Gordon Ryan recently shared his thoughts on the new main event superfight for CJI 2, and he’s clearly not a fan of the matchmaking. It’s not exactly a surprise of course, as there’s still plenty of animosity between Ryan and Craig Jones even after several years. The first edition of CJI was one of the most successful grappling shows in the sport after all, and Ryan hasn’t said a positive word about it. A lot of fans thought it might be a little different this time around on account of Ryan’s teammates being part of the CJI 2 lineup, but he still isn’t a fan of the promotion.
He ruled himself out of the New Wave team for the event almost immediately and was critical of the event back then, but his public comments have only increased in the months since. The most recent barrage came when Gable Steveson pulled out of his superfight with Jones, which was the original main event for CJI 2. Ryan and Steveson have actually trained together before and despite the fact that he withdrew from the match on just a week’s notice, Ryan was still supportive of him. In fact, he used the withdrawal as ammunition against Jones and CJI while they were scrambling to find a replacement.
Then just a matter of days later, MMA legend Chael Sonnen stepped in to replace Steveson against Jones. This saved the main event superfight at the very least, and allowed Jones to compete at the event he created for a second year in a row. Ryan was less than impressed with how competitive this matchup is though, and it’s pretty understandable because Sonnen has been retired for over 6 years and Jones won their last match by submission fairly quickly. He even made reference to the first CJI superfight last year, where Jones submitted Gabi Garcia in the first major intergender match.
Gordon Ryan shared his criticism of the new CJI 2 main event superfight in a recent story uploaded to his official Instagram account:
