MMA veteran Roger Gracie hasn’t been in the cage since last year when he went against Rodrigo with an armbar, but the fight was interesting enough to consider him to be one of the fighters in the upcoming event in Metamoris.
The ten-time jiu-jitsu champion black belter has been considered one of the best grapplers in the MMA history. With this impressive reputation, Gracie admitted that he was offered to fight current UFC heavyweight champ Fabricio Werdum in Metamoris, but nothing was finalized.
“I still have plans to do superfights in jiu-jitsu. I spoke with [Metamoris founder] Ralek [Gracie] a few times and he was seeing the possibility of doing a match with Werdum, but said the UFC wouldn’t let him do it, so I don’t know. He also wanted [Marcus Almeida] ‘Buchecha’ but he’s still injured, so I don’t know,” Gracie said.
Gracie actually had fought Werdum for three times now. He lost the first bout against the champion back in the World Championship when they were still purple-belt holders. The second was a victory for him during the Pan American Championship where they were already brown belts. The last one was a decade ago, where he finished the fight with a rear-naked choke. With all of these, Gracie was able to maintain his record with only one loss in jiu-jitsu in the last ten years.
“[Fabricio]’s a great athlete. It would be an interesting match.”
The jiu-jitsu champ revealed that Metamoris is eyeing April for the seventh edition of their event. Unfortunately, Gracie might not be able to make it to this date.
“If there’s a MMA fight around that date, it won’t be possible to do both,” Gracie said.
Gracie hasn’t tried fighting in MMA since 2014 when he was able to win over James McSweeney in his ONE Championship debut. However, Gracie said that he is expecting to be back inside the cage during the first half of the year. Now that he has already fully healed from his training injury last October, Gracie expressed his desire to get at least two fights this year.
“I spoke with my manager and he’s talking with the promotion to get my next fight done. I don’t have a date yet, but it’s probably April or May. We will probably get something done in the upcoming days,” Gracie said.
The Brazilian fighter also said that he doesn’t expect to finish the whole five rounds when he comes back inside the cage.
“I spoke with them last year about that. They said I had to fight one more time before fighting for the belt, so I don’t think my next fight will be for the title,” Gracie added.