The rivalry between Gordon Ryan and Pat Downey is still alive, and the two men have now agreed to a match with a few special conditions that’s based on the ADCC scoring system. This wouldn’t be the first time that the two men have met on the mats, but it would be the first time that they’ve been able to agree on a single ruleset. Their first meeting happened in 2020 and they underwent two matches, with each man picking their preferred ruleset. While Ryan mauled Downey along the way to a submission win in their submission-only match, Downey returned the favor with a tech fall in their wrestling match.
Given that Downey was completely new to submission grappling at the time and Ryan has never wrestled at a high enough level to compete with him, the results were predictable. A lot has changed for both men since then though, which is why a ruleset that bridges the gap between their strengths is now possible. Ryan might still be a Jiu-Jitsu expert first and foremost, but his standing grappling has come a very long way over the last few years. Likewise, Downey has had much more experience and even some high-level success in submission grappling competition even if he is still technically a white belt in the sport.
Most recently, Downey was seen going 2-1 at the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational and taking some time in one of his post-match interviews to get the crowd chanting against Ryan. Meanwhile, Ryan was busy on that very same weekend beating Felipe Pena and Yuri Simoes in a pair of superfights at ADCC 2024. One of the main stated goals of ADCC has actually been to create a ruleset where all different forms of grappling can thrive, so it makes sense that for Pat Downey and Gordon Ryan to base their match off those rules. Rather than having a full match though, Ryan wants to give Downey the perceived advantage by resetting every time someone scores and only winning when you score three times.
Pat Downey shared the screenshot of his messages with Gordon Ryan where they agree to have a match under special conditions based on ADCC scoring in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
