packed house. Every end of the year they had a show, and it was amazing, the quality of fighters that they brought.

41:20 They brought the guys from Holland. They, the guys from K-1, back then, the world champions in striking giants, you know. They had people there that was, those, the best fights I had ever seen in my life. They had Vanderlei Silva, Victor Belfort, Sakuraba. You know, it was unbelievable.

41:40 And every time I was there I made friends. For you to have an idea, recently I went there to promote an event that they were having. They were having the one event in Japan, and I went there to promote, to help promote the event, and when, when was my time to leave the hotel, I come down with my luggage. As I get to my driver, there’s a line of Japanese people, like at least 20 people standing there. And then I look when I get outside, they all bow their heads, and half of them are crying when I’m leaving, when I’m leaving, you know, like I couldn’t believe.

42:19 Wow, no, it was one of the best sites I have ever had in my life. You know, I had experience there that I cannot even explain. How well organized they are, and they became so popular for you to have an idea before I get my American citizenship. I had the Brazilian passport, so I was always running from one side to the other. I had the stamp, the visa, and I believe the visa would last two or three weeks for Brazilians back then.

42:45 I don’t, if I record it right, if I remember right. So, so I go in, I go there, I bring, so the fight is there. Then I have to come to the United States to do something else, and I’m doing, and in my head I thought the visa was still valid. So I go to the airport. I know everybody at the airport.

43:05 They don’t check to see the date of expiring my visa. They brought me on the plane. I get there, when I get there, the, the officer looks and says, your visas expire, sir. I say, impossible. I just got it.

43:18 It’s, it’s up to date. He goes, no, no, it’s not. It’s expired. So he showed me, was expired by two days, one or two days. I go, I can’t believe I’m gonna have to jump in the plane now go to the consulate.

43:29 It takes two days for Brazil to get the visa back and to come back. I’m gonna miss, to make it back here, I’m gonna miss the fight by 12 hours if I do everything perfect. I still going to be late, 12 hours, and I have to be, the quarter was my brother fighting, and I said, I can’t believe it. I’m already picturing the whole situation that I would have to go through. The officer left, say, one second.

43:54 He left. He went inside, comes back like five minutes later, say, Mr Gracie, I spoke to my manager, and he just asked me to tell you that we admire L’Oreal work. We are very proud for what you do for Japan, and you are an exception. You are welcome here, you are, you are welcome here with a visa or without a visa. Welcome to Japan!

44:22 Boom, and he stamped my passport, so I have this passport. Save it here with the authorization to walk in, with the expired visa. You know, I still have the passport. Which is your favorite memory of fighting in Japan? I’m probably gonna ask you about Sakuraba at some point, because that’s an epic fight that people remember.

44:42 You know, it went 45 minutes, and you broke your arm and you didn’t tap out. I mean, can you tell us about that fight, in that whole situation, because he was being called the Gracie killer, and you were the third Gracie to fight him, or the second Gracie. The third. The third. What happened was, I was supposed to fight him right on Pride 8, two events prior.

45:05 When I fought with Sakuraba, I was in the best shape of my life. I was getting ready for him, and then they changed. They put Hoyler in, and they took me out. So I fought with Sakuraba, who, who back then had just beat Marcus, who was in a, in a fight. Okay, and I fought him, my bitter Sakuraba, very fairly and square.

45:25 And then, quite a loss to Sakuraba on that fight, in a bad call. He got him, White is extremely flexible. Sakuraba got him in a kimura, but he couldn’t go any further, and Hoyler was fine, and they stopped the fight. They gave the referee, and there was a weight difference of around 25 kilos. Yeah, let’s talk about the weight difference.

45:46 First of all, because Hoyler’s not big. You’re not big, Renzo, come on. Water is 63 kilos. 63k. Yeah, I was huge.

45:55 I was 70 kilos. I don’t even know. I mean, if you fought the UFC back then, you would have fought at 140,145, right? 145. Yeah, that was my weight.

46:04 145. Yeah, it’s, it’s a funny thing, because people go, hazel when they see us, because they see us on TV, but when they see us next to each other, how come you’re fighting these guys? And I was fighting them bare-knuckle back then. Coleman was 230 pounds. I was probably 155, and I was trying to gain weight, and I knocked him out in a minute.

46:27 You know, same thing with Maurice Smith. I tried after I finished. I tried to lift Maurice Smith. I couldn’t He was too heavy. And Sakuraba is pretty big, right?

46:37 Soccer, obviously? Yeah, Sakuraba was like was easy, like, 215, you know, 220 at times. Yeah, right, a very accomplished Japanese fighter and the hometown unbelievable fighter, you know, and it was my dream fight. I want to really fight with him. And who did it?

46:54 And, and that was one of the biggest lessons I ever had, because my whole life I believed that my mind was stronger than my body, then when time comes I would have quit, you know, but nobody had. I never had the chance to prove that, because nobody could ever get me in no submission in my whole career. My, my amateur sports, that is, there’s a friend of mine calling here without stopping. Okay, gotcha. So you were saying your whole career, no one ever was able to make you tap or get you into submission?

47:25 Never, never. I was never submitted, you know. I was always, my defense was always very good, so even in the amateur part, on the gi competitions, then they never get, not even close. Nobody ever got even close, so I never knew if what I believe would work, and then Sakuraba gave me the amazing opportunity to see that was true, that my mind was actually stronger than my, than my body. And I remember, and I learned a lot with that fight, because in my head I already won.

47:55 I completely dominated him. He couldn’t find no way, and then finally I swapped him and I had his back, and that’s when he locked, and because of the glove I could have pulled my hand out. Suddenly he stood up, spun, and he broke my elbow. My elbow came out, and I remember when we landed he started screaming in Japanese to the ref, his arm is broken. And the rest comes as they come, and I look, I see it’s, it’s completely out.

48:22 And then I said, no, no, no, don’t worry, this happens all the time. Keep going. Keep going. It was 15 seconds to finish the round, and in my head, as I’m gonna put it back, and I will fight the last round with him, and I’m gonna finish this and show who’s the champion. But they stopped the fight.

48:38 They didn’t let that happen, you know. They made it stop, you know, and I remember my brother walk in. I said, put it back, put it back, just grab this one, pull it. Then he put it back, and I was smiling the whole time. And it was funny because many people come to me and they say, it wasn’t hurting you.

48:54 You’re smiling the whole time. And then I said, nothing ever, never, that happened to me. Never hurt so much in my life. I could give him the victory because he deserved it, but I could never give him to see, pay my faith, that that gift he will never have in this lifetime, you know. And that to me was an unbelievable moment for my life.

49:15 You know, it changed you. You make me see many different things in a different way, because many people say they won’t tap, but we don’t know. You never know if you won’t tap until the moment where you either you know, overcome the pain or not, and you got to prove to yourself that day that you didn’t tap, and you did put a smile, and you were acting. I remember you, seeing, see, I watched that video so many times, Renzo, and you’re like, it’s fine, it’s fine, and your arm’s broken, completely out.

49:45 This happens all the time, I said to him, don’t worry, keep going, finish the fight, let’s finish the fight. And then he, the ref tells him, let’s keep it. No, it’s broken. Tells, smart man. He’s, I always say, like he had, he, that guy, I believe, was half Brazilian, because he had like a knowledge, and a inside the ring that was beyond his years, you know, especially coming from the school that he came from.

50:16 They didn’t have that much experience. He wasn’t, he was much ahead of his time. He beat amazing fighters in his career, you know. Yeah, what are your other memories from Pride? There was too many.

50:28 There was, there was some that the guys got in a fight in the locker room that was, I forgot his name. It was a Black guy from the south of the United States, a Crazy Horse, crazy. This was fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then he turned on the stereo very loud, and we share a locker room. It was a big locker room divided by curtains, you know.

50:54 And he puts the stereo, like a rap song, very loud, and then the people from the, Vanderlei Silva, and those guys from Shooto, they complain. They ask the guy to put the stereo down, so one of the coaches goes there, asks him to put the stereo down. The guy answered, now, nah, I’m gonna be like the star, argue, and I’m sitting there watching. Suddenly they got in a fight. The coach with a jiu-jitsu guy got him, a fight with Crazy Horse, so they are going back and forward.

51:26 Suddenly the Brazilian guy locks him in a triangle, and Vanderlei is telling his coach, because that was their jiu-jitsu, can I squeeze and put him to sleep? To do that, and Crazy Horse sees this whole thing going. Then he passes out. He passes out, and then the fight is over. They separate.

51:46 These parts, they have filmed, it’s on YouTube. If you look on YouTube you’re gonna find it, until they put Crazy Horse to sleep, and it’s a fair fight between both of them at the locker room. Next you see Crazy Horse disappear, gone, and we’re in the locker room when the ladies getting ready to walk, to walk out. You know, the whole crew is together, one behind the other, as they leave. In the locker room Crazy Horse jumps from behind a curtain, and he could hit hard.

52:19 He threw a bomb. He sucker punched Vanderlei when the leg was out. Really, you have to understand, he’s knocked out at the moment that he’s walking. That he’s doing his walking out to his fight. They’re waiting for him.

52:35 They call his name, he’s out. So they go the whole mess again, and they pull them apart. They wake up from the leg. When they lay, he wakes up, get up, drink some water, throw some water himself, walk in the ring, wins his match, blocks his opponent. Oh my gosh, it was unbelievable.

