MORNING KOMBAT WITH LUKE THOMAS AND BRIAN CAMPBELL - Is Gordon Ryan the No Gi GOAT? | Morning Kombat Extra Credit Ep. 28

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Luke Thomas is back with Episode 28 of Morning Kombat Extra Credit to break down his three biggest takeaways from ADCC this past weekend. Morning Kombat’ is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Bullhorn and wherever else you listen to podcasts.    For more Combat Sports coverage subscribe here: youtube.com/MorningKombat   Follow our hosts on Twitter: @BCampbellCBS, @lthomasnews, @MorningKombat    For Morning Kombat gear visit:morning kombat.store   Follow our hosts on Instagram: @BrianCampbell, @lukethomasnews, @MorningKombat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is the 19th of September, 2022, and it's time for episode, I believe, 28 of Morning Combat Extra Credit. This is the podcast within the podcast. This is where we get to some of the stuff that we didn't have time for on regular MK. Hello, everyone. I am merely one half of your normal hosts. My name is Luke Thomas. Brian Campbell, of course, hosts with me for regular morning combat.

But I host just this particular podcast. Now, normally what we would do on something like today, of course, thumbs up on this. If you're watching, hit subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, give us a nice review if you're listening on whatever podcast platform. Normally what I would do here is go into some of the extra stuff that we did not get to on the UFC card. But for today, I decided to switch it up a little bit because something historic happened in combat sports over the weekend that has nothing to do with that UFC card. I'd rather put my attention there. Namely, ADCC 2022. This is largely considered to be the preeminent no-gi grappling tournament in the entire sport. Some might even argue it's the most prestigious gi or no-gi.

Obviously, it's only in no-gi. But I mean, of all the most prestigious tournaments, many would consider this to be the apex of them all. That's a matter of debate. Obviously, the World Championships run by the IBJJF, they happen annually. Neither here nor there, but it is obviously in a very prestigious tournament.

It is the number one tournament, certainly in Nogi. And Gordon Ryan, Gordon Ryan made some history over the weekend. I would like to talk about what he did at ADCC 2022 for today's program. So with that in mind, I have three points I'd like to make, but I want to put a pause on that for just a second. I want to start with an overview. First of all, what did he do? Well, he won, technically just this weekend, the 99 plus kilo weight division. So he got another gold medal in that one. He is now the first person to win a gold medal in ADCC in three different weight classes. He did it for, I think, minus 88 kilo, minus 99 kilo, and then plus 99 kilo. I believe that's right. Let me verify here that very quickly. Yes, that's correct.

Now, he also has, in 2017, he had a silver in the absolute, which is independent of weight. And he has a gold in the absolute from 2019. And he has a gold from this weekend from the super fight where he submitted Andre Galvan. So this now makes him the most decorated ADCC athlete of all time. Marcelo Garcia has four different championships in the minus 77 kilo weight category from different gears. So in four different, I think from 2003 and on up to 2011, basically, he skipped a couple of ones in between, but he has four different notes. But in his absolutes, he never got anything, I think one

silver maybe and one bronze. I'll double check here in just a second, but he never won a gold. Gordon Ryan has that. Now we'll talk about where he stands as the no-gi goat in just a minute, but I have to tell you, it was extremely, extremely impressive. Before I kick off the three points, because I want to talk about how impressive it was and put some context behind it, let me start, though, with this cloud that hangs over ADCC, which I think is very silly and everyone should just ignore it. Of course, this is my opinion. People get very passionate about this issue. I'm sure someone will see this who has a very different view and they might decide to tell me that I don't know anything and that this is all ridiculous. But I want to be very clear about this because I did see some folks saying, well, no one ever discusses this. So here I am having a discussion up front. By the way, this is also discussed a

lot, but I'm going to have this right up front. ADCC does not do drug testing in any capacity whatsoever. They don't care at all. And I have to tell you, I like that. I don't have any issue with that whatsoever. It is not to say that the competitors are drug-free. Some of them certainly are. Some of them are drug-free in a way where they take great pride in it. That's fine if they choose to compete that way. But this is a tournament that doesn't do any drug testing. I want to tell you why I think that that is both important and good. Folks ask me why I have such different attitudes about drugs and sport than other folks. Let's start with a very basic question.

