When Georges St-Pierre sat down with UFC legend Royce Gracie for a recent podcast, the two did not take long to arrive at the sport’s most fundamental question: what an athlete truly needs to compete at the highest level.
For GSP, the answer was jiu-jitsu, and nothing less.
“I certainly believe jiu-jitsu is the most necessary discipline that you need to have in your tool bag,” St-Pierre told Gracie. “No matter if you’re a good boxer, wrestler, if you don’t have jiu-jitsu, you’re not going to survive in the octagon or in a ring for mixed martial art. Jiu-jitsu is mandatory. You need to have some a certain level of jiu-jitsu just in order to survive.”
The roots of that conviction stretch back to 1993, when a 16-year-old St-Pierre watched Gracie dismantle bigger, stronger opponents at the first UFC tournament on a rented VHS tape. His karate teacher had recently passed away and he was close to walking away from martial arts entirely. What he saw that night changed everything.
“Immediately when I saw you winning it, you inspired me. You changed my life,” GSP told Gracie during the recording. “I told my friend I was like, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna follow that man’s path and I want to become like him.”
At the time, combat sports were dominated by striking disciplines. Karate, kung fu, and kickboxing were considered the legitimate martial arts, while grappling drew little serious attention.
Gracie recalled: “Back in the day, those Inside Karate, Black Belt magazine, all the martial arts magazines, they never put jiu-jitsu, judo, wrestling. They never considered those as a martial art. It was all the standup, striking styles.”
What Gracie demonstrated at those early UFC events upended that view. Even with a black belt in karate at the time, St-Pierre admitted he did not always follow what he was watching.
“You had a weapon that nobody had at the time,” he told Gracie.
Gracie put the art’s place in the sport plainly.
He said, “I consider jiu-jitsu the spine of all the other martial arts. In the UFC today, if you take jiu-jitsu out, it becomes one style against the other. It becomes wrestling against boxing. Nobody has submission like we do.”
St-Pierre’s conclusion was equally direct. “Of course, you might be a striker,” he said, “but if you don’t have jiu-jitsu, you screwed up 100%.”
