Publisher Avatar Renzo Gracie posted

THE INTERVIEW THAT CHANGED THE GAME - Part 2


During the interview, Renzo reversed the negative image of MMA, talking about family, ethical values and philosophical principles involved in the activity.
 
In the end, Pelley declared: “It became clear that fighting is a sport… And it's an incredible sport. You have the right to practice it, teach it and represent it."
 
RENZO: People tend to think that fighting is just violence. Violence is when someone drops a bomb and kills innocent children! The fight isn't violent, it's intense – like anything worthwhile. I told the journalist that ignorant people see the fight as something ugly, something that denigrates the human being. But in reality, fighting is present in EVERYTHING in life... You wake up in the morning and getting out of bed is already a battle! They think that fighting is a fool thing, when the main requirement for you to be really good in this sport is an intellect above average, given the complexity of the factors involved: technical, physical, psychological... You need to have a very broad vision of the human being to understand your opponent, to deal with your own emotions; must have the ability to devise sophisticated strategies to defend and attack. If you are limited in those aspects, you will have a short career, you will stop early... You will not establish yourself in this business. Fighting is a sport, it's a game, it's an ART – and its principles can and should be applied in all fields of life.
 
At the beginning of the interview, reiterating the old cliché, Pelley said that MMA was aggressive. Renzo responded right away: “Do you want to know what aggressiveness is?”
 
"What is aggressiveness?”, Pelley asked in a wry tone. Then the following dialogue happened:
 
RENZO: How many years have you been working as a journalist?
 
SCOTT PELLEY: 20 years.
 
RENZO: 20 years... Guiding this show and interviewing people, as you are doing with me today?
 
SCOTT PELLEY: Yes!
 
RENZO: Trust me: you are ten times more aggressive than I will ever be. I can imagine what it's like to have to reinvent yourself with each show: not repeating the questions you asked last week's interviewee, looking for new topics every day, pressuring people in search of controversial statements, manipulating viewers' emotions... Your work is aggressive – mine is not. You are much more violent than I am; and I tell you that if you belonged to my sport, you would be a star!
 
Pelley was silent at this point, not knowing what to say...
 
The icing on the cake came later, when Renzo won the fight against Miletich: because it was proof, in a clean and technically impeccable fight, that the culture and philosophy that Renzo had expounded in the interview led him to victory.
 
As soon as the recording was over, the first person who came to talk to Renzo was the show's producer, the man who had approached him the day before. Solly Granatstein paid for 1 year of academy in advance, enrolling on the spot. Today he is a Jiu-Jitsu black belt and trains with Renzo on 30th Street.