Kron Gracie returned to action at UFC 288 earlier this month after a three-year hiatus with a gameplan that came straight out of Nov. 1993. Indeed, the son of Rickson Gracie brought us back to the early days of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in his fight against Charles Jourdain. The bout included a lot of pulling guard, butt scooting and closed guard.
None of which works very well any more at the highest levels of mixed martial arts (MMA).
Jourdain defeated Gracie 30-27 on all three judges’ scorecards. It was noted that he actually looked worse than he did in his last two fights, like he was regressing with his fighting. Now, Kron has made a short — and slightly confusing — statement regarding the Jourdain loss.
“In a lifetime of fighting, it’s always been a fight to the death,” Gracie wrote on Instagram. “Understand the situation and willing to limit myself, even that being said I threw no punches because of bad advice and tried to please the jiujitsu community two day before my fight.
“First fight in my life I didn’t throw a punch,” he finished. “Going back to my old ways.”
This is a pretty remarkable claim: that Kron not only received “advice” from someone or someones from the jiu-jitsu community, and not only did they tell him to throw no punches ... but he actually listened?!? He adopted a classic pure jiu-jitsu gameplan, but it wasn’t prepared through months leading up to this battle, or the years since Kron’s last UFC fight in 2019.
He decided to implement it in the last two days before his fight? We’d say we’re shocked, but this is one of the loudest voices in the combat sports Flat Earth club we’re talking about here.
The loss to Jourdain drops Kron to 5-2 MMA (1-2 UFC), but at least we have hope now that he has a more well-rounded style he can revert back to than what we witnessed at UFC 288.
For complete UFC 288 results, coverage and highlights click HERE.
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