Bleacher Report's Top 25 MMA Prospects for 2017, Part 1

Division: Featherweight
Promotion: Rizin FF
Record: 4-0
Age: 28
Country: Brazil  

It can be easy to giggle at Rizin, with its grandma-fighting and so on, but deep down there are some serious things afoot. One of those serious things is Kron Gracie.

If nothing else, he gets the award for the coldest walkout of 2016. If you watch his Rizin walkout from New Year's Eve, with its Pride-style theatrics and his father—someone named Rickson Gracie—in tow, and you don't get chicken skin, consult your dermatologist. 

It's an orthopedist most of Gracie's opponents have needed. Four fights, four submission wins for the jiu-jitsu and judo black belt. A huge featherweight, Gracie competed at 180 pounds during his grappling days. So, yeah, he usually has a size advantage.

Only one opponent has survived the first round with Kron, and that was Tatsuya Kawajiri, fresh off a UFC run that saw him give fighters like Cub Swanson all they could handle.

There will be no stalling from Ice Cream Kron. He's out to submit you and has any number of ways to do it.

Is his boxing great? No, it's not great. Don't let his training with the Diaz brothers and Gilbert Melendez throw you off. Yes, Kron trains with them all, but you can't see a lot of the evidence in his clunky standup. It's a pretty tried-and-true playbook: mainly leg kicks and dirty boxing, all just formality until Gracie can jump guard.

To hear Rickson Gracie tell it, that isn't going to change.

"He’s not doing crosstraining to work on his weaknesses," Rickson said of Kron. "He won’t start boxing, kickboxing, wrestling. He will use his jiu-jitsu to neutralize the wrestler, the striker, and work on his expertise. I don’t want him to learn how to knock someone out with a punch. He would need another life just to learn how to deal with fighters who come from this background. He has to learn how to avoid fighting his opponent’s game."

Those comments came in 2014. But Kron's 2016 fights seem to bear that thinking out. To date, it hasn't made a difference to the bottom line.

It will be very interesting to see how Rizin handles Gracie in 2017. He could be the talent the Gracie family needs to regain relevance in modern MMA.