“All these feelings that you get before you fight or when you’re fighting or training for a fight, it makes me feel alive, and I love that feeling.” However, that’s not a feeling Kron Gracie could repeat for the post-fight hangover, especially after one such dizzying spell turned into a fatal nightmare for the BJJ practitioner turned MMA fighter.

Following in the footsteps of the legendary Gracie family, which brought the Brazilian twist to modern-day jiu-jitsu, Kron Gracie went on to have a decent stint in the UFC before suffering a career-ending skid. But what has truly turned heads was the aftermath of a fight, which almost ended it all for one of BJJ’s greatest icons.

Kron Gracie recalls a breakfast turned macabre episode

As ‘Ice Cream Kron’ joined the Ariel Helwani Show, the conversation steered over to a random morning breakfast 8 or 9 years ago, which was supposedly after a fight, when the dizzying spell began. “I went outside and passed out. I saw parts of my life pass in front of my face in random little clips, and then I saw the white light. I was like, ‘oh s–t, that’s the white light. Don’t go to the white light,'” he shared.

Gracie claimed that it was somewhere he felt repelled towards for reasons subconscious to him. That’s when he opened his eyes to his friend pumping his chest to bring him back to consciousness. However, he hadn’t just passed out; there was reportedly puke all over his jacket, which he might have thrown up as the dizzying knocked him out of his senses.

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Here’s where the story takes an even stranger, almost morbid turn. The BJJ practitioner revealed that as he took off his jacket, a “huge ball of steam” wisped out into the air. The details of that steam or the ‘white light’ remained under the radar. Even the doctor ruled it out as something Gracie wouldn’t have to “worry about”.

If we ask Gracie, he blames over-caffeine intake right after his fight as one of the plausible causes. But what’s more important is the urgency his friend, who stepped in at the nick of time, showed. Without him, we might have lost one of the BJJ greats forever.

But that frightening episode wasn’t the only turning point in Gracie’s journey. In the years that followed, he began rethinking not just his lifestyle, but his very approach to jiu-jitsu.

How Kron Gracie changed his BJJ game

The BJJ practitioner made his professional MMA debut over a decade ago, in 2014, submitting his opponent via armbar 65 seconds into the first round. And with that began the reign of Gracie’s unconventional pro-BJJ fighting style. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t sustain some significant strikes, especially for a game that relied on pulling guard.

As smart a strategy as that is in a grappling match, in an MMA setting against elite striking, guard-pulling is the perfect recipe for a devastating KO/TKO loss. And that’s exactly what happened in his contract-ending loss against Bryce Mitchell in 2024 at UFC 310, which had even his own family criticizing him.

After Mitchell shut down a disastrous guard-pull attempt from Gracie, he slammed the latter in a knockout finish. With that loss, Kron Gracie’s UFC spell ended, failing to have as decorated a career as his legendary kinsman Royce Gracie. But that also marked a revolution in Gracie’s BJJ style; he discovered how some jiu-jitsu techniques don’t translate well under a punishing MMA environment.

“He was in the top 15, and I knew it was going to be a tough fight, but I was very confident and I was doing well, and I had a lot of confidence in my guard and pulling guard, and I just made a mistake and I paid for it,” Gracie’s response was straightforward and ready to take accountability for his loss.

And so, from a brush with danger to a career-shaping knockout, Kron Gracie’s journey stands as a stark reminder that even legends must adapt or be left behind. How do you think that shaped the future of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in MMA?