Renzo: I see through Jiu-Jitsu eyes

The great Bobby Razak turns his lens on the great Renzo Gracie and the result is well and truly great.

“At five, I began going to the academy with frequency, and at seven I did my first competition,” explains Renzo Gracie. “I was a champion for the first time when I was seven years old.

“To me, it’s my religion. It changed my way of seeing. I can’t see things the same way as everybody does, because I see through Jiu-Jitsu eyes. I see ways to achieve. I see ways to make possibility.

“People think we sell Jiu-Jitsu, that we sell martial arts to our students, to people around us. We don’t.

“In reality, we sell self-confidence, we’re selling a positive lifestyle. Jiu-Jitsu is not just a martial art, it is a lifestyle. If you take Jiu-Jitsu out of me, you’re going to have an empty shell.”

“I do believe that what makes a champion, it’s the ability of not quitting. Not giving up. You have to have in you knowing that even if defeat surprises you, in reality, it’s just another step, just another wall that you have to jump over, to reach your goal.

“When you think like that, when you are able to see defeat only as a new step, to overcome failure and build a champion, you can see that there is no losing in Jiu-Jtsu. You either win, or you learn.”

“I was shot the first time I was 16 years old. He broke my femur; I had to stay a year in bed. But this was the first time they actually hit me – they shot at me many time before, since when I was 14.

“And I am lucky to be telling you these stories. The intensity. For sure things could have gone wrong. Thank God it didn’t.

“I have three amazing kids now, and they believe I am a normal guy. Heh. I am far from that.”

“I was around 16, and that’s when Jiu-Jitsu started having problems with Luta Livre. During a party, a 15-year-old’s birthday party, we end up having a fight in there.

“The thing escalated pretty quick. There was bottles everywhere, glasses, and they were throwing, and my friends were all knocked out, and I had to defend them.

“As I was holding the ground there, I was pushing a lot of people, hurting a lot of people. At the same time a guy pulled out a gun and shot me.

“I remember, I still ran after him, with two broken glasses in my hand. And he took off with his gun.

“When I turned, my leg gave up. So I grabbed the pillar and I turned and I started hopping on one leg. He came back, and he unloaded. But he wasn’t able to hit me. He shot everywhere, but didn’t hit me.

“I walked straight into a woman’s bathroom, and the women are all screaming in there and I say ‘There’s a guy killing everybody in the club. Shooting everybody. And he’s coming this way. If you guys let him in, we are all dead.’

“So we had 50 women holding the door. So that guy could never make his way in the bathroom, while I sat in the toilet fixing my leg.

That was some pretty tense moments. But life always gives me a chance to fix things. So a few later, I am driving on a rainy day, through a tunnel, 4:00 in the morning, the street’s empty, when I look on a motorcycle, who’s there riding right next to me?

“The guy who shot me.

“Socrates used to say ‘If you put on a veil of invisibility, you would become a killer in 24 hours.’ That night, I had that veil.

“And I rolled next to him, for like at least 15 minutes – whole time we are going together. He probably was going towards his house.

“And I was considering if I would hit him and kill him, or let it go. And then I realized, that was the heat of the moment, we are fighters, we were having actually fun on that day.

“He was a coward for pulling a gun and shooting me, and I could never be the same coward as he did, and kill him in a coward way.”

Then Renzo discusses the passing of his brother Ryan at the age of just 33.

“When my father separated from my mother, I was responsible for raising my younger brother Ryan. He was one of the most amazing guys I ever met. And at the same time, he was a wild animal. He was different from everybody else.

“And I had the privilege to live with a wild animal, without getting bit. Sometimes he scratched me, especially in the training sessions. But he was the best friend I had, and the most amazing human being, to me.

“It was always very tough, after he died … I still can’t think of him without crying. It’s been almost seven years. And to me, he’s still with me all the time. I miss him a lot. 

“The funny thing is, death is the only certainty we have, when we are born… And in reality, I know he outlives us all. Time was something invented by man. And in reality, we don’t measure a man’s life by the (length of time) that he lived. We measure a man’s life by the intensity that he lived. Nobody that I know lived longer than he did.”

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Thanks and respect to producer Mohammed Al Housani