UFC co-founder Rorion Gracie says he won’t watch UFC Freedom 250 at the White House on June 14, arguing he believes “unnecessary violence” is part of the sport’s modern format—even as he credits UFC’s evolution for its growth.
On June 14, an MMA event will move into a place built for ceremony and statecraft—the White House. For UFC co-founder Rorion Gracie, though, the setting won’t be enough to pull him in as a viewer.
Gracie says he won’t watch UFC Freedom 250, telling he admires the fighters who step into the ring, but drawing a clear line for himself. “Now the UFC guys, no disrespect,” he said. “I admire every single one of them. Anybody who climbs in the ring to fight, to get beat up, that’s a hero.”
He added that he is not trying to diminish anyone. “No, I’m not putting anybody down so that you’re very clear. I personally don’t watch the UFC anymore because I think it’s violence (is) unnecessary violence. That’s my point of view.”
The Gracie name carries history inside mixed martial arts. Rorion Gracie is a Grand Master of a jiu-jitsu style his family developed in Brazil. In explaining what drew him to grappling, he described a training and fighting approach aimed at control rather than punishment. “I had the elements in a very humane way to get into a clinch with my opponent. take him to the ground very gently. put him on the ground. mount on top of him. ” he said.
He described how opponents would struggle briefly—“He would struggle crazy for 30, 40 seconds, and then he got exhausted”—and said he didn’t treat the exchange as a search for damage. “I didn’t do a punch or hunt anybody.”
Gracie also pointed to what happened when he sparred. “As a result of that 95% of the guys who came to spar and challenged me became my friends and students. Chuck Norris included.”
For today’s UFC audience, the images are usually different. The violence and blood inside the Octagon—where fights are fought in a cage—helped the promotion build a global audience. Gracie acknowledged that reality, even as he said the modern version of the sport diverged from what he expected.
He described that shift in plain terms: “You’re taking the violence thing and what’s happened is it’s going to be interesting,” he said. “I mean, I find that really interesting. And I know they went their direction, but it’s not the direction it was intended to go.”
Still, he stopped short of calling the path wrong. “It doesn’t mean they did the wrong thing. In fact, the way they did it is what made it possible to grow so much.”
The event itself is being staged at the White House as UFC Freedom 250, landing on the calendar for June 14. Gracie is not simply watching from the sidelines—he says he will not watch at all.
Even with that distance from the product as it exists now, he insists he still feels close to the UFC’s story. He noted that he sold his share of the company in 1995. Later, he said Frank Fertita III and Lorenzo Fertita bought the UFC in 2001 and then hired Dana White as a key executive.
“‘The Fertitas and Dana White adopted the baby, sent him to Harvard and now the kid is running Wall Street,” Gracie said. ‘But I am still the father.’
In the background of his refusal to watch is a tension that runs through the sport’s modern history: UFC’s evolution into a mass-audience spectacle has powered its growth, even as Gracie keeps returning to his belief that the violence at its center is unnecessary.
UFC Rorion Gracie UFC Freedom 250 White House June 14 Dana White Fertita MMA violence jiu-jitsu