Royler Gracie failed to respond to Eddie Bravo’s challenge to compete at the 2011 Abu Dhabi Combat Club submission grappling competition by the July 10 deadline set by the 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu founder and has now tried to save face by challenging Bravo, who has never competed in mixed martial arts in his life, to a one-off MMA bout in Brazil.
“I have no problems with ADCC, but the fact is that we didn’t get to an agreement on our negotiation and unfortunately the organizers of the event haven’t got in touch with me again. I can’t keep waiting, I have other plans for myself. I’m assuming this bout won’t happen”, Royler told TATAME. “I’m dealing with this MMA event, which might happen in Brazil. I haven’t sign anything yet, but the negotiations are going well and it’s likely it happens. The organizer of the event even called Eddie Bravo to fight me, but he declined it, he didn’t want to fight me… And I said I was only punch him with my hands opened, man (laughs).”
According to Eddie, he received a call from some random Brazilian promoter whose show he has never heard of asking if he’d be interested in fighting Royler in MMA. Since he was still waiting on word on the ADCC bout and the fact that the fight would be contested in hostile territory, he declined.
“About a month ago I get an email from some promoter I’ve never heard of in Brazil asking me if I would fight Royler in his small show in Brazil. This was right in the middle of Royler asking for 50k show money for a grappling match with me. I told him I wanted the rematch to happen in ADCC, plus MMA would take so much longer to prepare for, so I declined his offer. That was it,” Bravo explained on MixedMartialArts.com’s Underground Forum. “The first match happened in ADCC and the second one should as well since none of this would even be talked about if it wasn’t for the Sheik making it happen. Fuck going to dangerous ass Brazil to fight MMA in a small show when we can do it in the most prestigious grappling show ever.”
One question that remains is, if Gracie was asking ADCC for $50,000 to show plus the $25,000 win bonus that was offered for the bout to cover the losses he would have incurred because of the fact that he would not have been able to do seminars and privates while he trained for the bout, why was he willing to fight for a small Brazilian promotion who likely wouldn’t have been able to pay him half of his asking price? Maybe it isn’t about the money or maybe he was trying to bilk the Sheik for some extra cash because he knows he has it, even though ADCC is a not-for-profit company.
Whatever the reason, it’s unlikely that the pair will ever face each other again.
Since he wants to fight Bravo in a sport he’s never competed in, maybe the best two out of three could be a guitar or band war.
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