52:58 What amazing experiences we had there. It was, those were great days, those were great days, and the organization that they had, how they treat you. They make you feel like a star, you know. It’s, I remember that there was one year the World Cup was there, and now the, the film crew from the Globo TV station in Brazil. I knew them, I knew them very well.

53:20 The head of the, the film crew was a very good friend of mine from Brazil, so he goes, hey, so can we come and watch the fight? I went, I got I got passes for all of them. They came to watch. When they finished watching the event, they came to me and say, hello, we are in awe. They say, what the World Cup cannot compare to this event.

53:41 The organization, what they had access to, everything they could see. We never seen something so well organized. It’s insane. We can’t believe it. We said we never see enough people should watch this and learn, you know, and it’s amazing.

53:56 It’s a funny thing, because the one, that’s one fighting championship belongs to one student of mine, Chatri. Chatri is a genius, an amazing soul, loves fighting, admires everything that the martial art was brought to him. You know, he’s a guy that graduated Harvard, and then he came to train with us after, and when he moved back he opened the Gracie Academy there. They ended up calling it Evolve, and from that he created. I gave him the idea to create the ONE.

54:25 I say, begin with a small fighting company. I remember I went there on the first event. It was on a basketball court, like a hundred people watching, you know, only. And I was recently there doing an apprentice show with me and George Santiago, and we came to the new office. It’s the whole floor, one of the best buildings in Singapore, you know.

54:48 It’s 100 people working at the offices, and he goes, my hair, so take a look here. And then he went and showed me the picture of the first office, the office that I went, geese hanging boxes on the floor. It was probably half of the office that I, I mean, right now here in my house, you know. And he showed me, but look, I never forgot what I came from. I said, that’s the secret.

55:09 That’s the secret. And with that I always pass into him, and I was sharing with him how Pride was, and how, what was done, how they treat it. And that’s what he’s doing, and if you have a chance to one day see Pride back, it’s going to be through one. Right? They are doing an unbelievable job.

55:28 An unbelievable job. Yeah, the fight that I did two years ago against Yuki Kondo, who, by the way, is 10 years younger than me. They ask if they ask if I want a guy my age. I told them, I’m sorry, but I don’t hate old people. This is not a geriatric encounter.

55:44 This is you can have only one crazy old man. The other one has to be a younger guy, so I told him, I said, I come back, but I need a champion this time. I need a guy who is prime. I don’t want to measure myself against an average Joe, you know. I wanted someone that my grandkids would be proud.

56:01 I fought it, you know, even if I got my butt kicked. Yeah, so if one day we have an opportunity to see Pride back, we’ll be through ONE, and they are doing an amazing job. Yeah, yeah, no, they are. Tell me about the UFC. Tell me about your memories from that, and then how you’ve watched it evolve from something that you, you know, Horian started to bought by Dana White, to then invested in by friends you knew in Abu Dhabi, to now they’re doing Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.

56:27 I know you have a lot of ties there, but what are your early, you could write, I could write them books about their subject. Easy. I bet things that people would never dream that happened. Yeah, like what, you know, there was too many, too many. That was like, when, when my friends actually invested, they bought 10% of the UFC.

56:47 They didn’t want us. They didn’t trust it would be run properly back then, and, and I convinced him. I said, understand one thing. this is for you. It’s just an extra building that you don’t build.

56:58 I say, buy this, because in the worst case, this is OSPREY. In the worst case, tomorrow you acquired the whole thing, and I will run it for you. I said, don’t worry about it, because this is, it can fail. There’s no other sport with intensity and, and the complexity that esports brings to the, to the screen, you know, and, and this is a product that we always sell, right? And this is about, this is about 10 years ago, when investors from Abu Dhabi bought, I think, 10% of the UFC.

57:24 Is that about right? Yes, that was exactly 10 years ago, and, and agreed that they made great returns on their money. I’m sure. Yes, after, after, after, only when they sold it. Right, right.

57:37 And I’m gonna tell you why. Through that time he didn’t make no income back. Throughout that time, I think it was five years. It took five years with them. Yeah, and we have, she grew the whole thing going, but he made no return at all on that period until one day I go out of my academy to some guys from the financial market invite me to have a beer.

57:59 So I went there with them in a French restaurant to have a beer with them. There was like 15 guys there, and when I get there they already, they drink pretty much already, and I sit down with them, and they had friends that I never met, guys from outside. So one, one guy goes, oh, the Fertittas and Dana White are going to Saudi Arabia next week to buy back a piece of the UFC that I, I and a Saudi chic bought. I said, excuse me. Yeah, we lent them the money.

58:33 They authorized to pay from 250 to 270 on acquiring back the, the UFC, the share of the UFC, because they are selling to BlackRock, Blackstone. I can remember, for 5.2 billion. So I say, really? But which, which Saudi prince has 10? I don’t know.

58:54 Someone from Saudi Arabia, because in America, if you’re from Middle East, you’re from Saudi Arabia, right? Right, you know. Immediately I grabbed my phone. I sent him a message. Let’s say I heard the Fertittas and then are coming, are coming, are coming there next week.

59:09 And then he sends me back immediately a message, because over there it was like midnight. Over there was like eight o’clock in the morning. Yeah, yes, they’re coming, do you want to come? I send you a ticket tomorrow. I said, no, no, they are coming to buy you out from the UFC, and they authorize to offer you from 250 to 270 million, because they have a buyer for 5.2 billion.

59:34 And I put it back. I don’t know if it’s BlackRock or Black Stone. Yeah, and, and I go, when they need it you save them. You kept the boat afloat and made it go forward with great wins on their sale. Now they cannot cut you short, and you didn’t get nothing on these five years.

59:53 So it’s time now for you to get, just say one thing. I’m with you guys. When you guys leave, I leave. If you guys don’t leave, I stay. He, he didn’t answer.

1:00:05 He didn’t send a message back, right? So suddenly the UFC sold to IMG, I think, or like a month later, or two months later, I sold to IMG. Yeah, and then I go, trouble, that I’m there, and then he comes next to me, he goes, we sold the UFC. I go, 250 to 270. He goes, 420, because he was sold by 4.2 billion.

1:00:30 Yeah, you know, and then he goes, for 20. I go, yes, pay that. Payback is bad for there, where he goes, he goes, you earn the wrong job. I go, wrong job. The only thing that I love is you [expletive], now that I want to do it, jiu-jitsu, nothing else, because you should work with the information, because every time you bring the information, and it’s by chance, I believe, because he’s a guy who always did everything right.

1:01:00 You know, it’s like people only see him for the money or the fortune. They only mention that, and in reality the the, the, the, the thing of last value he has is a lot of money. You know, if you have a chance one day to meet him and to know him, and to see how he drives that country, to make good to other countries, to other people. How he helps people. His money is nothing.

1:01:24 It’s just a little tool that complements, you know, the, the big heart that he has, and to do what they were trying to do with him wasn’t fair. And by chance, what’s the odds that I’d have a beer at midnight? And the guy who was there taking care of this is sitting there, you know. So yeah, and let it leak the information. So that technology, why, what, so why it wasn’t?

1:01:46 So that’s why I’m telling you that that [expletive] Shaytan was an amazing soul, you know. Why he didn’t make 520? Why? Because you were going to be sold like 5.2? Yeah, it was because he knew the guy who was buying, so he called him and said, these numbers are not right.

1:02:07 It’s not worth that much, you know. So he was making a hundred million more if he let them go, right? And he didn’t. He didn’t, because he knew the, so I, I learned later that there was a guy next to this, the president of BlackRock, of Blackstone, next to him, because they were in a boat in Ibiza, and when the guy answered the phone and how the conversation went, it was pretty nasty, like, but I can’t repeat it here, but the guy was extremely angry because he got that call from Shaytan before.

1:02:41 And so tell me about your relationship with, you know, with Sheikh. How did you meet him, and how did that happen, and you know, Abu Dhabi fell in love with jiu-jitsu, and you’ve known him for a long time. Tell me about that. He came. He came, he came to meet me.

1:02:55 His father was doing a treatment, I think, I don’t know if it was Cleveland, or somewhere in 1996. That was the first year I was here, and then he came to the academy to train with me for one day, and then he got there, he told me he was the student of Nelson Montero, a guy that grew up with me. So I saw, you know, so, so here you don’t pay. You’re my guest. Please, this is your house, and, but I need a gi.

1:03:17 It’s a gift for you, and grab a rabbit water, Gatorade, you want, you know? And he was very shy, very quiet, and he had a few guys with him. He had a British secretary guy. He’s the guy who organized the, the ABCCs, and his guy, never. He’s, he’s an Englishman, and the English guy was much more outgoing, you know, more confident than him.

1:03:40 He was quiet on his corner, but when he began training jiu-jitsu, I said, this guy is very talented. His guard was unbelievable. He, you know, and he was doing a training session with the Ricochet Rally, that was one of the best wrestlers ever in America, you know, saved by Dan Gable. So Rico is trying to pass his guard, cannot pass his guard. The train is getting tested.

1:04:04 Suddenly he hits him with an elbow, blood everywhere. I got a towel, I put it. He has his back on the thing. I said, buddy, are you okay? He’s, he’s holding the towel on his nose.

