In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Brazilian jiu-jitsu prodigy champion Kron Gracie confirmed he would be getting into MMA in the very near future. Rumours had been flying around the jiu-jitsu world for a while and given Kron’s fighting lineage I have to admit the thought had engulfed me at times. It’s not just the idea of the son of BJJ legend Rickson Gracie squaring off in a cage that gripped me, it’s the idea Kron’s been putting out there--that jiu-jitsu alone might be enough to win an MMA fight, even in 2014.

At first I thought his suggestion smacked of familial arrogance. A self-absorbed air was an enduring feature of Kron’s father’s fighting persona back in the day--though in fairness, I guess confidence bordering on conceit is a part of most fighters’ mental composition. Then I considered that Kron’s theory might just be a folly of youth. But then I started to ponder it seriously. What if it wasn’t arrogance or Kron believing his own hype; what if the guy really is the fucking BJJ messiah, here to redeem MMA by taking it back to its early days? It’s been said before. By Eddie Bravo, for example, who was himself repeating the words of Jean Jacques Machado. Could it be that Kron Gracie really is the one to restore balance to the Force and turn MMA back into a sport dominated by BJJ?

The days when jiu-jitsu was a mystery are long gone--the Royce Gracie days. Today every fighter trains and uses BJJ, and like boxing and wrestling it has become merely a component. The massive weight of evidence is that any kind of single-style fighter is likely to find him or herself badly outmatched in an MMA fight today. This is the age of the mixed martial arts all-rounder.

But even the most committed attempts to broaden and adapt your skills are no guarantee of success. Demian Maia’s remarkable journey from grappler extraordinaire to entirely ordinary kickboxer culminated recently in a defeat to Rory MacDonald, a young man who is the embodiment of the ultra-modern fighter: master of nothing but an eight out of 10 at virtually everything. Recent years have been hard on purists of all stripes.

And yet in the face of all this reality the romantic notion of what the young Kron Gracie and his jiu-jitsu could achieve in MMA still endures for me, helped along by the undeniable mythical quality not just of Kron, but of the very idea of Kron as a kind of Rickson 2.0. And the narrative is already there as if it has been storyboarded: The pre-ordained son of the all-conquering fighter, grandson of the great generalissimo Helio, has finally come of age in his 25th year.

And there’s more. The mats may have been his canvas so far, but Kron’s style was forged with mixed martial arts in mind. The grappling game he's crafted is pure, economical, and simple. Basics upon basics, carried out exquisitely. He is far more Roger Gracie then Miyao brother and has never capitulated to any of the flashy, faddish, and highly specialised embellishments for which sport jiu-jitsu is increasingly and frustratingly known.

Not for Kron Gracie is the gratuitous use of the berimbolo, or a heavy reliance on the 50/50, inverted, spider, or De La Riva guards. He takes people down, mounts them, takes their backs. He arm-bars and rear naked chokes opponents and possesses a picture-perfect guillotine. Nor is he a staller. His guard, when he pulls it, is active and functional--the first step in a route to submission attempts, not a kind of combative life raft he’s content to just hang out in. He's lost matches on points in his kamikaze hunt for submissions.

This question is could Kron hang on his feet as well? Rickson did, albeit using a kind of semi-comical arms-extended guard, and he did it against some decent strikers, always with the aim of surviving their blows before clinching with them, downing them, and finally smothering them. To enhance his boxing Kron has recently taken up with the Diaz brothers, which could only bode well because everything the Diazs touch is brilliant. If enough of the Diaz boxing method rubs off on Kron, and he can use it to tee up takedowns rather than rely on it, he might go somewhere.

So can Kron bring a purer form of jiu-jitsu back the cage? Perhaps. But the whole thing leaves me torn. Certainly the idea that Kron might flourish is appealing, but if he does fight and gets trounced, what then? If he flourishes in the east and then turns out like Shinya Aoki in the west ... what becomes of the whole messiah narrative? And will it mean once and for all the death of jiu-jitsu as a stand-alone fighting art in the world of MMA?

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