And your answer will define your worldview here. But I will tell you about mine, and you can make a judgment call about it however you want. If the question is posed that what, or rather, is the only role for drugs in professional competitive sports prohibition? Is that the only role? Is that the only role performance-enhancing drugs should play is that they are cast aside, they are prohibited, they are not allowed? To me, that seems absolutely crazy, and I don't support that at all. What I support is creating a diversity of options for athletes. That's what I believe. I do not believe that the only role for drugs in sport is prohibition.

In fact, you can already see why that would be potentially something you should begin to figure out or reconcile with. For example, you have strongman, which is a strength sport, obviously. At the highest levels of super heavyweight, they nominally say they do drug testing, but they really don't. There's really, for world's strongest man, for example, basically you can take whatever you want, and in fact, to compete on that level, you have to.

But of course, in the sport of strongman, there's all different kinds of different tournaments and competitions. They're adjusted for age, they're adjusted for weight, they're adjusted for gender. They are some that do, in fact, do some testing so that for folks who are interested in that, they can have those options. I'm not calling for drugs to run over sport. I am simply saying I don't think the only role, the only role is prohibition. I simply believe that fans prefer at least some kind of alternative where there is no testing. ADCC is not merely the most prestigious no-gi grappling tournament. It's arguably the most popular tournament in all of sport jiu-jitsu.

The fact that they don't drug test the competitors is not an incidental feature of that. There is a direct relationship between the two, I would put to you humbly. And more to the point, IBJJF does do some testing through USADA. They randomly test some of their gold medal winners. Now, I wouldn't call that a very robust system of testing relative to what you see in some other sports, but there is at least something along those lines. And again, it's not the idea that everyone should be forced to take drugs. It's that athletes should be given the option to not only work under a rubric of strict and total prohibition. I believe that our conversation around drugs and sport is fraudulent. I believe our attitudes about prohibition being a

good thing is more or less, I would say, poorly founded, not utterly unfounded. For example, there can be one case where prohibition, I think, is very good. That would be youth sports. People who are 16 years old should not be taking D-ball, for example. I think that's very much backed by medical science. You would want adults making adult choices about these kinds of things to the extent that it is important for them. And I'm not working under the impression that to the extent Gordon Ryan or Andre Galva or anybody else, if they in fact are using,

that they don't derive some benefit from it. You could make the Tim Sylvia argument, which he made when he got caught, which was that he just wanted to look better on the poster. And you did see some insane physiques out there. But I basically just start from the premise that total prohibition, total prohibition seems a little bit over the line, that the market will actually reward sporting tournaments or certain sporting activities where there is a lack of testing, I believe that when people say that they find that there is a cancerous or negative element to it having some kind of role in sport, that the people who really believe that are actually very much the minority. And the fact that this was, I think they had sold 12,000 or more tickets

at the Thomas and Mack Center is evidence of the fact that the consumer base does support it. The competitors clearly have no issue with it, and the sport still rewards the achievements as legitimate. Again, if everything in every case where drugs were forced on them, that could be something different. Of course, you could make the claim that, yeah, ADCC doesn't test. IBJJF might, but there's still not much of a difference in terms of what they can find. Sure, we can have that conversation, but at least giving the option to athletes. In powerlifting, they have tested and non-tested federations, and you are allowed to compete wherever you want. Gordon Ryan does not compete, to my knowledge, at least currently anyway, in any IBJJF testing events. And that's absolutely his right. You can make whatever inference you want from

that. So I just want to be very clear about this. There's a lot of folks who are hand-wringing. I've seen people say, oh, well, now it's just a question of who has the best steroids. Let's assume for just a second, I'm going to make an assumption for the sake of argument. That's all I'm doing. I'm not making a claim to knowing the truth of this. Let's make a claim here again for the sake of argument that both Andre Galvan and Gordon Ryan were, let's say, for the sake of argument, both using. I don't think that he won because he had better drugs. In fact, I'm sure that that's not even close to being true. There is a lot of moralizing language that gets used when it comes to PEDs in sport about things like good and evil and corrupt. And I think that this is all a bunch of nonsense. There's rational, there's irrational, there are incentives, there

are lack of incentives. And humans will simply respond to them no matter what the other rule set being. In this particular case, no one is breaking any rules, so you can't really get mad at them for that if they choose to then take, which again, some folks I'm sure were absolutely, that's something that they don't want for their lives one way or the other. It's the option. It's the option of giving to them. I actually feel like performance-enhancing drugs, hence the name, they make performance better. And I am very curious about seeing sports where those kinds of drugs are not weeded out and what it does to the sport.

