After a much-applauded speech from doctor and friend Pedro Valente, Carlos Robson Gracie stepped forth for a warm embrace. That was the cue for Rickson Gracie to pass the red belt son of Carlos Gracie the microphone. “Helio Gracie would say this is one of the family’s bravest,” said Valente as the next speaker entered the scene.
The bespectacled Master Robson stepped up onto the small stage covered in red cloth and delivered his speech.
“First off I’d like to say it brings me joy to have so many friends here in one place, after more than 50 years or our being together. I owe my life to Helio Gracie. He was the one who brought me up; he was a father to me. But I truly owe him my life.
“When a tough guy would show up at the gym doubting Jiu-Jitsu, the professor would ask the challenger to choose one of his instructors to test, in the famous challenge matches. Since I was scrawny, the smallest of them all, the task always came to me; that’s why I was the one to fight most in there.
“We often disagreed, and he would say: “Robson is very valiant, but is quite the hustler…” After 1964, when the Gracie Academy on Rio Branco was frequented by military men, ministers and other high authorities of the military coup, I chose another path; I chose to help my friends in their leftist revolt. Or in other words, I went against the academy’s student base.
“One day I showed up on the beach and started seeing all my subversive friends coming up on the sand, and discovered there was a plot to assassinate the minister Mario Andreazza, who would play volleyball there. I argued, fought and managed to avert the worst.
“But I ended up in jail some time later, bound with my son Renzo’s yellow belt at home. They took me to be tortured, and I saw the unthinkable. In there, nobody respected authority, and I saw a general be slapped by a sergeant. Helio Gracie was the one to intervene, with Figuiredo (then president) and general Sylvio Frota, and saved me. One month after Helio came looking for me, they left me on a highway. Of the 50 to have been imprisoned with me, 49 died. Only Robson Gracie got out alive.
“Senator Arthur Virgilio’s mother was the one to pick me up, and Helio took me home. Rickson, Rorion, don’t think he was more father to you than to me, to Carlson, Geysa, Rose, Sonja, Oneica. One cannot build something solid, put the brick to the binder, without the soft part and the hard part. My brothers, we can never disassociate from Carlos and Helio Gracie, the brother who along with Osvaldo, Gastao and George Gracie, carried Jiu-Jitsu to the success it enjoys around the world today.
“And, if we are here today, we have all of you to thank, you young and experienced Jiu-Jitsu practitioners. Were it not for the thousands of followers of Carlos and Helio Gracie, our family and our art would be a legend today, a legend like the mermaids of the Amazon and that North-South railroad, which disappeared before ever being built. Thank you.”
