Bruce Buffer details participating in Gracie Challenge in 1991 and getting humbled by Royce Gracie

John Davis

Bruce Buffer has been with the UFC since UFC 10. But naturally he was more than pleased to meat the winner of the very first UFC event of all time – Royce Gracie. Gracie was recruited to represent the family instead of Rickson Gracie who was embroiled in a conflict with UFC founder Rorion Gracie.

Buffer went on the Logan Paul podcast and shared the humbling tale of meeting and rolling with the Gracie family representative.

While Buffer is a household name thanks to his stint as a UFC announcer, he has studied judo, Tang Soo Do and kickboxing. A concussion reportedly made him hang up the gloves around age 32, as per his wikipedia page.

Buffer told Paul:

“in 1991, there was a there is a famous director named John Milius who wrote Apocalypse Now. You know, did Red Dawn all these films? He was a buddy of my family’s in mind.”

“So he called me up because I was kickboxing really heavily. And he’s like, you know, above come over to this gym, you got to train some jujitsu. And I said, I tried jujitsu, but you’d never trained Gracie Jujitsu. Okay, so we go to Torrance, we go to the gym.”

“We go to the gym, out comes this six-foot-one, six-foot skinny kid, nice kid, 20 something years old. He goes ‘Hi, my name is Royce, come with me.’ He pulls me in a room, we’re alone, the rooms are padded. ”

“He goes, ‘I understand you’re a kickboxer. Come at me, take my head off.’ There’s nobody there. But, you know, the Gracie challenge, so whatever.”

“so I tap. And I’ll never forget it, he gets up in the guard, straightens out his gi and says ‘See, isn’t it nice not to get hit in the face?’ Wow.”

Buffer later added:

“And then when I saw him come out at UFC one with his hands on the back of one of his family members”

“I looked at my family and friends watching, ‘ See this skinny kid? He’s gonna beat everybody'”