And it gives athletes options to do one or the other or at least have some kind of choice about how they want to navigate those spaces. Rank prohibition to me is a outdated idea that I think won't stand the test of time. Drugs are here. The question is what we're going to do about them and how we're going to incorporate them. And a blanket no all the way across. I simply believe that the consumers don't want. I believe a lot of the athletes don't want. And I believe a lot of the moralizing language and then the moralizing institutions around it, these are people trying to uphold a zealotry, or I should say a worldview of zealotry,

that I think is far too heavy-handed. Take that for what it is worth. Now, that aside, let's talk about what Gordon Ryan did. As I indicated, winning the plus 99 kilo weight division, winning the super fight against Andre Galva. Here are my three points that I would like to make, and we'll talk about some of the broader context in just a second. Number one, Gordon Ryan is peerless. I cannot overstate to you how effortless this was for him to win.

He didn't have to claw and scrape his way to get here. He just ran over the competition. Only one person was able to withstand the duration of the match with him, and that was Victor Hugo, who Gordon Ryan beat 8-0. So Gordon Ryan submitted, I'm going to mispronounce his name,

but Heikki Hjusala, who is, I think, from Finland. Then he beat Victor Hugo via points he had submitted, his'm going to mispronounce his name, but Heikki Hjusala, who is I think from Finland, then he beat Victor Hugo via points he had submitted, his previous opponent. He submitted Roosevelt Souza. He submitted Nicky Rod, Nick Rodriguez, and then he submitted Andre Galvan. Didn't surrender a single point, submitted almost everyone, dummied the guy who was able to last. Absolutely dominant from beginning to end. And even in the case of someone like Nicky Rod, understand Nicky Rod is a real big guy. Fills out in that weight class for plus 99 kilo quite well. Nicky Rod was a training partner for a very long time

with Gordon Ryan. In fact, it was Gordon Ryan before there was that split off into the B team after they left Puerto Rico for Austin in Puerto Rico, and then before that at Henzo's. They were the guys who had basically recruited and sort of curated the career of Nicky Rodriguez. This guy has intimate familiarity with the game and then the evolution of the game of Gordon Ryan. He barely lasted over two minutes. Barely lasted over two minutes. Couldn't do a thing to him. Go back and watch the match with Galvan. Now, Galvan is a little bit older. I think he's close to 40 years old at this point, but he looked to be in, let's say, tremendous shape. And more to that point, this is a very long-standing, decorated competitor. Galvan, by the way, I think at the last ADCC,

going back, had won the gold medal in the super fight, then 2017 gold medal in super fight, 2015 gold medal in the super fight, 2013 gold medal in the super fight, and then in 2011 won the minus 88 kilo and then won the absolute. This is not some guy wet behind the ears. This is a very, very good grappler. He could do nothing to Gordon Ryan. Understand the levels here as well of jiu-jitsu, right? It's a very basic way to understand it. There is survive, defend, and attack. All Galvan could do was survive and then on occasion defend. There was no attack hardly at all. I mean, virtually non-existent. Never even got to that. Much less having a successful attack or an attack that was repelled. There was just no attack. Gordon Ryan is so far ahead of the rest of the sport.

It is shocking. And I make this point all the time. But it's worth reiterating here. I made it on Twitter. I ask MMA fighters, pro MMA fighters all the time, how did you do this? How did you do that? You guys have heard me ask Max Holloway, Volkanovski. Anybody I interview, I'm always trying to get little details about what they do,

and they keep their secrets very close to the vest, which you can understand. They are, in fact, to a degree, some kind of trade secret. At least that's how they view them. Gordon Ryan gives away every piece of his game that he can. He has an endless, endless, long series of attacks from half guards, top pins, defending from the half guard. I mean, every kind of position in extraordinary detail. And now, of course, you could say if you watched his game this weekend, you would say it's evolved past that. I even asked him, like, how can you give this stuff away? And he made that point. He's like, well, one, these people won't watch.