1:04:15 He pulls down. He goes, we’re still bleeding. He goes, he couldn’t pass my guard. I go, God, another crazy one like us. This one belongs to the tribe.

1:04:26 And we enjoy, we stay there, we finish the training, and then in the end he goes, we’d like to have lunch with me tomorrow, me and the guys. I said, yes, I loved you. And then he gave me the address. I said, I’ll meet you guys. I get that at noon.

1:04:38 I walk in. I say, for this hotel, it’s pretty nice, but it must suck, because there’s nobody in it. Completely empty, you know. And we go to the restaurant, nobody on the restaurant, so we start eating, we joking, we laugh, got the stories. Next thing I see, I pushed the tables to the corner.

1:04:56 I said, there’s nobody here, you know, so I pushed the tables. We are training on the floor, me and him. We’re seeing moves. We’re talking about armlocks and things like that. And in the end he sat down, and I said, look man, what time does your plane leave?

1:05:10 He goes, five o’clock. I say, which airport? He goes, it’s in Newark, Newark airport in Jersey. I said, okay, you’re gonna have to leave early, because the traffic leaving at that time is very bad. And we keep going.

1:05:23 I said, buddy, you gotta leave. Are your luggage ready? Let’s go there and pick it up. He goes, yeah, don’t worry, we keep going. I say, my friend, look, let me explain to you, you just missed your flight.

1:05:33 Extend the stay here for one more day, rebook your tickets after. Let’s go train now at the academy. And then he goes, hell’s, the Boeing is mine. I don’t believe they’re going anywhere without me. Inside I go, what?

1:05:52 And that’s what he told me. Then he goes, I got a gift for you. I want to thank you for the, for the amazing time you gave us here. So he gave me, I Rolled my first Rolex, you know, my first watch. He gave me as a gift.

1:06:03 Nice, you know? An amazing soul, and and I will stay laughing and joke for more, and then I went to teach, and then he goes, I would like you to bring you to my country. I want you to show you the beauty of my country, how my country is. I want you to interact with us. That I want you to see my country.

1:06:19 So like a month later I went, to meet him there, and then I met his brothers, and, and then I began teaching him there. And now, so my dear friend moved there, and he was there teaching him for like three or four years, and then our friendship began, and it was amazing, you know, and we became, I became like part of the family. I stayed in that house, you know, and it’s each, and I remember back then it was like a village. It was a small place. Like Dubai, there was nothing in, buy.

1:06:45 I remember to stay at to stay at Jumeirah Beach Hotel. It cost like 89, 90 a day. Today you can get a room for less than a thousand, you know, and you have, when you can get a room, because there’s no, there’s no Vegas. It’s always packed, you know, and Dubai became what he became, you know, and I remember I saw growing, and I saw everything changing, and and, one of my last trips there, I was able to put, I got a phone call from him, say, hello, I need to meet your friend.

1:07:18 I say, which one of them? I have too many. He goes, the Brazilian president. I need to have to send a coup down and sit down. We’re going to stop business between both countries.

1:07:26 And I say, no problem, let me, it was morning here, say let me wake up. I’ll get a ticket, and I’ll, I’ll be tomorrow, be in Brazil, or I’ll fly overnight. It goes, really, overnight? Yeah, I jump in a plane, there, went straight to the Brazilian White House, knock at the door, and I told the security, is the president at home? The guy looked at me like, yeah.

1:07:50 I said, could you please tell him Hans was here. And then I go, do you have an appointment, sir? I say, I’m sorry, I don’t, but just tell him that I’m here to see him. And then he goes, are you crazy? I say, tell him, then you find out that I’m here.

1:08:08 And the guy goes, I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t do it. And I say, look, I already have your name memorized, and I’ll write a book about this, and I’ll tell the story, and I’m gonna say that you he was an FBI officer, like a federal police officer. I said, I’m gonna say you delay the good things that we can bring to Brazil, because you’re too stupid to see to open your eyes for different things. Get in there and tell him that I’m here. You never met the president before.

1:08:37 You never met him? Yeah, my, I met him a couple times. Okay. Yeah, before I helped his campaign a little bit, you know, but I met him twice, and unfortunately for him, one time that I met him was during a Gracie Pro competition. It was a big jiu-jitsu competition that my niece Kira was doing, and he walked with me everywhere.

1:08:57 We walked together. And then he goes, you know, it’s the first time in my life that I go to a place where people actually want to talk more to someone else than say hi to me. You know? Like, and I go, yeah, this is because there’s a jiu-jitsu place. That’s right.

1:09:15 I said to him, if it was anybody else, it’s, you don’t worry about that. So, and that was the last time I saw him, you know. I was doing competition, so he became the president. I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t see him anymore.

1:09:27 I actually did an audio saying why he shouldn’t be the president. The audio went viral. It was everywhere, like, like, like three months ago I received it again over the internet, you know. It was me talking to my nephew and explaining to him why he shouldn’t be the president, and that thing went viral, and you know, everybody posted, everybody sent it over. It was insane, and, and the guy went in, came back with my credentials, put it in my neck, follow me, please.

1:09:56 Then I follow him. When I get in there, I see the president. I go, say thank you to the officer. The guy was so angry, he turned around and left, you know, like he’s not even saying bye to me, and then I, I talked to the president. I explained to him, the idea, the next day he invited me for a, for a call, for, for breakfast with him, and I could bring wherever I wanted, you know, and, I remember I brought, I brought the lower, rank employee from the UAE embassy, but since she was the guy who treated me the nicest, I brought like a secretary.

1:10:32 I brought him, like, the, the ambassador, the ambassador of, you. He was so angry. Why wasn’t her that came? I said, you should, I’m thinking you should have learned to smile more, be more friendly. There will open doors for you.

1:10:47 And that happened with the little, the lower-ranked employees. So he, he dried the breakfast with us. We set up everything in 20 days. They had a meeting, they’re gonna meet, they will fly from Abu Dhabi, all the ministers and all the investors, and everything. They sat down They had the first meeting.

1:11:06 They booked to sign the deal and to sign the agreement between both countries. The total time was four months from the moment that I got a call to the moment that was signed. And what people don’t know, that the night before that they were signed, I was sitting in a restaurant with the Emiratis, helping to design, to draw, the deal that is going to be signed the next day, today, between both countries. There is no more visa. The visa was removed.

1:11:34 A Brazilian can fly to the Emirates, open a company, issue himself a working visa, and start running his business from there. This is unheard of, a country of first word to give the opportunity to a third-world country. They invest 40 billion, was 25 billion United Arab Emirates, and 15 billion are Saudi Arabia. Wow, because they are best friends, Sheikh Tahnoon and the King of Saudi Arabia, and that was a unique opportunity to invest, help grow Brazil, and they will get their returns for sure.

1:12:08 For sure, guarantee. I was there. Actually, this week I was, I don’t know if I told you, I was there this whole week doing. I slept an average of two hours a night, working, and the [expletive], I do not even know, but I was there helping his company to get better. I was sitting down with the governor, with everybody and tuning up everything for them to grow, you know.

1:12:30 And in the end, the guy who’s running the company there goes, can I give you a job? Can I keep you here? I say, my brother, I’m in your heart. I’ll be here the whole time, but I’m, I’m a real Brazilian. You’re talking about giving me a job?

1:12:44 I start itching. It gives me allergies. And you did this. Whatever you need, you call me at any time, day or night. And he already called me yesterday at midnight.

1:12:55 He called me here for me to solve another problem, and you did this all out of loyalty to your friend in the Emirates. Brother, if you don’t do it for your friends, who you’re gonna do it for? I’m not only doing it for the Emirates. I’m doing it for the Brazilian. You know what Shaytan told me was when he called me and asked me that.

1:13:14 He goes, it’s time that Brazil gets better. It’s time that we help Brazil. And that those words made me, I would knock the door out, now, of the president if the guy didn’t let me in that day. Well, that’s the reality. So they want to make, and they are making, a huge difference.

1:13:31 The president of Mubadala in Brazil right now, his name is Hamad. He has the same mentality, the same bill. He goes, this country has to be like New York, has to be like United States. This country has everything to be great. You, you eat the fruit and you spit the seed.

1:13:48 It will grow on the floor. You know, there’s, there’s all the weather. You have the perfect ground for everything. How come we are still being held back by a bunch of hypocrites, politicians who only look about lining their own pockets instead of doing what is right. You know, and then suddenly you have a Bolsonaro who, actually, it’s believe it.

1:14:09 I, I sat with him for two hours doing a live, and I could see all the problems written in front of him, and I was right next to him. I read everything, and I see what he has to put up with to make that country improve. It’s like, as the whole corruption legion against him, not to let it happen. When I met him here in Miami, I walk in. I walk into his, his room, with a big suite, and I walk in, and he’s on the phone talking to someone, screaming, you know.

1:14:40 So I come in with his son, his ministers are sitting down. I come in, and then suddenly he hangs up the phone, and he keeps staring at the floor. He’s, his son goes, Dad, look, Renzo’s here, say hi, you know. And he just raised the head, and I go, leave your father alone. That the head is burning right now, and I know, I know how probably it is.

