So? The thread isn’t about who is the most famous.
You did ask if there was a family out there with a greater number of notable members. I think people are disputing just how notable these people are.
Yeah, I’m really not getting this.
I have heard of the Gracies as a family. I could actually name Royce through seeing him in MMA contests.
But how notable are the rest of these people? I mean, look at the page for Ralph for example. The only vaguely notable thing the guy has ever done is to fight 6 times in low level tournaments. He only fought for 10 years and then retired. He has done absolutely nothing else notable in his life except 6 low level fights.
This guy is the equivalent of Rocky Balboa before his big break. He is a competent, but not very good, pro-am fighter. Unless you followed MMA very closely you would never have heard of him. I doubt if most Brazilians have ever heard of him.
If this is the standard of “notable” then there would be thousands of families much more notable than this. We need to include all individuals who have ever competed in any event, including singing competitions, bike races etc. All individuals who have ever published anything at all (kids book, thesis etc). All individuals who ever did anything at all that ever got even a passing reference in print media.
Buy this standard of “notable” any family where a college education is the norm is going to beat the Gracies hands down. Heck by this standard my own family is more notable than the Gracies if I can include every competition they ever entered and everything they ever published and every newspaper mention.
Even better example. Look at the page for Rillion.
The guy has earned a black belt in martial arts and run his own dojo. That is it. He has never fought competitively, never published anything, never won anything.
This guy just is not notable. The evidence for that can be seen in the fact that the only references are webpages devoted to the Gracie family. The guy has never even warranted a newspaper paragraph. The only time anybody mentions him is as part of his family.
If this is our standard of notable: owning your own business and reaching some degree of competence in a sport, then almost any family will have more notable members than the Gracies. My own family is certainly much more notable, containing at least 4 professional sport people, dozens of business owners and so forth.
Consider me unimpressed that some guy got a black belt and started his own business. Not really notable.
I agree. As far as I can tell, the Gracie family members only achieved fame in one relatively obscure sport. Members of the other families mentioned (Kennedys, Tafts, Rockefellers) have achievements in multiple occupations.
I guess this is the heart of what you guys don’t understand. They didn’t achieve fame in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, they invented it. And it’s not an “obscure” sport by an stretch of the imagination. That’s just hilariously ignorant. I typically expect a little more worldly awareness out of this place, but I shouldn’t be too surprised. The Straight Dope Hive Mind has concluded once again that “I haven’t heard of it, so it’s irrelevant” (or in Blake’s case that his family is even more notable – I challenge you to name your family, Blake, and I guarantee I can prove you wrong).
In any case, it’s clear that turning the topic into an argument in which you can make yourself feel Right is, as usual, far more urgent than intelligent or rational discussion, so, what’s the freakin’ point. Thought I could get an interesting discussion going but you guys pissed in the Kool Aid again. Thanks.
The only Gracies I know about are Gracie Allen and NYC’s Gracie Mansion . . . neither of which has to do with the fabled Gracie family. Perhaps it should be called the most notable family with the lowest profile.
No, objectively it is an extremely obscure sport.
The number of participants worldwide probably number in the tens of thousands. At a real stretch it might be hundreds of thousands. Compared to mainstream sports such as soccer or even third tier sports such as darts or boxing, it is obscure.
The number of hours of broadcast or the number of column inches devoted to covering the sport is trivial. The only time most people will ever even be exposed to BJJ is when a BJJ practitioner enters a MMA comp. MMA in itself is an obscure sport. The vast majority of people will have no idea what I mean when I say MMA and most people have never seen a fight. So BJJ is a minor component of an already obscure sport.
There are probably sports that are more obscure than BJJ, but cheese rolling is the only one that springs to mind.
No, nobody is saying that. We are saying that somebody who’s sole claim to fame is opening a MA dojo is not in any way notable. Somebody who has fought 6 low level fights is hardly more notable.
The question we are asking you is "Why do you consider these guys notable? It can’t be because they are in Wikipedia, surely?
Why, for example, is Rillion Gracie more noteworthy than any of the numerous other black belts who have opened their own dojos who do not has a Wikipedia page??
You claim to want a factual answer to this question, but you won’t define the question. What is your standard of notable? If it is just Wikipedia pages then that question has already been answered. However, we have also pointed out why that is a flawed standard of notability.
If you have some other standard of notability then share it with us and explain why opening a small business makes Rillian Gracie noteworthy.