My competitors are too arrogant. Number two, even if they did, by the time they watched it, my game is already advanced past that. But nevertheless, it is very unusual for a guy to give out this much detail smack in the middle of his prime. This is not some guy doing like a basic seminar on heel hooks and like heel hook conversions and how to set it up. And, you know, it's sort of a relatively basic,

but some decent details along the way. It's not giving away a ton of his game. They're more going over more as what I would call sort of general knowledge with some specific pieces of information included. This is a detailed breakdown of how they do things. He has given that out to the world. All you gotta do is pay for it. Maybe it doesn't matter at this point,

but that is very unusual. That amount right in the middle of a guy's run through the sport. Highly unusual. So the first takeaway you should have is like, who's the best grappler in the sport? Obviously he would get thrashed if he went to Nogi. Gordon Ryan says that himself. He knows he can't beat the very best guys. I'm sure he's probably better than some folks think, but no, I don't think he could win a world title there. But in Nogi, he does not have a peer. He does not have an equal. And if he continues to get better, and if he continues to stay healthy, if he can, and compete, God only knows how many more titles he could add. I don't even know who could make it competitive with him. The guy who beat him previously, Felipe Pena, couldn't make it to the

finals of his own weight category. He was previously beaten. And obviously, Vinny Magalhaes had a win over him some years ago, but is not really competitive in the sport anymore. He's obviously a little bit older and has moved on to a different part of his life. I don't even know who would be number two, a very, very, very distant number two, to put it quite mildly. He is absolutely phenomenal. Point number two, someone else who is much more, just has a better grappling knowledge than me can tell you the very, very important specifics.

I want to give a shout out to this, and we'll put the link in the description box. There is a post from OpenNoteGrappling.com on new wave jiu-jitsu. New wave is the John Danaher school, which of course Gordon is a part of. And what they make a point of saying is, if you look at what Gordon Ryan does, obviously he has a complex web of things he can go to. But if you look at the way he wins, how did he win this time? Leg lock, choke from the back. Or heel hook, choke from the back is really what he wins. How did he win this time? Leg lock, choke from the back, or heel hook,

choke from the back is really what he did. They constantly go to a lot of the same positions. They have setups from a lot of different scenarios to get to those same positions, and then they have total mastery of those positions. Simple is what they say, not easy. Simple, not easy. In fact, in that post, one thing that they talk about, I really encourage you to read it. You can get a much more thorough breakdown of the new wave, John Danaher, Gordon Ryan style from that. But one of the points that they make is look at Habib in MMA, Habib Nurmagomedov. Habib did not have a super well-rounded game, right? He did have submissions and obviously had phenomenal wrestling and combined them.

Striking wasn't all that great. Good enough to get by, drop Conor in the second round, that's pretty good. But he wasn't trying to do everything really well. He was trying to do basically a certain kind of game very well. He was trying to be as specific as possible. Think about what Gordon Ryan has done. He rejected gi jiu-jitsu, by and large, stuck with no gi. So that's one kind of specificity. And now in that game has a bunch of different setups to get there, but really has kind of a game that features more or less a couple of different directions. Chokes from the back, leg entanglements, and there's of course some things in between here and there, but it's not super complicated in that way. The details are precise. Remember,

it's simple, not easy. Something to keep in mind about what kind of games work best in combat sports. This idea, in MMA anyway, that the next generation is always going to be able to do everything really well. That sounds nice in theory. Is that actually the best way to win? To be able to do everything really well? Or is the idea to make some trade-offs about what you do well so that you can get a portion of the game where you're just much better than everybody else. Something to think about here. But his game is simple,

not easy. Not easy. That's the weird part about watching him compete. If you just watch him compete, you just can't believe how easy, again, it's not, but how easy he makes it look. It doesn't look like he's trying. It always looks like when you get two other guys who even very good black belts, there's this really difficult way of trying to overcome someone else's resistance. Gordon is very methodical. And by the way, for all of the allegations anyway, that he's a user, and of course, I'm sure he derives benefit from the physicality of it all, I would say that his game doesn't really rely on that at all. Again, it's not to say he doesn't benefit, assuming that those things are true. But this is hardly some kind of game that's built on brute strength. This is not a guy who is like, for example, there's a really good black belt named Orlando Sanchez.

