If you trained jiu-jitsu his whole life, why would you trade punches on fight night against a striker?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of using one's strengths in situations instead of engaging in risky behavior that goes against one's training.
Royce Gracie's quote suggests that if someone has dedicated their life to mastering jiu-jitsu, they should leverage that skill on fight night rather than choose to engage in a risky stand-up fight with a striker. It highlights the importance of utilizing one's strengths in competition and not compromising one's training for the sake of conforming to conventional expectations.
In practice
During a martial arts seminar, to encourage practitioners to focus on their unique skills.
I like guys who know how to implement a strategy. The ones who make a fight look easy. But there's no easy fight, even if you win in 30 seconds, that only means you were able to execute your strategy correctly and induced your opponent to make a mistake. Those are the champions. That's why they are the champions.
Martial arts in general were not made for a tournament, for points system. Martial arts were made to defend yourself in the street fight situation, not to score points.
The greatest tribute you can to pay to my father is to continue to train and share Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, remembering to never lose sight of the fact that what you do off the matt counts more than what you do on the matt.
I believe in pure jiu-jitsu. That's what I've done in the past.
A black belt only covers two inches of your ass. You have to cover the rest.
Now you've given them hope, and they're unhappy. So the blame is all yours.
You are your greatest investment. The more you store in that mind of yours, the more you enrich your experience, the more people you meet, the more books you read, and the more places you visit, the greater is that investment in all that you are. Everything that you add to your peace of mind, and to your outlook upon life, is added capital that no one but yourself can dissipate.
Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.
I saw that everything really was written there before me, and that the doors had only been closed before because I hadn't realized that I was the one person in the world with the authority to open them.
He is truly great in who hath power over himself.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.