What is your family name, Blake? I want to know what you guys have done that is more notable than creating a sport that tens of thousands of people practice, and far more watch and follow. That’s not to mention that they were essential to the genesis of modern MMA and founded the UFC, which routinely does 1,000,000 in pay per view buys + thousands in attendance + people watching in bars + people pirating + people following the headlines on the web or in newspapers. I want to go my local library and check out a book about you guys, or to the grocery store I shop at and pick up your magazine. I want to keep my eyes peeled for people wearing your t-shirts and tattoos. Scratch that-- I want to go to a country a few thousand miles away from where you guys are from, a country that speaks another language, and do those things.
You are now conflating two totally separate issues.
Nobody disputes that *some *of the Gracies are rightly notable, much more notable than anybody in my family for the last 4 generations. Nobody disputes that BJJ as a sport is moderately notable, though still not in the same league as darts or curling.
But you asked a question pertaining to the notability of *all individual *family members. And most of them are no more notable than most of my family.
Do you really think that that you can go “to the grocery store I shop at and pick up [a] magazine” about Rillian Gracie? No, of course you cannot.
We can define “noteworthy” as meaning “started own off shoot of family business and became moderately succsessful and skilled in that business”. That is the only standard by which Rillian Gracie is noteworthy. Using that standard however my family also has numerous noteworthy members, as does any moderately successful family.
You asked a question about the notability of 66 members of the family. The notability of 3 or 4 family members has no bearing at all on the notablity of the other 63. 63 or so of the Gracies are essentially total unknowns that only a handful of people in the world would recognise.
If your question is whether some of the Gracies are the most noteworthy people in the world, then the answer is “No, of course not”. If your question is whether the family contains more noteworthy individuals than other families, then you will need to explain what you mean by noteworthy.
Based on the inclusion of people like Rillian Gracie on your list, I have to conclude that the answer is “No”. Any family that is even vaguely successful will contain a majority of people as noteworthy as Rillian Gracie. The fact that 3 or four Gracies are genuinely noteworthy doesn’t mean that the family contains a lot of noteworthy members. It just means that 3 or 4 are noteworthy.
Sorry Cisco, the Gracies are about as notable as the King Family. Your standard of notability is just too low.
Rodney?
Don?
Bernard?
Kong?
That’s it. That is all the guy has ever done.
Can someone explain to me how this person is more noteworthy than any high school jock?
He has won a handful of second-tier sporting competitions. He works in his father’s shop. He appears on his mother’s home movies.
That’s it. In toto. That is the guys total resume.
Can you explain precisely how this is this notable Cisco?
Nitpick, but King Kong is a member of the Kong family. The other’s are only related by marriage I think 
I think you will find that the giant anthropoid inhabitants of skull island use the same naming system as those of east Asia, where the family name is placed first followed by the given name.
That may be, but the moniker King was first applied by Carl Denham. The locals just called him Kong. I don’t know if that was his given or family name. But he was in show biz, so there could be some genes shared with the King Family anyway.
Ooo, hit a sore spot, I see.
But doesn’t this thread really belong on the IMHO board? The question is based on individual opinions of what constitutes “notable” and whether this one sport is or is not so incredibly important that achievements like becoming president of a superpower pale in comparison…not exactly GQ material.
This us one of those times I feel the board is too old and out of touch to debate a subject. ASK ANY American male 18-30 who the Gracies are and what MMA is, and they will know. Ask ANY brazilian of either sex and any age, and they will know the Gracies and bjj and vale tudo (the Gracie family has been in newspapers for almost 100 years in Brazil and are prominent businessmen). MMA is one of the fastest growing soorts in the world, expanding into many countries it was previously illegal in, drawing higher PPVs and regularly available free on network television. Hardly as obscure as you would think visiting the SDMB.
Whether individual Gracies are noteable is worth debating, but calling them or MMA obscure is a serious reach and reflects the skewed demographics of the board more than reality.
I’m fairly certain most of you know The Big Bopper-to me he’s a guy who died in a plane crash, completely not noteworthy to me. But he mattered to a lot of people older than me.
I think I’m going by what Jay Leno said: “You’re famous when my mother has heard of you.”
There is some truth to this, but the thread title says noteable, not famous. In my opinion the bar to be noteable is lower than being famous. Arab inventor Al Jazari is noteable for inventing the camshaft in the 13th century, but he’s definitely not famous for it, at least here in the west.