Rickson Gracie explains how infidelity – a well-kept secret – helped construct Gracie’s “Clan of Fighters”

Carlson, Rolls, Rickson, Royce, Royler, Rorion – chances are MMA wouldn’t exist, at least not as we know it today if it weren’t for this generation of the Gracie family.

But building such a large “clan of fighters” would be almost impossible without infidelity, according to Rickson Gracie.

Carlos Gracie, who founded Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the first half of the 20th century, had 21 children with seven different women. Helio Gracie, his younger brother, had nine children with his wife Margarida. At least that’s the story Rickson told the world was told for decades.

Jiu-jitsu and MMA legend Rickson, one of the greatest fighters to ever emerge from the family, published his biography “Breathe: A Life in Flow” earlier this year, revealing that his mother actually named a nanny. was Isabel because Margarida could not get pregnant. In an hour-long interview with the Portuguese-language podcast Trocação Franca from MMA Fighting, Rickson went into detail about his family tree.

“My uncle and father intended to start a clan of fighters and they couldn’t limit themselves to one relationship and two or three children,” said Rickson. That is why Carlos is “married six times and my father only married once, but secretly two other women who have his children, and it blended into a large family.”

“I think that’s a truth that needs to be told at some point,” added Rickson. “I didn’t know the reality when I was born. I always saw Margarida entirely as my mother and saw no other way. I believed that until I was 16. After I started connecting the dots and making things more meaningful, I really understood that my real mom was a nanny that my dad had for a long time. With [Margarida’s] Agreement, they had a plan that they had three children. “

Rickson, born in 1959, stated that Margarida is listed as his mother on his birth certificate and all other documents. “I have been Margarida Gracie’s son all my life,” he said, “when in reality I was surprised that this was not the case.”

Rickson said Rorion Gracie, the co-founder of the UFC, and her brother Relson Gracie are also sons of Isabel, not Margarida. But that’s not the case with Helio’s other six children, including UFC pioneer Royce Gracie and PRIDE veteran Royler Gracie.

“When I was 12 years old, my father asked me, ‘My son, would you like more siblings?’ I said, ‘yeah dad’ but what a strange question that was. I still thought I was the son of [Margarida]”Said Gracia. “We got in the car and left the house in Flamengo and when we got to Botafogo we reached an apartment on the sixth floor and when the door opened a lady appeared and I saw heads appear behind her. At the time there were four: Rolker, Royler, Royce and Rerika. Ricci and Robin still had to be born. “

That lady was Vera, who worked in the Gracie Academy in Rio de Janeiro.

“I’ve seen these children and [Helio] said, ‘These are all your siblings,’ ”he continued. “That was a surprise for me, but I can say it was a pleasant one. But from the point of view of his relationship with my mother [Margarida]”She was surprised by these four children, who later turned six, and it was traumatic because she disagreed with it and she probably didn’t know anything about this story either.”

At the time, Helio was a respected man in the martial arts world and in Brazilian society. To hide her husband’s infidelity, Rickson said Margarida used pillows to pretend she was pregnant with her first three children. Rickson considered Helio less than husband after noticing how much his other children hurt with Vera Margarida.

“She was disappointed when she found out about it, and I started to see one side of – I wouldn’t call disrespect, but lack of love, lack of partnership that bothered me at the time,” he said. “I didn’t want a girlfriend who had that kind of relationship with me, a weak relationship, not knowing what I was doing, not being okay with the things I want, etc. That wasn’t what I was into for myself a relationship. ”and was a reference for my future.

“I saw that with my mother [Margarida]Even though she did everything for love, there came a point where her depression, her sadness at not being able to satisfy him with her own strength, felt that in the end she was unsuccessful. As she got older, I began to feel a lack of joy and that influenced me a lot. Thinking about seeing this relationship is not something I wanted in my life. Even if I admired my father as a role model, as a general, as someone with many [qualities], on the relationship side, I felt he missed it a little.

“As a child, 12 or 13 years old, you don’t understand much about life. But when you see your mother crying in the corner for no reason, you say, ‘Mom, are you upset?’ [She says,] ‘No, my son.’ [She] tries to hide it. You begin to understand things that exist between the lines, things that are not written or shown, but there is an emotional impact. Why is my mother mad? You are beginning to understand something that is under the rug. Then you have to act [as if you] feel comfortable with what is going on. “

Keeping the story a secret for over six decades in a family as large as the Gracies is impressive, and Rickson laughed when asked how it was kept from the public eye for so long.

“I’m just a victim of the product,” he said.

The former Vale Tudo fighter said he kept in touch with his birth mother, Isabel, after finding out the truth, but apparently she wasn’t comfortable making this public either.

“After it was revealed, she continued to be with the family, a partner, went to our house and visited,” Gracie said. “And we always treated her differently, as a one-of-a-kind nanny who later turned into Mother # 2, you know? We treated her nicely, but she never spoke about that fact, never about being our mother. We never talked about it openly.

“The only time I tried to talk to her about it, I was already married, I think it was 2006 or 2008, and she said no one in her family knew about it. She kept it a secret. Since she wanted it that way, I didn’t want to force anything by coming as a new son. I felt a little uncomfortable about opening up and being disappointed in something she could do, so I accepted that this would be a positive distance between us. “