1:15:03 And then he goes, hello, please sit here. I go, sit next to him. He looks at me, puts the head in my shoulder, he begins tears, he starts going down, and he goes, you know what it is to try to do the right thing, and they don’t let you. Those cowards won’t let you do it, and that’s what he’s putting up with. The impression that I have is that he aged 10 years in one year.

1:15:26 Yeah, you know, last time I was with him he looks tired. You’ve been, you’ve been super supportive of him, and in true Renzo Gracie style, you have pulled no punches when it comes to people who say bad things about Brazil, or the president, or the Amazon forest. You’re calling out the French president. You’re calling out everybody. You’re old school, right?

1:15:46 You’re not politically correct. It’s, it’s, it’s I don’t want, I have no ambition to become a politician. I, I, I tell you what my heart tells you. I have no delay between what comes from my heart and goes out in my mouth, so it’s like, I got called Nazi. I got called racist, and I’m 18% Black.

1:16:09 I just found out, because my daughter did a DNA test, okay, to see, okay, she’s, either she was dead. I’m even prouder of you. I say, why? Because you have no athletic abilities, and you became the champion that you are, that shows your strength, and [expletive], you know? My grandson and he’s an amazing athlete.

1:16:31 He goes, he’s like Olympic material, but you are not. You are nothing. You’re not supposed to be an athlete. I say, I know. I couldn’t kick a ball half a field.

1:16:40 My whole life I was the weakest one in the family. My brothers and my cousins used to get me to warm up. Let’s warm up, let me warm up with hands, and then they go, someone serious will come, they’ll go train for real. So I was the warm-up, and I remember thinking, one day I’m gonna walk in, they’re gonna look away, they’re gonna call somebody else quick, and that happened too, in the end. And why were people, why were people hating on you because of the comments you made?

1:17:05 Because you said they were calling you Nazi and racists, and all this stuff. Where’d that come from? One day I made a quote, my loyalty, my, my lawyer, my honor is my loyalty. I didn’t know this was a humor code that was in 2012. Okay, like a tweet or something.

1:17:24 Yeah, when I got to it, it was a tweet, right? Look, you have to understand one thing. My godparents, they were Jews. My sister is married to a Jew. My nephew Naaman is a Jew.

1:17:41 You go at my door here, you’re gonna see the Jewish thing, that you touch it, and that was put here the day that I bought this house. My sister brought this, and I stole it, right at my door, like, I’m Jewish. I have a school in Israel. I have unbelievable souls that I teach and train there, you know, and I don’t, in my head, I was raised in a way of jiu-jitsu. We have no religions.

1:18:05 You believe in your God, I believe in mine, but there’s one God for all of us, and even when you don’t believe in God, even when you don’t believe at all, you always don’t know what you are doing. It’s right or wrong. You always know when you’re doing something that this is not right. All right, this is right, and even on that, I tell you that’s God. So you feel the respect.

1:18:28 No other god, respect that one and only. Do what is right. You know, that’s the difference, and then the next thing I see, I’m a racist. And then I say, racism, you become amazing, you’re racist, you’re homophobic, you know, someone bothers you, I stop, I tell him to stop being a [expletive]. You, you are, you are a homophobic if you say this, stop being a [expletive], behave like a man.

1:18:53 You become a homophobic, and I start, and then I, I learn, and then I ask them, are you, are you saying that if I say you’re gay, I’m a homophobic? So you’re actually being a homophobic, because maybe a compliment for you to be gay, and you’re saying that is a bad thing. I say, don’t try, don’t try, because I never see an axe. One, you once they go that way, they never change, you know, like you must be good. So that the reality, they try everything, because I was supporting the police in New York.

1:19:27 Yeah, I wasn’t supporting, they breaking everything. I wasn’t supporting what they are doing, the card acts that they are doing with my president in Brazil. You know, when I know that he’s trying to do, he completely closed the, the taps of, of corruption money that was going out like garbage and ruining our country. You know, so for that they went crazy, and that’s why the news immediately, he cut from the Globo news 1.5 billion dollars with sponsorship that they would get from the national bank, and he goes, we’re the national bank.

1:19:58 This bank is created to pay the employees of the government. Why do we need to spend 1.5, which makes sense? But the other governments were doing this to get the support. So then they will get the support. The news will play their way, so it’s finished.

1:20:15 He didn’t Bolsonaro had one million dollars budget to do his campaign. He spent 300,000. He tried to donate the 700,000 to the hospital who saved him from the stab that he got. They didn’t let it. There was anything he tries to go against, they not even let him donate that money.

1:20:36 There was extra that he didn’t spend. He was, he was elected by the, by the, by the, the internet, you know. Was people angry at what the whole corruption situation was happening, what they were doing with the country? They got together and started spreading the word, you know. So for that reason they attack you immediately, you know, they start attacking you like crazy, like you are homophobic, you are a racist.

1:21:00 And it was a funny thing, one of the main guys that I have in my academy, I don’t know if you saw him there when you were there, his name is Black Rob. Have you seen him? No, I didn’t see him. I was only there once or twice. It’s a big Black guy.

1:21:13 He used to be a police officer in Poughkeepsie when I went there to do a seminar, and I fell in love with the guy. The guy was one of the best shows ever, funny, you know, sarcastic. I say, why, what are you doing here? Come move to New York, start work with me at the academy, and you’re going to get your black belt, and soon you can have your school you’re going to be working here in the middle of nowhere, Pokey, all the way up in upstate New York. He moved.

1:21:36 He started working as a bouncer, training at the academy every day. Today when next time you go to my academy, look, there’s a chair that nobody sits on. It, that chair belongs to Black Rob, you know, or he sits there. It’s, it’s that we call his strong, you know. So he helps in the teaching the class.

1:21:53 He helps me run the academy. He’s always there. So they suddenly, they call me a racist. He who gets the most hungry, Black Rob. And then he goes, my daughter, my poor daughter, goes, my dad’s not a racist.

1:22:10 I never see him making and then she stop and think. He goes, a racist man will never get a homeless Black homeless guy from the street, in the winter time, bring him inside the academy, set up his bed next to the to the heater that was by, and tell him, look, by seven o’clock these shoes should be arriving. You have to leave, but you sleep here right next to the, here, you’re gonna be fine. So he slept there for a week, and I told him, if you need food, there’s food there, there’s drinks, but don’t touch him, people stuff.

1:22:47 Oh, he slept there for like a week. This guy became a close friend of mine. Like, he would give me books to read. He’ll find books and bring it to me for many years, you know. And every day I leave my car at the door, he goes, I’m gonna watch it.

1:23:01 I say, thank you, and every time I walk out I give him 20 bucks. And by the way, 20 bucks is nothing, but it’s the cost of a night in a hotel in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where a lot of homeless go there to sleep, so they have an opportunity to have a shower. So I always wait until it was nine o’clock, so he wouldn’t drink. He would go to the hotel and be able to pay for it. Got it?

1:23:24 That’s the racist that I am, you know? So that’s why I saw those posts on your Instagram, of all these people saying these great things about Renzo. I was like, what is this? Because everybody knows that Renzo is like that. Like everybody knows you got a big heart.

1:23:36 Can you have a good friend is the one that comes in with a flying kick? He doesn’t come in to pull you out of the fight. He comes in with a fly kick, so all these amazing souls, they came in and they went off on them, not him. You talk about somebody else, you know? It was a funny thing, because the Brazilian president goes, Hansel, you are the only one who says whatever you want, and you can get away with it.

1:24:00 You are old school, Renzo. You’re old school. You are the president of France, claiming why I was so angry with them, claiming that Amazon was on fire. They made me an ambassador of tourism. I’m in Miami at the office of American Airlines, having a meeting with the Brazilian tourism president and the president of American Airlines of the, of Florida.

1:24:24 As I’m there, they have, in a big screen in the wall, all the reservations, all the flights that are going to Brazil, all the, whatever flight is going to Brazil. He has up in the screen the moment we are there, we begin our meeting there. That’s when the news come out that the Amazon is on fire. True, macro, right? The president of France, as the news is going, we had a meeting for like two, three hours as this is going.

1:24:54 The president keeps looking up and seeing how many cancellations of tourists go into Brazil because of that news. Immediately Madonna posted, reposted, and posted, and then Leonardo DiCaprio did it, I know. All the big celebrities started doing that. And I stayed in Amazon for three months and a half. Believe me, if that place could catch fire, I would have set that on fire.

1:25:22 I was there. I was 14 years old for three months and a half. That place is impossible to burn. What they talk about burning is where they raise the cattle, which is near Belém and near Acre, and then they take them. They had pictures here in America of a fire in the jungle and a giraffe running a giraffe.

1:25:45 You know, I don’t believe we have a giraffe in the Amazon. So it’s overdone. Yeah, so I was very insulted, that’s why I did that comment that went viral everywhere. Yeah, yeah, Macron, you know, and it was on the news in the UK, I think on The Sun, they posted, does it ever surprise you, Renzo, that you went from, you know, fighting in a cage in Rio, and now you’re the tourism ambassador to Brazil, you’re doing deals with sheikhs, multiple deals with sheikhs in the UAE, and then the president of France is calling you out, or is this just the normal life of Renzo Gracie?

1:26:21 There is a lot of more things that happen. Believe, I have, I have a crew now doing a documentary. These guys came, and they arrived yesterday. I had a meeting with them until late last night. They, they came to meet me one day that we set, you know, by my academy.

