Gordon Ryan

I'm, somewhat lucky that i'm a pretty decent competitor and one of maybe the few from greece i think not in an arrogant way but i'm you know no one from greece went to like an adcc kind of like semi-finals trials or something like that so i think countries that don't tend to have many athletes tend to actually quite support them Cool, so all the Greek guys are like, where's my Greek brother at? Exactly.

So I think that's kind of lucky for me in that sense that like, you know, Gordon Ryan's not Greek.

Otherwise I'd be like fucked.

But the other thing is if you go to the Middle East, there's a big difference.

So I wrote Business Jiu-Jitsu.

And it got a lot of real, I had incredible cottage support from the jiu-jitsu community and especially the Henzo family from John Danahar and Gordon Ryan and Ricardo Almeida and just this whole lineage.

Everybody really got behind it and supported the podcast and the book.

But one of the things I found so incredible is that I'm getting pinged from people all over the jiu-jitsu world.

And I made a list of all the people I wanted to speak to to do research for the book.

And I didn't know any of these.

I didn't know John Benahar or Gordon Ryan or Ricardo Almeida or all the business people who did jujitsu.

But I naively thought, of course, they would want to speak to me.

All right.

So my semi-mild hot take is that I think Craig Jones is better at jiu-jitsu than Gordon Ryan.

I think Gordon Ryan's better at competing and better at game planning.

So that's my hot take.

Okay.

And I think most people are going to relate to Rick Dale's story because we've all gone through that.

As much as we try and hide it and paint a blanket over it, we really... will relate to that in some way shape or form especially when you've tried to do something that scares you but other you know also the the actors that we got we got so lucky they were so great like they fit into those roles so well and they really all brought something extra to it and you know and we were lucky enough to have like you know like gordon ryan flew himself out to come and be in it and uh isaac dodoline and um it's Adele what's it Adele yes so you know we're really lucky to have that and and just I felt like everyone just did a really good job so it was hard to feel the pressure because I was so busy but it's also it's what I wanted to do for so long that I was just so happy to do it and enjoying it so much I think It'll probably get harder than what it will easier as we go forward because I feel like I'm like the white belt in that division, right? And you know, when you first go to a club, it's like, well, you don't have any pressure on you to do well.

You're just beginning.

So you can feel free.

How has the reception been, you think, from the jiu-jitsu community? And I'm sure you're kind of filming at different people's gyms or needing kind of different expertise from the jiu-jitsu world.

It feels like the jiu-jitsu kind of community has really kind of rallied behind the movie and they seem really excited about it.

You know, we mentioned earlier you had Gordon Ryan, of course.

Yeah.

And it's fun to watch, actually, as a coach, when they start to, when the puzzle pieces snap into place, you say it's mission accomplished.

So maybe they're not going to be like Brianna, like Gordon Ryan or Joseph Chen, but I like to see my student.

I like when they start to understand the game of grappling, you know, and they start to connect things and make it happen.

And I think it's fun to watch.

Legend, one of the GOATs.

And then the second ADCC, my second match was Gordon Ryan.

I never made it to Day 2, so coming into this one, I was like...

I'm gonna add one more episode over here.

These jiu-jitsu guys are becoming more and more public figures.

I think, like, it's not uncommon for untrained people to know who Gordon Ryan is.

I think it's not uncommon for untrained people to know who Mikey Musumeshi is or even Craig Jones, right? I think that these people sort of share the spotlight with a lot of other public figures and, in turn, their behavior or the way that they carry themselves or the personas that they portray in front of other people in the public sort of – develop people's opinion about jiu-jitsu athletes and practitioners in totality.

So today we're going to be talking about professionalism in the sport, what that means, what that looks like, some of our issues with some of the professional athletes in the sport right now and some of their behaviors, primarily some of the recent events that happened at ADCC and what can be kind of done better about this.

Dorian's fighting the coaches, but the Dagestani guy, he or whatever, he has like 20 fucking coaches.

They're fighting his dad.

Gordon Ryan comes in and it just breaks out into like a huge brawl with like 20 plus people involved.

So that's kind of what kicked off this argument or this conversational topic.