Eddie Bravo vs Royler Gracie 2: A Grappling Super-Fight of Epic Magnitude
By Daniel S. Fletcher

The realm of fightsport is inhabited by some of the most nostalgic sports watchers on the planet; with more “what if’s”, “ands” and “buts” and subjective speculation than is to be seen amongst the aficionados of “Unidentified Flying Objects” conspiracy theory. It is all-encompassing; the debate fuels greater interest, which generates attention and garners profit; the subject of speculation subsequently stars in a super-show to satiate fan interest and lo and behold, that’s where we get trilogies and quadrilogies; the Vicious Circle of mixfight.

To use one notable – if negative – example; did the world truly need a rematch of Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr? Decidedly not; when they first clashed at 72kg (middleweight) the two stars occupied a place in the alphabet soup – WBA, WBO, WBC, IBF et al – between 160-68lbs which had Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn, Gerald McClellan, James Toney, Mike McCallum and more swirling and sloshing around in the diluted porridge of its viscous grunge.

Did the world need additions to the Israel Vazquez/Rafael Marquez trilogy? Yes. A quintology wasn’t enough; much like Katsunori Kikuno, both the unfortunately named Isi Vazquez and Juan Manuel’s younger cousin should be on every card, in every promotion, in every country, everywhere, siempre. If the idealistic and abstract notion that is ‘justice’ truly existed as a tangible in the machinations of the world; Hollywood would pay as much attention to the Holodomor as to the Holocaust, Palestine wouldn’t have been cynically annihilated on overwhelmingly false pretexts – much like Anglo-American Middle East realpolitik – and there would exist a fight promotion which simply served to tour the world, staging fights featuring endless Vazquez/Marquez contests, Eubank versus Benn the saga, Katsunori Kikuno versus… anyone – I’d happily watch him shadow box – and Minowaman running a gauntlet of fire against the oversized manbears of the world; an endless succession of Super Hluk freak fights with ‘The Punk’ squaring off against the local Jimmy Armbriz in a scintillating spectacle for the people…

Alas, that promotion exists only in the imagination; natural habitat of the novelist and the reader alike.

In much the same vein as those aforementioned, the nostalgic appetite and speculative frenzy of fightsport has been whetted with a long-awaited rematch of a grappling super-fight of renown; 10th planet jiu jitsu founding black belt Eddie Bravo vs Royler Gracie; a standard bearer of The First Family of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and a man who’s delivered more chokeholds and armlocks than the most racist policeman in Detroit. He’s snapped more limbs than snowboarding. He’s grappled with more sweating, throbbing men than my ex-girlfriend – and that’s prodigious.

And he’s all set to rematch the Bravo in a classic encounter; EDDIE B vs ROYLER G: Malfunction At The Junction!

While the Mixed Martial Arts fan or follower will be familiar with the admittedly infrequent work of Royler G, many may have missed mention of the 10th Planet founder. While it’s unlikely, given Rogan’s prominence as a UFC commentator and their ugly, obnoxious spirit at the apex of the sporting mountain – the evil Napoleon Bonaparte spreading their globalist sickness to Asian shores at the expense of more entertaining products – it is still possible that repeated references to ‘twisters’, or the origin of the ‘rubber guard’ may have passed you by. So, here’s a glowing endorsement of the 10th planet man.

~Bravo, Sir: Eddie The Sentient Being & His Offering To This World



Edward Bravo is an upstanding man; let scripture state, I like the cut of his jib.

A militant cannabis user and an enlightened soul in the ceaseless war against the corporate propaganda of the velvet fascism of free enterprise; Bravo founded the 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu system, named after the is-it-isn’t-it 10th planet believed to exist at the outer reaches of our Solar System of our Milky Way… and let the record state; contrary to what you may or may not have been taught at the laughable educational paradigm of “school”, Pluto is no longer considered a planet by the scientific community. But fear not; all the other Roman Gods remain; though they were basically stolen from the Greeks and renamed. Hector’s cousin Aeneas escaped the burning ruins of Troy to found Ancient Rome; this was history’s revenge on Agamemnon, Odysseus et al. But to the classicist, the next planets up from us are ‘Ares’ and ‘Zeus’. Roman slags.

As the picture clearly indicates, Bravo is an enlightened fellow when it comes to the green; the cannabinoids located all over his body – as in yours, and mine – are evidently, regularly stimulated with the help of God’s introspection plant; the ultimate ego-reduction tool.
Well, perhaps not ultimate, per se; the extended psychedelic-empathogen-entheogen-phenethylamine-tryptamine family sit ‘high’ and mighty upon the throne of empathy-boosting consciousness expansion.

Alas, Tim Leary’s dream is dead; Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and more chronicled its untimely demise and the ‘Death of the American Dream’ some twenty-years and more before my birth… and besides; with the evils of free enterprise and the cynicism of the corporatocracy old boys network of financial elitism and big business rule, you’d have to be fucking asleep to believe in the bastard dream anyhow.

But consciousness expansion lives on; and on the evidence of Eddie Bravo and 10th Planet family member, UFC commentator et al Joe Rogan and their podcasting work, the often consciousness-related discourse suggests that while the Controlled Substances Act may have killed off a ‘movement’, its spirit lives on, and refreshingly, among positive, successful people; Men on the Move, just sick enough to be totally confident…

These people cannot be mocked and derided as would the average acid casualty of The Love Generation; ostensibly a broken generation of mentally crippled malcontents with broken dreams, unable to readjust into the ’70s and the advent of less cathartic times. No, nay, never; Eddie Bravo and Sir Joseph Rogan are successful, driven, physically and mentally high functioning people and a credit to the more idealistic, pathos-filled side of the worldview platform.

His crowning achievement in the grappling realm came at Royler Gracie’s expense in 2003; the quite excellent Metamoris, in their unbridled ambition to positively hegemonise the submission grappling world as a ‘super-show’, will allow for Royler to gain his vengeance, a decade in the making.

While Eddie’s prospective deal with Molino Glass bongs ultimately collapsed – likely due to the ugly visage of Andrew Leone’s chosen email avatars, who could want that little face popping up on your screen every day? - his militant cannabis stance, the verbal vibes sent through the airwaves of he and MMA’s own “Good Old J.R” – Rogan being slightly less rotund and Oklahoman than Ross – and in founding and creating his own very real niche and place in the annals of grappling, this site offers salutations, hugs and hi-fives in the warmest fashion.

METAMORIS.com shall offer the live stream of his scintillating submission super-fight showdown, and we advise that with glass fashionably close to hand, mescaline pellets aplenty and a keen interest in the intricacies of ‘zhiuu zhiiiitzu‘ (Brazilian for ‘jiu jitsu’) that you settle down in front of the screen for this excellent malfunction at the junction in March!

“All the world’s a stage, and all men and women merely players,” was Sir William Shakespeare’s philosophy in the otherwise somewhat overlooked ‘As You Like It’. “They each have their exits and entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” Last time these two notable names met in martial combat, the entrance, part and exit alike belonged to a victorious Bravo, and the classic theatrical trait of The Man Seeking Vengeance fell to Royler’s remit. On March 29th 2014, we shall see when the curtains raise, just which part Bravo and Royler are allotted to playing this time around, for whom the bell tolls, and which man or player be granted vindication in his exit from the Metamoris stage.



Samurai Life

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This is a rematch all grappling fans have been waiting for, me included. I can't wait to see this go down.