Kelly Slater reveals thirty-year friendship with world’s greatest fighter Rickson Gracie

Two titans of world sport connect via their love of surfing at Slater's Lemoore wave pool.

As far as titans of sport go, there ain’t nobody higher bigger than greatest surfer of all time Kelly Slater and human wrecking ball Rickson Gracie, the man who brought legitimacy to the once-obscure martial art jiujitsu.

Rickson Gracie, four hundred and 0 in the fight game is a man so good at beating hell out of other human beings, it was his half-bro Royce who was chosen to represent jiujitsu at the UFC. Rickson, too good looking and too brutal, would’ve left the men unconscious and the women in a terrific state of arousal. 

A while back, Kelly Slater, without a hell of a lot of prompting, advised parents to put their kids in jiujitsu “before any other sport.” 

Forget surf, get ‘em rolling. he said. It’ll teach ‘em confidence and smash their ego. 

“There’s something about it that puts you in your place.”

Slater got turned onto the art of human chess and the various ways to buckle a man in 1992 on one of his first trips to Brazil; ended up getting pally with Rickson Gracie when the BJJ legend moved to California, swapping boards for private lessons. 

“I wish that I had grown up training Jiujitsu,” said Slater, who would be put to the sword soon after in an ironic turn by Peter Maguire, black belt and ghost-writer of the Rickson Gracie biography Breathe.

Maguire described Slater’s approach on the mats as “aggressive and competitive.” 

Which you can see below in this old clip of Slater and boxing guru Jason Parillo. 

The pair start on the knees, which is pretty lame ‘cause takedowns are the best part of grappling and it’s why you should spend your high school years wrestling and not throttling cones, although, I’d guess Slater didn’t want his career prematurely shortened ’cause of busted knees.

Slater flies into a blast takedown, Parillo sweeps the champ, Slater jumps on a guillotine, almost gets Parillo’s back, does a kinda weird frontside escape etc. As the buzzer goes and Parillo lets go, Slater jumps into mount and claims victory.

Compelling. 

Anyway, yesterday, Slater wowed his millions of fans with screenshots of a FaceTime call with Rickson Gracie, who was a guest at his Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California. 

Although footage of Rickson Gracie, who is sixty four, surfing the tank has yet to surface, the clip below shows he ain’t so bad for a man whose spent his life fighting, has two artificial hips etc.