Gordon Ryan recently spoke publicly about the black belt promotion of Derek Moneyberg, the financial guru who has actually interviewed Ryan in the past. It was only around two months ago that Moneyberg was promoted to black belt after spending the last three and a half years training in Jiu-Jitsu, a length of time that immediately caused controversy. The promotion came approximately a year earlier than the minimum time requirements that the IBJJF dictate, although they’re not a governing body and cannot actually enforce that in any way. It’s still a remarkably quick time to progress to that level though, and it puts Moneyberg among the very quickest to ever achieve the rank.
There were a lot of questions surrounding the promotion from all corners of the BJJ world, and Moneyberg later fired back at the doubters. Some top competitors have come out in support of him while others still criticise the promotion, and the topic came up for Ryan when he appeared on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience:
“Everyone thinks that Derek (Moneyberg) is going to go out and beat an ADCC champion… it’s just not how it’s going to work. But I mean if he trained with a guy his… Like he’s 45 years old or 42 years old, if he trained with a 42 year-old black belt he’d do fine.”
Ryan has trained with Moneyberg before, as have many other elite competitors and coaches. He went on to explain how Moneyberg’s time training actually works:
“He trains with the guys who come in to train him, so he doesn’t have like a lot of looks. Like he doesn’t go in to like a normal gym and train, which is something I think that’s important to do just for your personal journey in Jiu-Jitsu.”
Although Moneyberg doesn’t get any time training with the general population, Ryan thinks he would be at a similar level to them:
“When you actually go to a gym and you see like what your average black belt is, it kinda brings you back to reality and you’re like ‘oh, this is what black belts are’. Like if Derek rolled with like a regular black belt in the gym, he’d do fine.”
Obviously the vast majority of Ryan’s time is spent at Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu, so he has likely trained with thousands of other black belts over the years. Gordon Ryan used that experience to judge how Derek Moneyberg would compare to other black belts:
“I train with normal black belts in the gym and I train with Derek when I go there, I’m telling you he would do fine against a normal black belt. If he had to compete against an average black belt who’s been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 10 years and he does it for an hour in a random gym in Kentucky… he’d probably beat him up to be honest.”
Gordon Ryan spoke about Derek Moneyberg and his promotion to BJJ black belt on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience and the clip was uploaded to the official Instagram account of Powerfuljje:
