The son of Pride Fighting Championships talent Ryan Gracie may make his way to MMA someday.
Teddy Riner, a three-time Olympic judo gold medalist at heavyweight as well as a 10-time world champion, wanted to change things up in his training regiment, leaving his home country of France to do so. Heading down to Brazil, he joined up with the Brazilian national judo team to sharpen his own skills alongside Paulo Caruso – a black belt in both judo and BJJ – to coordinate a short but intense four-day jiu-jitsu training series.
Among those who joined in were the sons of fan-favorite Brazilian MMA fighters Ryan Gracie and Marcio Cruz: Rayron Gracie and Renan Cruz. Born on Dec. 8, 2001, and not completely dwarfed by the 6-foot-8 Frenchman, Riner found Rayron to be a very suitable training partner for their cross-training sessions. Caruso spoke to Sherdog this week about his experience with Riner and Ryan Gracie’s lone son, Rayron.
“[Riner’s] competition weight is around 140kg [309 pounds] and he said he was a little overweight,” Caruso said. “When the Brazilian judo confederation called us to bring up some jiu-jitsu specialists, it was not very easy to find some guys from 90 to 110kg [198 to 243 pounds] to help four days [on] such a short notice, and definitely the son of Ryan [Gracie] and the son of ‘Pe de Pano’ Marcio Cruz were the ones who helped him the most with their guard skills.”
According to Caruso, Riner’s sought out tips for the guard and half guard positions, as the 32-year-old still actively competes around the world. Following their four-day seminar, Riner learned a lot of new tricks and, according to Caruso, wants to repeat the experience in his next trip to Brazil.
“His goal was not do heavy ground sparring, it was more [to] understand the mechanic of our jiu-jitsu and see how it could help his [skills],” Caruso noted. “Rayron and [Renan Cruz] were amazing at teaching him some new stuff. I truly hope this example of Riner is more used by the Brazilian judo and jiu-jitsu community. Judo and jiu-jitsu have a lot [that can] help each other.”
Both Rayron and Cruz won European champions in the purple belt category in 2021, before each earned their brown belt. A mere week after training with Riner, Rayron traveled up to Kings MMA, working with Rafael Cordeiro and cousin Neiman Gracie in California. Cordeiro in particular was impressed by the youngster.
“[Rayron] did a great training here with us last Monday. The guy is very talented, and is ready to migrate to MMA,” Cordeiro told Sherdog about the young up-and-comer.
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