Bo Nickal recently revealed that he only went to a grand total of just three Jiu-Jitsu classes in order to prepare for his famous crossover match against Gordon Ryan in 2019. The match itself went pretty much exactly the way that everyone predicted it would, with Ryan getting the win by submission despite the hybrid ruleset that attempted to bridge the gap between their respective sports. Although Nickal has quickly built up a reputation as a top MMA fighter in the UFC, he was still only known for his elite wrestling back when the match took place and he intended to rely more on that than Jiu-Jitsu.
Nickal recently did an interview with Demetrious Johnson and he started out by explaining how he actually knew Ryan in the first place:
“The match the way it came about, I had talked to Gordon (Ryan) a few times about training together because I was like this guy’s the best in the world. For me, that’s the type of people I want to surround myself with and want to learn from. So knowing I was going to transition over to MMA I was like that’s a guy I would like to train with.”
He then explained that the opportunity to compete against him at a Third Coast Grappling event only came about by chance, and he actually came up with the idea:
“He was competing at an event and he had a big fight and then it fell out and then another guy came in and it fell out. It was like two or three guys had pulled out of the fight for whatever reason I just DM’d him like ‘hey bro, I don’t know what the issue is why nobody will go against you but count me in, I’ll do it. Tell the promoter to hit me up.’ I just wanted to challenge myself and feel it out.”
That’s when he revealed that despite being up against the man that most people would consider the greatest no gi grappler in the world, he didn’t really spend any time learning Jiu-Jitsu:
“So he got me in touch with the promoter and they’re like ‘yeah, this would be great, let’s do it. I was like well I better start practicing Jiu-Jjitsu. So I did three Jiu-Jitsu practices.”
Even though Bo Nickal has now spent a ton of time learning Jiu-Jitsu through training for his MMA career, his match against Gordon Ryan was before any of that took place as well:
“I had never even done any MMA training, just wrestling. I knew some guys in Pittsburgh that had a gym, pretty high level, some pretty high level guys so I was like hey, try to show me some stuff and we’ll get after it.”
Although he was submitted by Gordon Ryan, Bo Nickal did learn some very valuable lessons from his first ever Jiu-Jitsu match and he explained how this has even helped him in his MMA career as well:
“It was bittersweet. I wanted to go in there and shock the world and win and just (represent) wrestling and be like ‘see, Jiu-Jitsu doesn’t work.’ But it also taught me I do need to work on that part of my game and how important it is because it’s very helpful in a fight to be able to decide where the fight goes but for me, I’ve always been a finisher. With wrestling it was always go for the pin, get the pin and so I realized in MMA if I’m going to take a guy down, you can TKO a guy of course but guys are pretty tough. They’re durable and they’re good at not getting hit too much. So you’ve got to figure out ways to pass, to get position, to get the mount, take the back and submit guys. If you’re really good, I think the path of least resistance to get a lot of wins and honestly just to save yourself some effort and some energy and save yourself some brain damage.”
The full interview with Bo Nickal where he reveals that he only took three Jiu-Jitsu classes before facing Gordon Ryan was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Demetrious Johnson:
