Kyra Gracie: Money’s not enough to fight for
Kyra Gracie: “If you fight just for money, you’re not going to go far enough. You have to fight for the things I showed on the show.”
Four-time Mundial and three-time ADCC champion, and 3rd degree black belt Kyra Gracie has a new series on UFC Fight Pass called, appropriately enough, The 3rd Degree with Kyra Gracie. In it she travels to gyms worldwide, and immerses herself in the training process.
She has trips planned to Japan (judo and taekwondo), the USA (wrestling), and Thailand (Muay Thai). Her latest was to Mexico City’s Romanza Gym, home to renowned boxing trainer Ignacio Nacho Beristain.
Technique you can pretty much see all over, she said. You can go on YouTube and learn a technique. (Laughs) I wanted to show what it really takes to be a fighter. How it is, how they live, how hard it is to succeed in the sport and to show the essence of the martial arts. Why are they making this sacrifice to be a champion? Why are they giving up everything and moving from where they live to go to Mexico to train? I really wanted to know why. Most of the time they don’t have sponsors, it’s hard to get money, so they’re just there for a dream. And that’s my main goal of the show, to show these fighters. Imagine if they succeed in the future, it would be awesome seeing this ten years from now. And if I just show boxing or technique, it would be just another show. I wanted to do something different.
The good thing about the boxing episode was that I was there as a white belt, to learn everything from them. And I could see that with a lot of things from my background and my competitions, they have the same feelings that I used to have when I competed. So it was nice to see that for every athlete, there are a lot of similarities. And on the other hand, I could learn different things. Beristain has a different approach. If you see the episode, there are no luxuries in the gym, and he really knows who has the heart to be the champion.
“(Coach Beristain) taught me that and he told me that in Mexico, people are very religious. I asked ‘how religious are you for the fight; do you pray before?’ And he said ‘Here, we don’t have to think about praying. If you train hard, then you’re going to get what you deserve. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter if you pray or not.’ It was a different approach and it was really nice to learn from him. He’s trained legends of boxing and a lot of world champions.
So will Kyra ever try MMA?
MMA was always something that I wanted to try, and I was training for MMA and then I got pregnant, she said. I had a baby, she’s one year old, so life is hard to plan. But I competed my whole life. I grew up watching MMA fights before, when it was vale tudo. I was a little girl walking around and watching my uncles and my cousins fighting, so it’s in my DNA. And when I train, I feel like fighting, but it’s hard to say that I will fight. It can happen; I have a kind of desire in my heart.
If you fight just for money, you’re not going to go far enough,. You have to fight for the things I showed on the show. You have to fight for yourself, for something you have inside. Otherwise, then it’s done. I always fought in Jiu-Jitsu because I wanted to show that a Gracie female could succeed in the sport, to be a black belt, and to be a world champion. It was always something for myself, for my family, and it was a passion for me. So if I fight MMA, this has to be the feeling.
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