MMA: The 25 Most Influential Fighters in MMA History | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

Let's take a trip down memory lane.

An undisclosed number of years ago, when I was but a young lad, I remember taking part in a conversation one day around the lunch table in our school cafeteria.

That conversation went something like this:

Dude I was talking to:  "Dude, we rented this video the other day? It was, like, this no-rules fighting. You can punch and kick and stab and pull out people's eyes. And kill people! In the ring! It's called UFC."

Me: "Oh yeah?"

Dude: "Yeah. And the winner of the whole thing was this guy, right, who was, like, a lot smaller than all the other guys? But he knew jiu-jitsu?  And he broke everybody's arms."

Me:  "Sounds gross."

Dude:  "Sounds AWESOME, is what it sounds like."

Me:  "You make a good counterpoint."

Not long after, I found myself watching Dan Severn destroy Oleg Taktarov on a fuzzy copy of UFC 5. I wonder how many other conversations just like that one took place in classrooms and cafeterias and dorm rooms and barrooms and press rooms during those early days of the sport alllll the way back in the mid-1990s.

The Gracie family conceived the UFC in part as a way of selling their style of submission fighting to a generation of Karate Kid devotees who realized (in some cases, maybe too late) that tae kwon do, great martial art form though it was and is, wasn't ideally suited to helping them on the playground after school. Brazilian jiu-jitsu, on the other hand, was The Great Equalizer.  Suddenly, it didn't matter (at least in theory) how big you were or how hard you punched. Suddenly, it was more about what you knew than what you benched. 

In doing all of this, the Gracies also introduced the concept of pitting different fighting styles against each other. "Bloodsport" come to life.  A "mix" of martial arts, if you will. 

So with these two things taken together, Royce Gracie and his family didn't just make the UFC. They made the UFC possible.

In recent years, Royce Gracie's star has faded, as the perception spreads that his brand of jiu-jitsu is outmoded. Detractors point to the gi he wore in the cage, wagging their fingers in the air and opining that Gracie would never have been so effective without it. 

That might all be true, but it might all miss the point. 

You don't diminish Bill Russell because he couldn't have posted up Shaq, or Walter Johnson because he couldn't strike out modern hitters, or Knute Rockne because that forward pass of his is just so yesterday. 

When you get right down to it, when you talk about standing on the shoulders of those who came before you, it's not hard to make the case that MMA really stands on just one set of shoulders, which belong to Royce Gracie. He's not an influence. He's the influence.

And all these years after that conversation in the cafeteria, I still wouldn't want to fight him.