1:26:39 And they watch just six hours of my life, and they go with doing a documentary on him. So they’re here, they’re gonna begin shooting on Saturday. Now you know, they’re going to be in the, real, yeah, it begins this week, you know. It’s a funny thing. They stay with me for just five hours, and then yesterday we stayed together for like eight four, four, four hours.

1:27:00 Yesterday, four or five hours. All right, you’re like, hey, we have an idea, and I have already I’m collecting information from everywhere, and I’m gonna ask you this, and I want you talking, so we’re gonna start doing, in reality, it’s like I told you, it’s just the confirmation of this amazing tool that you know it’s a tool that you are able to approach people, you’re able to be honest to people, you’re able to, it’s like people say, why do you smile so much? I’m unafraid, I’m not hiding from nothing, you know.

1:27:32 It’s like people say, oh, why, in reality, people lie. It’s like with me, even when lying will be the best option, I still tell the truth, so by doing that I will have a smile to anybody, at the same time I’ll fight anybody anytime, because it’s, and I probably will be his friend next, you know? Like, this, this week I got a picture of the guy Hanson. Do you remember we were in the competition and we start the fight, and I stopped putting my hand in your face and doing this and you, you moving weird, and then I did it again.

1:28:06 You push me, I say, yes, I consider a lack of respect back then, and I said, I didn’t know it was you, and I go, and that may explain why we are so good friends now. So I’m helping him. He’s now working with the minister of sports in Brazil, and I’m putting everything together to improve the sports in Brazil, to have jiu-jitsu in schools in Brazil, you know, and to have the Olympics between the, the students of the whole country. I’m helping them together with Mubadala, which is the company from the Emirates.

1:28:39 That’s what I was doing this whole week. I said, that’s why, baby, I like you so much. It’s because I hit you once, and we became true friends. If you can overcome that, you know? And so tell me about New York, in your academy, because you know, I mean, Hixon went to LA, and Hoyler went to San Diego, and Hoyce went to Torrance, and Roger Gracie came to London, but you went to New York City, the cold place, and you created that academy from nothing, and now, 20-some years later, like, you know, before COVID it was the most successful academies, probably in the world.

1:29:12 What what can you, why did all that happen? It was a funny thing. I never thought I would leave Brazil in my head. I lived, I had to live in I had to live in San Diego, in San Francisco, one time for six months, because I had a fight with some guys from the, from the militia in Brazil, and they really wanted to kill me, and just to bring peace to my mom and, and my dad, I actually left the country. I say, I’m gonna leave for six months, and Dad, if you cannot fix this, I’m gonna come back, and I’m gonna be the one hunting them.

1:29:46 You know, and they were very easy to spot. It’s you’re talking to a guy who doesn’t sleep. You can’t get a fight with a guy who does sleep, you know? Like if you sleep, you lose it. And I told my dad, I said, Dad, because my love of you and Mom, and you guys always worry, I’m going to leave for six months.

1:30:04 If this is not fixed in six months, I’ll come back, and it’s going to be a different ballgame. So I left, and I lived in San Francisco, so I had the opportunity to see California, to see everything there. And then after, I went to Australia. I stayed in Australia for a month. I love her, straight at you, but I say I could never live, I could never leave Brazil.

1:30:24 I’m gonna age, I’m gonna help Brazil to get better. I’m gonna leave my life there. I’ll build champions there, and then even if I have to live in a little bit more restricted way financially, I’ll be fine there, until the day that I came to New York. You know, when I came to New York, even though everybody chose California, Florida, because of the weather, you know, the girls in bikinis on the beach, surf surfing. Yeah, because normally jiu-jitsu guys, they all surf.

1:30:57 Yeah, yeah, you know. And, I get to New York, and this is my wife, Christina. Christina, say hi. Hi. She’s impressed with your clothes.

1:31:14 Good for a fact, you’re looking too good. So I get to New York. What I see is the most amazing center of culture. I thought immediately that I was on the crossroads of the world. I had, on, on, 29th Street, I had the Muslims on 31st Street I had the Koreans.

1:31:39 I had a Little Italy. I have Little Brazil at 46. I could buy all the things that I had in the supermarket at the 46th Street, New York. You know, so suddenly I see a Japanese. I see the Chinese.

1:31:51 China Town. I see Muslims pray on the street. I see the Orthodox Jews, you know. I get offered, I’m, I’m such a Nazi, that I got offered to run a school in the basement of a synagogue, teaching. Yeah, this is the kind of anatomy that I am, you know?

1:32:10 Like, you know, they really want to put me there, and that’s now I have a school on the Upper West Side, 72nd and Columbus, you know. Most of the students are Jewish up there, Upper West Side. We have, we, before we closed, we had 510 new students there. That was amazing. We built that in 10 months of academy.

1:32:28 Wow. So jiu-jitsu is really taking off in New York, you know. And when I was here, that I saw this, I say, I have to live in New York. I have to have access to all this information here. It was easy to fly anywhere.

1:32:42 A flight to Japan, an economy class, was 400. A flight to Brazil was 400, you know, round trip. I’d say, from here life gets easy, you know. If it’s exactly like, first, not the song, if you can make it here you’re gonna make it everywhere. And it was the biggest door opening I ever, I had the opportunity to see.

1:33:02 I was like, I told you it was 52 times in Japan. It was easy to fly back and forward. It was easy to go anywhere. I was easy to be in Abu Dhabi with my, my friends, the sheikhs, you know? And I was able to put many things together thanks to this.

1:33:15 How easy, how central, and how important, and how much access you have on everything once you’re in New York, right? And and I end up, I actually, 40 minutes from the, from the city. I live in a town called Honda. And, the reason that I chose this town was because it was one of the best schools in America back then. It was recognized like a top school, and I have no kids who became a doctor.

1:33:43 They all, they all work in jiu-jitsu. They do. Yeah, and with your academy in New York, it’s, it started off with kind of like tough guys and fighters, but soon it evolved to be Wall Street bankers and sheikhs. And I mean, you must have had some fascinating people come through your academy. This is the beauty of my school.

1:34:07 You have, you. It’s like every time I go there, it’s like I read a book. I learn from everyone. There was, there was so many different situations. I teach from the guy who shined shoes at Madison Square Garden to the guy who took the guy who took America out of the crisis in 2008, 2018, 2008.

1:34:30 The guy who actually was responsible for bringing back America financially to become well again was my student, and how I knew that, I never knew what his job was. I was actually here at home. My phone rings, and it’s one of my students from Brazil who used to own the Bank of America in Brazil. He goes, Helsel, I just got the book of the pope of economics. He wrote this book, and there’s a whole chapter talking about you.

1:34:58 I go, I have no clue. That I’m sending you a picture. He sent me a picture. I said, yeah, that’s my student, and he don’t have me trained as he should. What happened that I realized, only after I went to show him the book, and His name is Rich Stam.

1:35:17 When I show him the book, when I, he sent me, and I would show him the book. He goes, hello, that was the problem. When 2008 hit, the crisis came, I had to move to, to, to wash them, and I could only come training one day a week, which was Saturday, so he would drive, train, and then drive back, you know. You treat everybody in here the same. That’s true, there’s no difference.

1:35:48 Yeah, you know, you are, you are unique. One story with, there was a story with, with that, with the homeless guy that I told you. He was sitting there hours when I came back. Then sometimes I would come by train, so I’ll pass by the Starbucks, I’ll grab a, it was, ring there was a chocolate, hot chocolate if it was a summer. It was a cold coffee, so I’ll bring the coffee and two pieces of cake, one for him or for me, so I would sit with him on the street, you know, sit next to him, give him his, his pistol.

1:36:18 This day I was starving, but I’m ready to eat with him and drink the hot chocolate we have. I sit down and put it. He grabs his, I grab mine, and we’re laughing already, joking, when I go to open, mind, my cake falls straight on the floor. When he fell, the first thing I thought, the three-second rule. I reached forward immediately, and I went to eat, the homeless guy hit my hand.

1:36:47 No, I said, I look at him, he goes, don’t eat from the floor. Here he grabs half of his cake, breaks in half, gives me half, right? This phone never rings, man. You must bring me luck. This is a fax.

1:37:05 So he goes, no, he grabs half of his cake, breaks, and gives me half. When he gives me half, his nails are long and completely black, dirt everywhere. It was ten times better than the ground. I look at that, I grab it, and I start eating and having my, my hot chocolate, and then we keep talking about everything. We finish.

1:37:29 I give him a hug, and I say I gotta go teach. When I hug him, you know, there’s a car parked right in front of us with, with peeled windows. I couldn’t see inside, so I hug him. I said I gotta go teach. When I stand up, the door opens.

1:37:44 It’s a guy reaching, Guy Rich walks out with his gi, because it’s time for the class. He looks at me and he goes, you never cease to amaze me. I will, what, do you think VIP treatment was just for you? And then he goes, I know it’s not just for me. That’s why this is my academy, you know.

1:38:04 That’s why this is my school, you know? I said, get your ass in there, let’s go train, man. You know, a guy, he left. He was a brown belt, so he wasn’t leaving, he, and I didn’t see him for many years, you know. Then when he released the movie, A Man from U.N.C.L.E., the release was in New York, right?

