Will Gordon Ryan Transition to MMA?

Now obviously the next course of progression for a guy like you would be MMA. Yeah. Now I know that you had talked about doing MMA in the past but now it seems like it's actually going to happen. Yeah. So John doesn't want me to compete in MMA because he feels like Jiu-Jitsu is just about to break into that next level of professional sports. So for me at least right now I feel like I need at least someone from my team to be able to do the things that I'm doing before I can kind of move away from Jiu-Jitsu into MMA. Because right now we have Gary at MMA. He's carrying our flag, our team's flag at MMA. We have me at the top of the heap in Jiu-Jitsu. So like if Craig or Nicky Rod and my brother can start doing the things that I'm doing and they win in the ATCC absolute maybe or they go out and they start beating and submitting all the high level guys then I feel like maybe I can leave Jiu-Jitsu because if I start fighting MMA I'm going to focus on MMA. So I feel like if one of my teammates can kind of take my place then I can start moving into MMA and then go from there. So you look at it as a, you really do genuinely look at it as a team effort. You're not looking at just as an individual. Most athletes are very selfish and they just take, take, take. Whereas we have a very great, a very good team cohesion and we're always looking out for one another and I find that that's the way that people operate best. If you look at most teams, it's basically just a bunch of tough guys in the room who train together who have no loyalty and if someone offers them a better deal they're going to go somewhere else and train there. Whereas with us, we're very loyal to John and you know everything that we do is the same. Like my game is very similar to John's, very similar to Gary's, very similar to Craig's. We all are taught by John and we all follow the same ideas and the same philosophy of Jiu-Jitsu. The loyalty within the team is very strong and I feel that it's always going to be a team effort. Without John I wouldn't be as good as I am, without Gary I wouldn't be as good as I am, without Nikki. It's the collaboration of minds in the gym that really pushes you forward. So I feel like we're different in that sense that we're not a team that recruits people, we're a team that builds athletes from almost the ground up. Like you see a lot of the big MMA teams or even the big Jiu-Jitsu teams like Autos for example, they recruit guys, guys who are already successful, they recruit and they give them a place to live, they give them a training program and they just recruit tough guys. But if you look at a guy like Andre and you look at his black belts, they all have vastly different games. Kainan's game is different than Andre's, Hanger's game is different than Andre's, Kenan's game is different than Andre's and it's basically just a team of recruited guys who are a bunch of tough guys training in the same room. Whereas John, we have a team of home grown guys who all do the same thing. They all have discernible games that all mimic what John teaches and they just have slight changes and variations due to our physical attributes and personalities. Now when you say you think of it as a team, this has taken it to a completely different level because you're not willing to progress your career outside the realm of Jiu-Jitsu until someone else can carry the crown. That's next level commitment to the team philosophy. Yeah, I mean, like I said, you have a guy like John who's the most selfless person in the world. He shows up every day and he gives you everything. I want what's best for the team even if it's not what's best for me. I want what's best for John's team. I want him to go down in history as being the guy who had the absolute best team in the world. Right now you can make the argument that sure, Gordon's the best in the world, but the rest of the guys don't win as much as him. I want to get the rest of the guys on my team to my level so that you don't have the argument anymore of sure, Gordon's good, but he's the only one who really wins when it counts. I want to go into ADCC with my team and I want to win every single division. That would be insane. That's not outside the realm of possibility either. That's what's crazy. Next year we have Gary, Mike cut to 66 kilos. If Gary's at 66, my brother will be at 77, Craig will be at 88, I'll be at 99 if they let me do the division, and then Nikki Roddle will be at 99 plus. What do you mean if they let you do the division? For ADCC when you win the absolute, you go to the super fight. The super fight champion fights the winner of the absolute. I won the absolute last year so I'm only supposed to have one fight, but I have requested to do the weight division as well because you normally would just do the super fight. I want to do the super fight and I also want to do my weight division. Instead of having one match, I'd have five matches. No one's ever asked to do that. People have asked to do the absolute before, but the problem is if I win the absolute and then I win the super fight, the super fight winner is supposed to fight the absolute winner so you can't fight yourself. It doesn't make sense to do the super fight and the absolute, but it does make sense to do the weight division and the absolute. If they let me do the weight division, I'll be the first person in history to ever do the weight division plus the super fight at the same time. How's Gary juggling training for MMA and jujitsu as well? That guy's a machine. He basically just didn't do less jujitsu to do MMA. He just added MMA on top of the jujitsu sessions. He trains MMA seven days a week and he spars lightly seven days a week and then he finishes that. We have a gym set up in Puerto Rico, so we're working around the class schedule of the gym owner. He does MMA at nine and then he trains for an hour, spars. Then he has a 30 minute break and then he does jujitsu at 11 and he just adds the session on. He does MMA and jujitsu seven days a week and within two hours of each other. When he's training MMA, he's also grappling. He's grappling twice. Most of the MMA training is shoot boxing, is standing to takedowns because he's already so good on the ground he needs to work on fence wrestling and shoot boxing. He definitely is some grappling when he does MMA. He grapples and spars and then he pretty much goes right to jujitsu and has to do that. That's definitely not an easy thing to do and seven days a week is definitely not an easy thing to do. How is he doing in terms of striking coaching? Did he bring someone with him to Puerto Rico? Was he using a different person in New York? What was he doing? He uses John. John is our striking coach. Really? I'm telling you John knows just as much about every martial art as he does jujitsu. John is our wrestling coach. John is our jujitsu coach. John is our striking coach. John is our MMA coach. John coaches Gary for every aspect of MMA, wall wrestling, everything. Holy shit. Yeah. So he coaches him for kicking and everything? Yeah. Dude, people know this about John. John's first martial art was Muay Thai. John did Muay Thai for over a decade when he was growing up and he studied all the best Muay Thai guys. I mean, John knows a lot about striking. I mean, like I said, people don't know this about John. They think he's just a leg lock guy or just a grappler. He coaches Gary and Gary's like, he's progressing fast as far as the striking is going. He's only been striking for a year and a half now and he looks comfortable out there. He does. That's shocking that he's only been doing it a year and a half. A year and a half, two years maybe. But yeah, John's his coach. John coaches everything. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.