Gordon Ryan recently shared an interesting story about how AJ Agazarm inadvertently helped to stop him from quitting Jiu-Jitsu. The two men have a fair bit of background with one another despite the fact that they’ve never competed against one another and even sit multiple weight classes apart. They’ve fired shots at one another on social media in the past and there’s clearly no love lost between them. Long before they had that kind of relationship they had actually trained together too, and that’s actually when Agazarm managed to help Ryan stick with Jiu-Jitsu without even realising he was doing it.
Apparently the session took place back when Ryan was a relatively new purple belt, long before he became the multiple-time ADCC world champion he is today. He shared the story with Jake Shields on his podcast and explained that it came from a particularly hard training session where he was submitted several times:
“I went out and I was just, like, sitting depressed all day. I was with Garry (Tonon). Garry‘s, like, what’s wrong? I’m, like, I’m f***ing done with this. Like, I don’t even know why I’m doing this anymore. That was the closest I ever was to quitting Jiu-Jitsu.”
That’s when Agazarm arrived for the afternoon training session and it was the sparring round that Ryan had with him that helped him change his mindset that day. Apparently it actually came from something that Agazarm has been known for in his Jiu-Jitsu career, his toughness and top-tier submission defense:
“The only thing that saved me that day was AJ Agazarm’s came into the gym for the afternoon class and I train with AJ. AJ doesn’t tap in training, and I just completely blew his shoulder apart. I’m pretty sure he needed shoulder surgery. He was there to train to compete in Pan-ams or something and I put him in the back triangle, and cranked the kimura. It just blew his shoulder apart, which is perfect because we were working on breaking mechanics back then and AJ was the perfect training partner because he just never taps like an idiot… So I beat up AJ and I was, like: ‘Okay, I’m back.’”
The full interview with Gordon Ryan where he shares the story of AJ Agazarm inadvertently helping him stick with Jiu-Jitsu was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Jake Shields’ Fight Back podcast:
