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Americans and Brazilians definitely did not compete together as much back then, but I'm not entirely sure there was so much less parity. It just seems that way because we think of IBJJF Pans and Worlds as the top guys, and no Americans were there to even win.
But if you look at ADCC (which the Americans have always done), there is no parity gap between the current decade and the last. In the last decade the Americans had ADCC golds from Ricco Rodriguez, Mark Kerr, Jeff Monson, Dean Lister, and Robert Drysdale. In the current decade we've had Orlando Sanchez, Mackenzie Dern, JT Torres, and Gordon Ryan. It's not much different at all.
I think the Americans have always been at a high level but just weren't really competing with the Brazilians as much previously.
There are still far more ADCC winners of Brazilian origin than American. So you can say the degree of parity hasn't changed, but you can't really say there ever was or has been parity even in no-gi. What I'm saying is that by not having to compete against the best Brazilians like Americans do now gives guys like Glover and Cooper an artificially inflated record in what were the top American but globally second tier tournaments like GQ and NAGA.