1:38:24 Red carpet, everything. Here I went there with his black belt, so in the middle of all that crowd I started hitting him, you know, and then I tied the belt. Only he could understand what was going on. The security knew, because the security were my students. Shoe, I didn’t know, by chance, so I put him.

1:38:42 He was the whole night in a white suit with a butterfly tie and his black belt, walking around, out proud. You know, it’s amazing. And then he told me that many times he was in academies, and people, he could sense that people are gonna give him his black belt. He went to the bathroom, jumped the wind and took off, not to embarrass them and not to accept a black belt, because he goes, he can only be from Helsing. You know, wow, that’s amazing, amazing.

1:39:08 What’s the secret to a good academy? So how are you, how are you able? Brother, you have to understand, we think about all, let’s make tough, let’s make a real fighting place. I run a school like this for many years, many, many years, and I could never pass 150 students. I could never pass, and one day I go to grab a pizza, and that was the school that you went on, 3rd Street, the big one where you had the private with John Danaher.

1:39:37 Yeah, so I go on the corner to have a pizza. When I get in there’s this huge guy, huge, very muscular. He was probably like six five, huge guy. His son was 11 years old. He was as tall as me, he was 5’10” like me, and I got those hands.

1:39:55 Here’s the Gracie. I say, oh man, you like the fights? And I go, check his hand, give him a hug. He goes, yeah, I says, I train. He goes, yeah, I try to meet Serra, which was my school in Long Island.

1:40:09 When Matt got his black belt, we passed to him, and he runs, and he does an unbelievable job, makes unbelievable champions. So when he tells me, oh, Generator, say, oh man, how that is like saying oh, I love it. He goes, oh, the beginning was very scary, hello? Huh, yeah, I was very insecure, you know. Was the first man that really told me what he thought how we had set up the whole thing.

1:40:36 And then I, you have to understand, you know what his job was. He was a fireman, so you’re talking about a guy who’s going to go into a building on fire to save a cat. Like, I would call the cat from outsiders, come, come, come, I would have got there to get him. He goes, you know, so he’s one of the top. He was like 260 pounds, 250 pounds, so it’s not an average guy from the office, a nerd who works in a computer the whole day.

1:41:08 I say, if this guy was insecure, imagine the average Joe, you know. So I said, something’s wrong, I got to change this. So I went back, we started, me, Hikaru made that gi, done, and a couple more shows we started developing how we could build the confidence and keep them there. And then I found out that would take you 32 days for you to create a habit. We extend that to three months instead of 32 days.

1:41:33 Let’s make it three months, the first three months, and I designed the whole classes with them to make the student comfortable. We would make, we would make a warm-up that was very easy, even if you’re completely out of shape you could do it. So that’s the part, that it’s that I looks like I can do that. And that already brought people in, and then I will show the techniques, and when you were beginner, everything under control. I wouldn’t let a full training happen.

1:42:05 I would make just positions training, and they learning, and they getting learn how to pass the guard, go back, so the guy could defend the guard and give it everything. When the guy lay in the cross side, he will never panic. You never feel uncomfortable, so go back, do it again, then switch, then it’s his time to play on top. So even the little guy with the big guy, they would switch, and they would experience all the situations, and that would build them confidence, will make them comfortable to train, and then after three months they will start going.

1:42:36 They’ll get a stripe, they’ll start going to the advanced class, they could join the other class. I went from 150 students in four months to 450. I was able to triple the number of my students by doing that, and another thing that I did that I learned, like, you can see, I like to read a little bit. Yeah, and now I have a new technique, because my wife doesn’t let me buy any more books. What I do, I hide the books behind the books, when she realized I have double my collection, you know.

1:43:15 So I read, I read the book from Starbucks, right? One of the main things that they use that was amazing was, they, when you get in there and you wear a coffee, they say, what’s your name, sir? And they put it on, and the moment that you give the name, she repeats the name to you once, then she calls you, she calls you by your name, and then makes you feel comfortable, and you come back. Now people don’t realize this was one of the main things that helped the growth of Starbucks all over the world, because you felt like they know you, and especially in a culture like America.

1:43:53 Like, I remember one time I go to have a beer here. I say, let me have a Corona. She puts the Corona. Six dollars, sir. It’s like in Brazil, if they give you the tab before you ask, that means they don’t want you there.

1:44:09 It’s the biggest insult, and I bet in many other cultures too, you know. So they never let you feel comfortable. Maybe you want to have three or four, why, you know? But he was different in the gym that I went, in the gym that I went here. The woman would keep her eye just like this, and as I walk in she’d keep her eye just as I plugged my name in, my number in, and she goes, thank you, and back to whatever she was doing, but she never let her eye see me.

1:44:40 So for three years I was there. Suddenly a friend of mine buys the gym, and I go, and he goes, yes, hello, there’s anything here that you think I should change? I say, yes, or you fire the lady, or you put her to work. Why, she doesn’t have to deal with people? And he goes, up, and then I explain to him, he goes, I never thought of that.

1:45:00 I said, believe, he makes a difference. The only time she actually raised her eye and spoke to us was when, Mario Van Peebles the actor came to train with me, and he stayed in my house for a week, and we went to work out. He want to see how my life was, so we want to work out in the gym when you walk in, she goes, whatever people, what are you doing here with him? Like, with him? And he goes, this is the guy.

1:45:28 This is, I’m lucky to be here with him. I’m learning from him, you know, but this is the funny thing. Like, some people just value if they think they can get something back, you know? And I changed that at my academy. I stopped putting everybody with the names here, and I made an instructor call every single one at least three times by their name, by the first name, so the school exploded.

1:45:51 We got to 1,500 students there, you know, insane. It’s 18 classes a day. I have the number one team of muay thai of the, the East Coast. We won one year 16, 13 titles. The next year 16 titles.

1:46:06 The following year 13 titles again. Wow, yeah, insane, and these three first months that we had this year, January, February, March was our record of growth. Wow, you know, it was insane. Yeah, yeah. My daughters worked there running the the office.

1:46:23 They run the whole thing, and it’s, we’re beginning a whole line of clothes, geez, and a bunch of different things that we’re going to start investing and making happen, you know. And unfortunately COVID stopped there for a little bit, but I’m not even worried. I’m just waiting to go back to the fight. Okay, it’s like when you issue [expletive], you’re getting your butt kicked, hanging there. Why are you the nail hanging there, right?

1:46:44 You have a chance to become the hammer. Hit hard. That’s the sneaker, so I’m ready for the chest to become the hammer. So how have you dealt with this year and COVID and everything? How, it wasn’t easy.

1:46:54 It wasn’t easy. I was able to keep the professionals training in the basement. I did some fixing in my academy. Fortunately I was financially well enough that I could afford to keep it close and could pay. I didn’t fire nobody.

1:47:07 I kept everybody in my team. They are working, you know, so it’s, the academy for sure is gonna return stronger than before, you know. I feel sorry for, I try to help the other people who have schools in the city. I try to get the same license that I have for them too, you know, and I don’t want to see them closing. You know, I want to see them as successful as I am.

1:47:28 And, but I heard some of them will be closing doors, because it’s, it’s hard times, and you know they couldn’t, they didn’t have the setup the way that I had to be able to resist this crazy, this crazy pandemic, and they didn’t expect to last that long. How did you create, I mean, how, how were you part of the evolution of legends like Matt Serra and John Danaher and Ricardo Almeida? I mean, you know, it’s not a coincidence, Renzo, that these great teachers and great fighters came from you.

1:48:00 It’s, it’s a, there’s a very simple explanation. I had two people who inspired me unbelievably well. One was my father, that he, I don’t remember playing with him since I was 23 years old. There wasn’t something about jiu-jitsu. He would put me on his back, put me the hooks, hold me, hold that, put the presser back.

1:48:19 Oh, I tap. I knew there. I don’t remember. I don’t have one memory of him that we were not like, he wasn’t teaching me something positive for my life and how to be. It for you to have an idea when I was like 10, 11, 12, I would go and spend my whole day with him.

1:48:37 I wouldn’t talk. I just walk he’ll go downtown, do his business meeting, talk to his friends, and do everything, and I’ll be next to him, just listening and learning. So that man was a soul that made me a lot of what I am today. And the other one was my uncle, Hollis. My uncle, Gracie, the one who died of a hang-gliding accident.

1:48:56 Yeah, he was the best teacher, the most open-minded, the guy that your success was Jesus. He was there. There was not one gram of jealousy on him. There was no one gram of greed. He wanted the same that he wanted himself.

1:49:12 He wanted for everybody else, and he was the biggest influence I remember, and my way. Like, I’m a black belt in judo. I trained boxing, I trained muay thai, and it was all thanks to him. He, he ran the team of wrestling in Brazil. He was a jiu-jitsu guy running the wrestling team in Brazil, and this is 1978.

1:49:30 He went to the first world, the Brazil competed at the first world, thanks to him. So he was an open mind. He brought Americans to teach wrestling, you know, and do today. This wrestler was one of the best wrestlers in America, and, and the best coach. He was the coach of Rage Culture.

1:49:49 Okay, this guy, someone went to his, to his, when he leaves, he had a trophy for Hollis. And when he grabbed the trophy, he stopped crying. He goes, there was one of the most amazing souls I ever met. He died at 33. You know, an unbelievable athlete, an unbelievable person, and a very good, and I was his student.