He's a big guy, and he has a very big guy game. He obviously is very skilled as well, to be clear. I think he's a Cabrinha black belt. He's skilled. I want to be 100% clear about that. But his game is obviously benefited by the fact that there's a ton of heft and brute force. That's not really Gordon Ryan's game, not nearly to the same extent. I think to the extent that one wants to make some assumptions about whether he uses, it probably would be more beneficial on the training end. But even then, there's a technical innovation that's a part of it. He and John Danaher, in the way in which they conceptualize jiu-jitsu and every other part of it, they are ahead of what the other competitors understand

jiu-jitsu to be. It's got nothing to do with drugs. Three, is he the no-gi goat? Yeah, I think he is. I think he is. As I mentioned, Marcello has four different ADCC cycles where in his weight class, he won a title, but he doesn't have the absolute to go with it. Marcello in the absolute in 2005 got bronze, and then in the absolute in 2007 just got silver. So he did not get it there. Also, by the way, in 2007, he did get the absolute in 2007 just got silver um so he did not get it there also by the way in 2007 he did get the gold in his weight class in 2009 he actually just got the silver straight up but that was um you know obviously in 2011 he rebounded and got the gold so that's nice but here's the argument for gordon gordon not only has um obviously the three in the three different weight classes which nobody else does he's got uh one in the absolute he has also has a three in the three different weight classes, which nobody else does.

He's got one in the absolute. He also has a silver in the absolute, and he has the super fight. And here's the other part about it. In the World No Gi Jiu-Jitsu Championships, which, by the way, is an IBJJF tournament, he had gold twice in 2018, once in the absolute,

once in the 97.5 kilo bracket. In 2015, as a brown belt, he also got gold, which doesn't really count for the black belt achievement, but just sort of pointed out. And in the Pan Nogi, he has a black belt in both the absolute and as well as in his weight class of 97.5 kilo. So you have the most decorated ADCC champion with, in terms of IBJJF titles, gold in the Pan Ams

and multiple golds in the world championships. I don't know who's got a better resume than that. You could say, well, what about Cabrinha? Cabrinha only has three ADCC gold medals. What about Hoffa Mendes? Hoffa Mendes has two, I believe. Let me verify that here in just a second. If I get it wrong, you can dead wrong me. I believe that's right. No one has a medal count like this guy. Not even close. Not even close. He has risen to a level at this point. Now, of course, what you could also say, to interrupt my own train of thought here, what you could say is, well, Marcelo has a bunch of titles in the Gi. True. Hoffa Mendez has a bunch of titles in the Gi. True. Gordon Ryan is not trying to be

the best overall jiu-jitsu player ever Gi no Gi. He's the no Gi guy. And I think at this point, the resume he has amassed makes him the no Gi GOAT. No, he doesn't have the Gi titles. No, not even close. He is very much one-sided. But by the way, I think is proof of his argument, which has been true for some time, that you don't really need to train Gi to get good at no Gi. It has become so much its own kind of thing that this dual training seems a little bit unnecessary. That might be part of it. It gives proof to that, and it gives proof to specificity, technical innovation, and everything else that goes into his winning ways but that was a remarkable run didn't surrender a point submitted five of

six i believe are all but one submitted all but one including his long time relatively speaking training partner and already had the ibjjf nogi titles now adds in himself as the most decorated adcc competitor first guy to do it across three-way classes and they could he doesn't even Already had the IBJJF No Gi titles. Now adds in himself as the most decorated ADCC competitor. First guy to do it across three-way classes, and he doesn't even have a peer. It's one of the most remarkable combat sports performances I've ever seen, and honestly, to see where he might go is, I can't even imagine.

I don't even know what it would look like if he keeps going where he's going. They can't touch him. They can't touch him technically. They can't touch him. They can't touch him technically. They can't touch him anywhere. It's insane how much better he is than the rest of that division. I think a lot of people will wrongly assume that this is a function of taking drugs without really understanding the nature of his winning ways.

But this is inevitable. We just are where we are with folks still buying 1980s drug war hysteria about the role of drugs in society and about the role of drugs in sport. So that's a longer debate and a longer conversation to have, but for today, Gordon Ryan is the guy. He's the guy. There's no one even close. What he did over the weekend in Las Vegas will not soon be repeated, if ever.

If you're not paying attention to what Gordon Ryan is up to, you better start. Thumbs up on the video. Hit subscribe. Thank you guys so much for watching. Back next week with some kind of extra credit, I think from the Bellator fights or maybe a few other things. Give me some feedback. LukeThomasNewsAtGmail.com. What did you like?

What did you not like? And, yeah, until then, enjoy the fights.