Gordon Ryan and Felipe Pena have had an ongoing rivalry over the last few years, owing to the fact that Pena has managed to beat him in two separate matches in the past. That makes Pena one of only four men to defeat Ryan, the only one to do it twice, and the only person who has ever managed to submit Ryan in his entire professional competition history. Of course the most recent of these two matches happened around five years ago, so there’s definitely been a huge amount of improvement in both of these men in that time and there’s no way that a third match between them looks exactly the same.
This rivalry has heated up since their last match, with Ryan taking to social media to call out Pena on multiple occasions and even going so far as to share private messages between the two with the public. It’s not entirely one-sided though of course, and Pena has previously stated that it’s actually Ryan who is avoiding the fight with him, accusing him of lying in the past. Regardless of who has actually been ducking who over the last five years, it seems as though one of the most hotly-anticipated grudge matches in BJJ history will come to fruition as both Gordon Ryan and Felipe Pena have seemingly agreed to terms for two matches worth a total of $220,000.
Ryan initially offered a wager to Pena that he would match whatever amount of money he was willing to look forward with four times the amount but after that was declined, he stepped the offer up to ten times the amount instead. This is when Pena finally agreed and now Ryan will be putting $100,000 of his own money against just $10,000 of Pena’s on two separate occasions. Theoretically, Pena only has to win one of the matches and he will come away with a profit of $90,000 while Ryan has to win both in order to win just $20,000.
The first of these two matches will apparently take place in a neutral venue in Italy in July and will be a submission-only match with no time-limit in place. The second of the two will be coming at the 2022 ADCC world championships where the pair should meet in the over 99kg division after Pena moved up in weight, provided they don’t lose to anyone else first. That means that the second match and subsequent bet is not guaranteed of course, but Ryan and Pena have prepared for that outcome and neither man will win the other’s money in this eventuality.
Gordon Ryan announced the news of the two matches that he will be having with Felipe Pena and the pair’s $220,000 bet in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