1:50:12 My father loved him, and even though he was very young, there was all the brothers that could teach me. He chose the artist, and you know, he was my main teacher, and he was the one who set out the standards. And he was the teacher of my teacher. Khalid was the one that kept his work after he died, you know. I stayed with Calin’s for my whole life.

1:50:31 Khalil Shade runs the Gracie Barras, you know. They have over 300 Gracie Barras all over the globe, you know. And I, I couldn’t, I was, I was the standards that were set was so high. I couldn’t go halfway. You know, you know what I love?

1:50:46 I love surfing. I love, relax. I stopped, and I was very good at surfing. I compete. I did a big, very good people in surfing competitions, and when I say beat was on Dash Point, not by choking the market, but this, the spinners were set so high that I, I couldn’t accept be shallow.

1:51:09 You know, keep walking and swimming in, in warm waters. I want depth. I want cold water. I want emotions. I want to leave.

1:51:17 I want to, when I leave this planet, I can look back and hear my feet hitting, like drums, everything and everywhere that I want. That’s what I chose to do, you know. So I’m not, it’s like, I think that’s one of the reasons I don’t have gray hair yet. I’m 53, and I don’t have longer hair, you know. It’s because it’s like I still feel like I’m 10 years old, 12 years old.

1:51:39 I still feel like I was playing kindergarten, and I kicked the ball up in the air, and I never heard it bouncing back. You know, it’s still that little kid inside of me doing what I do and doing what I love. And it’s, it’s strange, because you’ve got a big smile. You’re always making people laugh, but then you’re ready to fight anytime, and your standards are super high, and you’re super passionate, and you like taking risks. I mean, it’s a strange combination for most people.

1:52:06 Logan Hate, they walk like this, right? But you have to understand, fighting for me is so natural. I don’t get insulted if I fight someone. I forgive him, you know. It’s, I don’t care, but we have a disagreement there.

1:52:21 How was with the people that I loved the most, my brothers? You know how many times we fought? You know, we fought many times. And then we finish the end of the day. I’ll grab like a candy or an ice cream.

1:52:33 I put one next to him, and I kept one for myself, you know. That was my, my life was always like this, and, like, the intensity, the way that we talk to each other. But that is love. When you can do this, it’s a funny thing. It’s like, it’s like my, I have brothers who call me and they just curse me on the phone.

1:52:53 They call me a very bad name, and then I go, ah, I miss you too. He’s cursing me, and I’m telling him I miss you, my brother. Listen, too much. What do we do? I just call you to say this, and he cursed me again.

1:53:06 I say, okay, how’s your kids? How is this? And then he hangs up. That’s house, does that a lot. I laugh.

1:53:15 I said, this is his way of saying I love you, you know, but he’s so tough, he don’t want to be sentimental. So he curses me, he calls me bad names, and you know, it’s not a insult because I know how much I love him, and how much he loves me. So it’s, you know, it doesn’t exist, and it’s up there, and it’s different. It’s a different approach. We don’t see it today, because everybody wants to be politically correct, you know?

1:53:37 They’re now changing the feminine names and the masculine names in Brazil. They’re putting if a, and all they put in e, so they say if you say all, it sounds like a male name, because it’s all s in the end, and if it’s means the women, so then they want to change and put an e to this. So how, how can we live in a world like this? You know, when you talk about what mankind, you know, it’s like, man, there’s nothing more beautiful than the woman’s soul, and I do believe.

1:54:15 I believe in incarnation. I believe we are spiritual because I meet some people that I swear they just came from a monkey. They just migrate to be a human soul, and I believe that our soul doesn’t have, as a sex, it’s not male or female. It’s according to what you have to do and what you have to leave to make revolve. I think we all going towards a life that was going to make us better, you know, and not to, to.

1:54:43 It’s like, a gay people, it’s, I love many. I have friends, gay, I don’t care, it doesn’t bother me, and I honestly I believe they are a soul that we’re a feminine soul, and then suddenly They, they need to be born a man, too, and they didn’t have the time to do the full transition. I do believe 100%. That you know, it is even a funny thing to say, because normally I don’t say this to nobody. I’m telling you.

1:55:10 You know, I said, how can I see these souls, as I see the suffering? The first, the first, the first prejudice that they suffer is the eye of the father. Because normally the father is not gay. The father is married to his mother and had him, so the moment that he start becoming feminine, the first prejudice that he feels, the first censorship he feels, is from the eyes of his father. So how can I be, how can I look down at them?

1:55:42 How can I make them feel bad about themselves? You know, how can I not give a hug, what they need? You know, the truth is, man, you are pure to everyone, even to a dog. Even a dog who beat me, I took care of the little thing. I picked him back, but we became friends, and I will give him food.

1:56:04 There’s one here that every day I buy, I buy salami or presunto, because he loves and I give it to him, and especially because he doesn’t bite my girlfriend. They’re very good friends, so we became friends, but it was an adopted dog. So it’s, this is life. Problems will appear. We have to solve them, you know.

1:56:24 It’s like if you don’t expect to have problems, you are the problem. Yeah, this is life. Yeah, you can let that put you down. Renzo, you mentioned brothers, and you know, we all know one of your brothers who passed away, Hyan, who was a great fighter in Pride, such an intense guy in a ring full of intense guys, you know. So there was already top fighters, crazy fighters over there, but Hyan, when he came, I mean, nobody forgot him, but he passed early, and I just wondered what it was like to know him, and what it was like to process that whole event, and what did he do?

1:57:00 He was unique. Like, you think I’m honest. He was 10 times more honest than I am. There was no, he was black and white. Whatever he thinks, he’ll say.

1:57:09 If you insult him, he’ll fight you immediately. You know, he’s in testing. I remember one time, the first Abu Dhabi, he’s there with me. We crossed the arena, he almost got in three fights, and I say, what is this? It’s hell.

1:57:22 I can relax one minute. I’m gonna be competing and you’re picking fights. He goes, we have to educate them. These people, they always talking no sense. They’re insulting people, they’re doing wrong things, and they’re using jiu-jitsu for it, so I gotta let them know that I’m not liking it.

1:57:36 I say, can you wait until Monday, please? Let me finish this. So he was like this, but with me, like my father got divorced from my wife in 1978. ’78, that’s when I went to live in Barra, that’s when we moved. And I was, I believe, 1978, I was 11.

1:57:58 He was four years old when we moved, so I was the one who looked after him all the time. We had maids in the house, but I was the one that took care of him. I was the one who believed he could be ten times stronger than I was. So I remember back then we didn’t have vitamins, and the right vitamins that they had in America, right? We’re gonna have there.

1:58:18 I used to go to a racetrack for horses, buy the vitamins that they use for horses, and then make the doses for him, and put them on his bottle. That’s why he was, I was 67 kilos, he was 93. I was able to make him extremely strong and training and everything, so I, I watched after him. If he had fever, I was the one tucking him in bed, overlooking him the whole night. We shared the room, was me, a half, and higher, so I was the one taking care of him, making sure that he would do the diet, making sure that he followed the steps of training.

1:58:51 I was the father, basically. You know, I was the one teaching him about life, about, I was seven years older, you know. And, it was an amazing thing, because I remember I had the privilege of dealing with a wild animal and never got bitten. You know, he was the one who fight and when I was sick, or this, nobody talks about, he would put a bed next to my bed, and he would lay there the whole night, and throughout the night he’ll come put the hand in my head to see if I had fever.

1:59:21 You know, so I had the privilege to be with him like nobody else in this lifetime. And now some souls they have to leave earlier, because it’s, you know, they, we don’t see them aging. With the funny thing, we don’t see them getting old, you know, and he was one of those. If you, if you tell me, did he die young? I tell you no, he outlives us all, because he lived with such intensity that he probably, the ears they accumulate on him, by far, whatever I can put together in this lifetime, you know.

1:59:57 And, and like, you know, when the flame burns intensely, it burns quicker than the ones that make no light. You know, he produced no light and no heat. You know, so he’s one of those, and was it, believe it, if I could go back in time I would leave everything, again, exactly the same, exactly the same with you. I know. Wow.

2:00:19 Yeah, wow. I always think that when people die while we’re still alive, they’re teaching us valuable lessons, you know, and that, super valuable lessons, and that can change our lives, you know, when they leave us early, and they can teach us things about how to live, maybe better, or more, or how to value life more. You know? Yes, yes, it’s extremely, yeah, you should be right, you know. And it’s a, it’s, it’s a very funny thing.

2:00:44 It’s, it’s like normally we have, we get, we learn what are watches and the time, how we count it. It was a funny thing. I was watching one time a TV show, and the guy said, the guy said, or about the, the carving a hole in the ozone layer, and the guy look at him. The guy, especially, it doesn’t exist. I knows only here, huh, doesn’t exist, there is no rules, only the guy.

2:01:14 The reporter was a little, he goes, yeah, but people are destroying the Amazon, and he goes, if you take the whole Amazon down, in 20 years it grows back. The Amazon is there because of the day it rains. It’s not the other way around. It doesn’t rain there because of the Amazon. It’s the other way around.

