Gordon Ryan may be one of the best people to have in your corner for grappling advice. Since bursting onto the scene in 2016, 29-year-old “King” Ryan has risen to become one of the most decorated jiu-jitsu practitioners in the world, defeating several of his fellow all-time greats along the way. His fearsome reputation has naturally led to some crossover interest from the MMA world, including from Jon Jones.
Jones, the UFC heavyweight champion, began training with Ryan to work on his jiu-jitsu ahead of his recent title defense at UFC 309 in November against Stipe Miocic, which Jones won via highlight-reel knockout. Ryan and Jones have continued to train together since, and Ryan like what he sees in the potential matchup between Jones and interim UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall.
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“[Aspinall’s] definitely got good takedowns, he’s got decent jiu-jitsu,” Ryan said on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “The one fight I saw of him losing, he actually got heel hooked, and the heel hook wasn’t particularly tight. That was a long time ago and Tom has obviously gotten a lot better since then. But the one time I did see him actually lose a fight was to a heel hook, and it was not a particularly tight heel hook.
“Grappling is definitely a situation where I think that we can win the exchanges [against Aspinall]. Especially because Jon already has a grappling background, and he’s just very good at putting guys down and mixing things up — very good at holding guys down. So I think the grappling is definitely a place where we can win the exchanges, but I think that Tom’s grappling is up there with the rest of the guys.”
A fight between Jones and Aspinall still isn’t official despite UFC CEO Dana White’s insistence that it’s on the way. White recently suggested a summer date as a potential landing spot.
In the meantime, on May 3, UFC heads to Des Moines, Iowa, where blue-chip prospect Bo Nickal looks to continue his ascent up the middleweight ladder against former ONE Championship two-division titleholder Reinier de Ridder. Nickal is the latest MMA fighter to work with Ryan, and the jiu-jitsu master has been mightily impressed with what he’s seen out of the three-time NCAA Division I wrestling champ.
“He’s the best,” Ryan said of Nickal. “Just a super nice guy. We trained together, I took him around Austin a little bit and tried to coerce him to come back to Austin because he’s such good training. But he’s a very exceptional athlete. He really just wants to learn. There’s a lot of wrestlers who come in and just try to not get submitted, try to avoid submissions, but Bo really comes in with a learning mindset, where he was playing leg locks with some of the best leg-lockers that we have in the gym. He’s playing guard, he’s playing bottom position.
“So his ability to, No. 1, just kind of throw his ego out the door and put himself in positions where he isn’t really good, and be willing to get submitted and put himself in bad positions. And his ability to learn. Like, when he asks a question, he knows what questions to ask, which is very rare with someone who is coming from a completely different martial art. But he asked the right questions, he’s willing to learn, and he learns very quickly, so he’s going to be an issue in the middleweight division.”
Nickal, 29, couldn’t be working with Ryan at a better time in his still-young MMA career, which thus far spans just seven professional fights. Nickal enters the de Ridder matchup off the heels of a lopsided decision win over veteran contender Paul Craig from the same night that Jones defeated Miocic.
His performance didn’t win applause from the fans in New York at UFC 309, as Nickal explicitly avoided shooting for a single takedown or engaging in grappling with Craig. De Ridder, similar to Craig, is also known for his strong submission game, and Ryan believes the unexpected Paul strategy perfectly displayed the brilliance of Nickal’s mindset, leaving Ryan interested in this upcoming test.
“A lot of people were criticizing him in his last fight for kind of being a boring fight, or whatever the case is, but I looked at that fight, and I was like, ‘There is no way that Bo fought this way other than to get experience on the feet at a high level in front of a crowd,'” Ryan said. “And I asked him, and he was like, ‘Yeah, I was just trying to get experience out there and play on the feet. You don’t really play on the feet too much if you have a lot of early finishes.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, exactly.’
“So people don’t understand — he wants to learn, he wants to get the experience, he wants the time in the Octagon. I think, so far, his jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts, he’s just kind of scratching the surface. Obviously he’s a very credentialed wrestler and American legend, but there’s just so much more for him to learn pretty much in every area. So I’m excited to see him, especially for his next fight against de Ridder, because I’ve trained with both of these guys a fair amount. I’m excited for that.”
Regarding his own competitions, Ryan is in somewhat of his personal offseason, hence the reason for his all-natural hair color as opposed to the eye-catching trademark silver he usually wears.
Ryan has made a handful of rivals throughout his career, including Craig Jones, who in 2024 set up his own jiu-jitsu event to combat the world-famous ADCC. Another Ryan rival, former grappler Dillon Danis, mentioned recently on “The Ariel Helwani Show” that Ryan would be a big-money match for Jones’ event.
Ryan and Danis have feuded off and on over the years since their lone match at the ADCC 2017 World Championships, which Ryan won. Ryan, however, doesn’t expect anything to ever come to fruition.
“Dillon is always going to be Dillon,” Ryan said. “You’ve got to give Dillon props — Dillon is a guy that makes things happen. He manages to stay in the public eye, not having really any credentials or skills of any kind. Like, he’s never really won anything big in jiu-jitsu. He won no-gi Pans (IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi Championship), he was decent at one point. There was always a point where he was competing with the best guys, but he could never really beat the best guys. His record at black belt is 18-16.
“You can’t argue with facts and statistics. So he just knows that if he mentions my name, I’ll get more popular because of him mentioning me, so I don’t have a problem with Dillon. More power to him. He makes things happen without actually doing anything, but he’s a master of getting himself into big matches and pulling out, or just like — he doesn’t do anything athletically, and he keeps getting these big matches and keeps staying in the public eye. So nothing against Dillon, he’s just not a real athlete.”
