Kazushi Sakuraba, the Gracie Hunter, certainly helped with his God complex. Took Royce some time to come back later to only win by decision. Interesting part is that many MMA people train in judo or BJJ for ground but Sakuraba comes from catch wresting w/ some moves straight out of fake wrestling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazushi_Sakuraba

Far as Royce, I'll give you one more thing since you're a fan of his. I was one of few invited w/ local media to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings with him. I don't allow pictures but somebody got one of him, me, and local Krav expert staring at his laptop. What we were looking at was his second (or first?) great love: guns. He had a collection of pistols, rifles, SMG... huge collection. The neatest thing... I'd love to know if there's public copies... is pictures of his many kids each posing with one trying to look cool. The are individual ones and whole set together like an army. The bes though was the little girl with the SMG at low, side-ways position with mean look on her face but looking adorable as hell instead. She was just too cute. I immediately thought she could've been Hit Girl on Kick Ass if she was a bit older. Also, given how Gracie family trains their own, she might also live up to it in real life more than most. Kyra comes to mind.

"I've fought some hapkido guys back before groundfighting got big who had no problem with takedown defense. You'd get rocked with a back kick or a knee to the head unless you nailed the takedown."

Mirko Cro Cop comes to mind as a TKD fighter with great, takedown defense that did well in professional MMA. I've done well in personal fights on that with background of Shotokan karate, military, and ninjutsu styles. Thing is, a good enough grappler will eventually grab you and probably take you down. Most fighting environments are simply not open enough to dodge the person forever. Or you trip over something in heat of the moment and need ability to fight from bottom. Or their buddy jumps on you as you're winning (too many times...). The average, street thug can be defeated with something as simple as Krav Maga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcu2sRnIlo

There were things I noticed when studying Kung Fu, esp Chi Na. They correctly recognized principles such as surprise (partial intent of motions), hitting vital points, conserving energy, and enemy confusion. What they missed that Western, Japanese, and Thai styles identified was essentially the most efficient response to a situation that was easiest to learn. The Kung Fu and other systems like it add too much complexity with too little in terms of what's simple and effective.

Take Krav. Most defense situations are defeated with a tiny number of moves or principles that are reused in many ways across diverse number of situations. Likewise, most stand-up fighters (outside instant KO's) can be defeated with ground fighting. Much of that can be done with essentially a blue belt in BJJ with something like Gracie Combatives from my understanding as a non-BJJ guy (so fact-check it). I predicted based on this that most MMA fights in UFC would be won with a small number of moves whose attack and defense could be mastered in many configurations to give an advantage. This turned out true with many UFC fighters training in such a way to maximize ability to exploit that. Muay Thai having small number of attacks but devastating fighters was one of my hints. Likewise, I won almost all my fights going for the throat with hits or sleeper holds (not "rear-naked" cuz I keep my clothes on when attacked). So, I think a lot of these styles have too much unnecessary complexity, they miss ability to apply few techniques to many situations, they don't spar enough outside their style, they don't model real-world attacks enough, and many (including Shotokan) waste too much energy. Also, ninjutsu teaches us deception can go a long way. I always taught to imitate kung fu, drunkeness, arms crossed like I'm pacifist, etc to encourage enemies to do something stupid to expose themselves to a fight ender. Planned to illustrate it in MMA before a brain injury outside of fighting cost me my memory, reflexes, pain tolerance, and other stuff. Bad shit.

Anyway, I give you one last thing tonight you might find interesting as it was my end goal in MMA outside an Absolute Championship over all weight classes. I was going to try anyway haha. The thing I liked was Mas Oyama's 100-man kumite. I planed to attempt to achieve it plus see if anyone would do a MMA version. That maybe 10-25 man or up to 100 within three hours which I think was Helios record fight against Santos. Hell, I'll give you Kimura vs Santos too as Vale Tudo used to be wild. :)

For first, type 100 man kumite into Google to get many interesting results. I lost my original reference.

http://judoinfo.com/kimura2/