2:01:33 So immediately they cut the interview. They were very short after, and this was many years ago. I have that interview, and then I remember that the last comment of the report was, yeah, but it still would take 20 years. The guy goes, 20 years, a lot of time for you, but for the planet it’s less than a second. 20 years, you know.

2:01:54 But enough knowledge is very recent. Actually, it’s been recent since I can talk to you right now the way that we are doing now. It’s reason that I really can know immediately what’s happening in your country by you calling me and telling me what’s going on there, you know, before we have to trust news that, not like, you know, many times are not the right. They don’t give you the right information, you know. They, they fall in their own protocol and what they needed and their own needs, you know.

2:02:21 And this is, we’re lucky for the internet that completely changed everything. I’m able to be talking to you right here, why my wife wants to kill me inside there, because I’m probably late for something. My grandson, I’ll be controlling him, so I, and I appreciate all the time, Renzo. I guess my last question is, stay with you for the whole day if you want. I appreciate it, man.

2:02:42 You’re such a generous guy, Renzo. what’s next for Renzo Gracie? What’s next? What, what, what are you doing in 10 years? I mean, you could be doing anything. You might be on Mars.

2:02:53 I may be fighting my neighbor just for fun, so I can share coconut water with him up there, you know. Who knows? But it’s, it’s a funny thing. Like, I see my grandson becoming a fighter, and I’ll probably be involved with everything that I do. You know, I’m trying really to help Brazil to get better, you know, to open up the frontiers and expand that country and grow in the right way, you know.

2:03:15 Don’t let what’s happening right now in terms of corruption, and keep going. You know, that really, I had an opportunity, and I had the tool, which was jiu-jitsu, to allow me to have that access to improve things around, you know. And the funny thing, we imagine, you bring 40 billion to a country and not even one news channel mentioned that one, and that they are using for the roads, they are using for the, for the railway, they expanding all the, the, the, the communication between the, between, inside the country, like on the sense of transportation, and everything, and you don’t hear one channel, one news mentioning that.

2:03:54 You know, it’s even funny. You know, and that’s, that’s, that is that Brazil for you, where you just get different information, or the information just or is that today’s news media? You just don’t get the right information. The reality is the news media living in the country there, because they were used to, to, to, to be drinking from the breast of the, the Brazilian, the Brazilian government. They were fed by the Brazilian government, so all the money came from the Brazilian government, like actors and people.

2:04:25 They would, they would, they’ll file a project, the government would finance a hundred percent, and they would not even do the project for you. To have an idea, Cirque du Soleil went to Brazil to perform there. They received, I believe, was like, I was like almost 200 million dollars, or like me or that. And they still charge, I think it was between 100 and 200 million dollars. They still charge 250 dollars per ticket for the person to watch.

2:04:56 So you’re a private company. You put in, so you’re charging for the tickets, but the government is paying for the whole thing. How’s that, you know? So they were doing this. So in reality they would give a kickback to the corrupt politicians of their money.

2:05:10 So if they make a hundred, there is a case of, Juanitas Mayu, that he got 1.5 million, which is like three hundred thousand dollars, and they took from him one point three. They left him only with two hundred thousand, which is seventy thousand dollars less than seventy thousand dollars. So that’s how it is, right? That’s how bad of a businessman he is. He was able to give back, and he still has to do an event, you know, and it was this, typical of what they were doing, right?

2:05:44 Yeah, I think we’re starting to see these days that no news media can be trusted. We’re seeing that this year. The only thing that can be trusted is things like this. Renzo, I mean, if people want to know who Renzo Gracie is, listen to him for two hours, and now you know, you don’t got to look at a tweet. You don’t have to look at an Instagram post, and that’s the beauty.

2:06:02 And let them know that I’m much better-looking person, though, than I’m on the screen. Yeah, Renzo, I could talk to you for hours, but I really appreciate the time, and thank you for what you do, for anyone that’s watching us who would never think about a jujutsu class. I would say you should try one. It’ll change your life, and it doesn’t matter if you’re seven years old or 77 years old. If you’ve got two legs that work or two legs that don’t work, if you’ve got one arm, there’s one-arm jiu-jitsu players that’ll, that’ll, that’ll choke you unconscious, right?

2:06:36 So everybody should go find a jiu-jitsu class, right? Because it’ll make you better in life. You change, you change. It’s, it’s like a chocolate. Be careful, it’s addictive.

2:06:45 Once you begin, you can stop. You’re talking about the old, old man. There was this old guy that used to come in. He’s probably like almost 80. He used to come in carrying his gi in a, you know, like those luggage that people use in the airport with the wheels, you know?

2:07:04 Yeah, so he would, yeah, he would carry his gear on that. So many times I saw this one there. I go to him and say, my old man, why you carry a gi in this with wheels, in the cartwheel luggage? He goes, I come from four hours and a half away. If I can, on the beginning, you scare my, I start giving me back pain.

2:07:23 So that’s why I carry this. I say, you come from four hours and a half away? And he never told me this for the past eight years. I said, come here one second. I go to the front desk.

2:07:32 I say, cancel his membership. Any payment he makes here, you will never make up a payment again. From now on you would, you’re my guest for life, wherever I am. You have jiu-jitsu, you know? He was like, oh, surprise.

2:07:45 And I never knew he came from that far, you know? I say, my man, you have your roots for life. And if you go, kids, whatever you put here, I’m gonna take care of them too. I appreciate you coming from so far. There’s a lot, and there’s a lot of guys that travel far to be in the Blue Basement.

2:07:59 A lot, it’s true. A lot, a lot. Even the champions today, Gordon Ryan, his brother Nick, and all those guys, they come from, especially they arrive at the academy at seven o’clock in the morning, so they come from Jersey when the traffic is going toward Manhattan, so it take, it took them an average in the morning of three hours to get there, three hours, three hours and a half driving, all of them in one car, you know, and then they spend the whole day training, and then they come back later at five, six o’clock in the afternoon, you know.

2:08:32 So that’s why they became the champions that they are. Like Gordon Ryan and all those, Nick Ryan, Mick Robb, and Gary Thornton, you know, that’s why they become the team. So they are, they put the effort and knowledge, but I remember how long it was, the drive for them, and they had to go and traditional traffic. This is every day for years. Yeah, and nobody sees that hard work that they put in.

2:08:53 They just see the results. What’s it like when you, when you shine? Only when you shine, they recognize the gold, you know. But yeah, and when you know, you see you, you’re eating the, the bronze, the heavy metals to get there, and when you hear the Dinah Death Squad in the Blue Basement, and you got these guys that are just crushing everybody with these leg locks and this no-gi competition that all happens in your house. How does that make you feel?

2:09:19 It makes me feel great. Makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing, you know, making sure that I work on the right direction. And make me feel that you have to understand one thing, this academy that I have now it was the dream of Hollis Gracie. When I was, I was a young 13 years old, he described me one day, my perfect academy would be like this. He described a Blue Basement that we have today.

2:09:44 So that’s what I say. He set the standards that I need to, to achieve you know, and that’s exactly what happened. Today we have everything. You don’t need to go nowhere else. You have, from washing your geese, to, to teaching you wrestling, teaching you judo.

2:09:58 We have guys from the Olympic team, you know, the people who actually got the first gold medal and bronze medal for United States in judo. They train with us, you know. They, they’re part of our team. So it’s brother, it’s, it’s home. It’s a fighting home for anybody that loves the art, you know, and I, and my heart is telling me, back then how he dreamed to have a school.

2:10:22 And that’s what I always say, never stop dreaming. And people ask why I don’t sleep much. It’s because it’s while I’m awake that I dream in getting better and making people around me better, you know. So it’s, I live my dreams and I make them happy. Wow.

2:10:36 Well, I, I always heard the stories of Hollis, and I heard about him, and I heard how how good he was, and this, the character he was, but I’ve never heard someone who knew him so well. So and it’s also, I believe, I lived on the same building, on the same floor. My door, my door was here, his door was here. So every day when it was time to train, my mother forbid me to bother them. So I would walk to his door and wait there, because I knew it was time for him to come out, and I would ride with him to the academy, you know.

2:11:06 So I’ll wait for him without knocking, without ringing the bell. I’ll be right there, and then we go together to the academy. Wow, unbelievable, uncle, unbelievable. I was very fortunate. Renzo, again, I want to thank you for changing my life.

2:11:19 I honestly don’t know what I would have done without the jiu-jitsu, and it came out of nowhere, like, out of nowhere. I wasn’t, I wouldn’t, I hadn’t broken a sweat in 10 years, and wasn’t going to break a sweat for 10 years. I hadn’t done martial arts, you know, in forever, and then boom, I got the call because of your academy in New York, and it changed my whole life. It’s why this show even exists. So again, I’m one of many millions of people around the world that probably owes you a big debt.

2:11:42 You’ve got a huge heart. Renzo, thank you for everything. Thank you, my brother. It’s a pleasure to have you as part of our family. It’s my pleasure.

2:11:49 Thank you. With the regatta, I’m going to come to New York. I’m going to train with you when you come to London. To see Hodge, stop by and see us. You’ll have my number, give me a call at any time.

2:11:57 Anytime. All right, I’ll be waiting for you here, brother. Thank you. Oh, thank you. All right, bye, and thank you all for watching us on London Real.

2:12:06 We’ll see you next time. Take care.