Who knows the story behind Gordon Ryan?

There's a pretty easy test for whether sports like BJJ, Judo, wrestling, etc. get the best athletes in the US. Just go look at countries where those sports are as remunerative/high status as football or baseball are in the US (relatively speaking): during the Soviet era there was a huge emphasis placed on combat sports, and many of those countries' best athletes went into them. And what did you see? Not only did Eastern Bloc nations dominate in combat sports at the Olympics, the depth they had was spectacular compared to a country like the US. We definitely have a good training system for top tier athletes and could put some people on the podium, but we were never competitive in every weight class in every combat sport like the Soviets were (or, frankly, the Russians are now). You look at someone like Wladimir Klitschko, that guy is born in the US he's a power forward or a tight end, not a boxer. But in Ukraine boxing has more panache than basketball, so they get terrific athletes like the Klitschko bros and Lomachenko going into the sport. You think someone like Alexander Karelin, were he born in the US, becomes a wrestler and not a lineman? It's certainly possible, but even our good HW collegians will often take a try at the NFL because the money is so much better.

A second piece to this argument is just looking at the competitiveness across weight classes. Take MMA: the most competitive weight classes are between BW and WW. Most depth, best athletes. Why is that? Partially it's because more men just happen to fall into those size ranges (walking around between 150 and 200 lbs), but also because if you're bigger than that and a good athlete you probably aren't doing MMA unless you picked it up after an unsuccessful career in some other sport like OSP. I also don't think it's a coincidence that looking at the top 10 of each division that you find more non-Americans in the top ranks in the heavier weight classes. Why? Because those guys come from countries where their size doesn't immediately get them selected for sports like football or basketball, where fighting is a good athletic career option. There are like 2 Americans in the top 10 at LHW, FW is almost all Americans. It's not a coincidence.
 
Yep at the end of the day most kids do sports that are available at their places at lower cost without consideration for future earnings , in my place it was judo / karate / football ⚽️ / handball, basketball. you try a bit of everything until you find the one you really like. most of kids and adults s dont even know what bjj is, but I believe availibility and sport culture is more important than money IMO
USA is certainly another beast..
 
I didn’t go through the whole thread but I’m assuming it’s been mentioned Gordon has been rolling for longer than 4 years (since the thread was made). In a recent interview he said he started in like 2009 or so. Still impressive as hell but 7 years to reach elite level in no gi seems very possible. I think reaching that same level in the gi would be tougher.
 
I didn’t go through the whole thread but I’m assuming it’s been mentioned Gordon has been rolling for longer than 4 years (since the thread was made). In a recent interview he said he started in like 2009 or so. Still impressive as hell but 7 years to reach elite level in no gi seems very possible. I think reaching that same level in the gi would be tougher.

He's done gi before; you can watch some of his gi purple belt matches if you look hard enough on youtube. I'd guess the transition for him will be more focused on details, and less on building a gi game from the ground up.

Edit-- here's a Gordon Ryan gi match. Less than 3 years old, crazy how much progress he made in such a short time:

 
There's a pretty easy test for whether sports like BJJ, Judo, wrestling, etc. get the best athletes in the US. Just go look at countries where those sports are as remunerative/high status as football or baseball are in the US (relatively speaking): during the Soviet era there was a huge emphasis placed on combat sports, and many of those countries' best athletes went into them. And what did you see? Not only did Eastern Bloc nations dominate in combat sports at the Olympics, the depth they had was spectacular compared to a country like the US. We definitely have a good training system for top tier athletes and could put some people on the podium, but we were never competitive in every weight class in every combat sport like the Soviets were (or, frankly, the Russians are now). You look at someone like Wladimir Klitschko, that guy is born in the US he's a power forward or a tight end, not a boxer. But in Ukraine boxing has more panache than basketball, so they get terrific athletes like the Klitschko bros and Lomachenko going into the sport. You think someone like Alexander Karelin, were he born in the US, becomes a wrestler and not a lineman? It's certainly possible, but even our good HW collegians will often take a try at the NFL because the money is so much better.

A second piece to this argument is just looking at the competitiveness across weight classes. Take MMA: the most competitive weight classes are between BW and WW. Most depth, best athletes. Why is that? Partially it's because more men just happen to fall into those size ranges (walking around between 150 and 200 lbs), but also because if you're bigger than that and a good athlete you probably aren't doing MMA unless you picked it up after an unsuccessful career in some other sport like OSP. I also don't think it's a coincidence that looking at the top 10 of each division that you find more non-Americans in the top ranks in the heavier weight classes. Why? Because those guys come from countries where their size doesn't immediately get them selected for sports like football or basketball, where fighting is a good athletic career option. There are like 2 Americans in the top 10 at LHW, FW is almost all Americans. It's not a coincidence.
People really really need to understand this
 
Danaher and Deblass taught him well
 
You should really post this in the Grappling forum.

But basically, he trains at one if the best BJJ gyms in the world, with some of the best coaches and training partners.

Talent + hard work + the right people around you = success.

It's not rocket science.
So I have a sincere question, did he really only learn BJJ in 4-5 years? If so that gives me some hope. I suppose if you train twice as much, you can do in 5 years what most can do in 10. I think that logic is fairly accurate. I also think if you train 5 yrs with the best coach without having any experience before, you could possibly be better than if you had prior years training with an average bjj coach before going to Danaher. Danaher is mad man, a genius.
 
So I have a sincere question, did he really only learn BJJ in 4-5 years? If so that gives me some hope. I suppose if you train twice as much, you can do in 5 years what most can do in 10. I think that logic is fairly accurate. I also think if you train 5 yrs with the best coach without having any experience before, you could possibly be better than if you had prior years training with an average bjj coach before going to Danaher. Danaher is mad man, a genius.

Well, yeah. If you train twice as often, you'll probably get better approximately twice as fast. And having a mad genius like Danaher as your coach will definitely help.

But I'd also say it inevitably comes down to individual talent too, obviously.
 
So I have a sincere question, did he really only learn BJJ in 4-5 years? If so that gives me some hope. I suppose if you train twice as much, you can do in 5 years what most can do in 10. I think that logic is fairly accurate. I also think if you train 5 yrs with the best coach without having any experience before, you could possibly be better than if you had prior years training with an average bjj coach before going to Danaher. Danaher is mad man, a genius.
Yeah it's mat time. So he doesn't have a ton of years on the mat but in terms of hours spent drilling and rolling he's probably spent tons more hours than many seasoned recreational black belts. His life is training, eating, and sleeping.

He and Danaher also took a liking to each other. Gordon is highly coachable etc and Danaher saw that early on and they are a good match for each other as a student and coach.
 
it isn't surprising at all bj penn did it as well but the worlds then wernt as competitive as today but still give someone best coaches just a little bit of talent but just make sure you train 2 times a day at least and youll go very very far
 
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