Gordon Ryan has won basically everything there is to win in the world of BJJ, so many fans have been asking ‘why isn’t Ryan transitioning to MMA?’ It’s an understandable question too, given that Ryan put in the performance of a lifetime at ADCC 2022 when he won his third consecutive weightclass title and defeated Andre Galvao for the superfight championship. At one point, Ryan had even signed an exclusive contract with ONE Championship that included the option to take both submission grappling and MMA fights. Gordon Ryan recently appeared on an episode of The MMA Hour and explained exactly why he isn’t going to be doing MMA any time soon:
“John [Danaher] has never been wrong, our coach has never been wrong about anything. He’s never been wrong. He’s told me things and whether it be five years or three years or seven years later, he always ends up being right, and John is like, ‘Absolutely do not go into MMA. You already make a ton of money doing this, you’re considered the greatest of all time already, and jiu-jitsu is about to become mainstream, and once it becomes mainstream everyone is going to get paid more and jiu-jitsu is going to be a real sport. You’re at the forefront of that and if you move to MMA now, that could be lost. So I don’t know. Maybe if one of the other guys from the team wins an ADCC Absolute or something.”
Gordon Ryan also explained that there was a time when a transition to MMA was in his plans, but that has since passed due to conditions outside of his control:
“I was actually going to start fighting in 2019. I was actually getting ready, I was sparring. I went to a Bellator event and I was talking to some guys from Bellator, I was talking to some guys from ONE [Championship] about fighting MMA, and then 2019, right in the beginning of the year, I fought João Gabriel Rocha and I tore my LCL and I had to have surgery on my LCL. So the second I came back from LCL surgery, the focus wasn’t on MMA anymore, I was hoping into camp for ADCC… So that was the focus and then I won the Absolutes, so now I’m looking forward to 2021 ADCC where I have to fight André [Galvão], which ended up being 2022, and I ended up just getting roped back into jiu-jitsu. Like, ‘Oh, there’s something more I have to do in jiu-jitsu before I can leave.’ And now I’m at a point where I don’t have to leave. I make more money than most UFC champions and there’s no reason for me to get punched in the head every day and have to fight.”
To his credit, Gordon Ryan didn’t shut the door on an MMA career for good. It remains unlikely given what he’s already said about how much he trusts Danaher’s opinion, but it’s not completely impossible:
“I’ve always wanted to fight MMA, but I’m in such a good position now and I feel like it’s kind of my job to push jiu-jitsu over the hump into the mainstream. So I’m not totally ruling it out but I’m pretty comfortable with just grappling right now. I’m like the Mayweather or McGregor of jiu-jitsu. I don’t make nearly as much money as them but in proportion to the rest of the guys.”
While Ryan is open about the fact that instructionals are his main source of income, he remains hopeful that grapplers will be able to make a great wage from competition alone in the future:
“But my goal in the next five to 10 years is to have athletes, at least with purses — most of my money comes from instructionals. Most of my jiu-jitsu money comes from instructional videos, so I don’t think anyone is going to make as much money teaching as I do, because I think I’m a much better teacher, but I do think that in the next five to 10 years, athletes could be making similar money to what I’m making now just through competition purses. I think that an athlete in jiu-jitsu in the next five to 10 years should be making over $1 million a year just competing. And if we can do that, I think we’ll have something going for us.”
The interview with Gordon Ryan where he explains why he’s not transitioning to MMA any time soon and discusses his recent sparring session with Hafthor ‘The Mountain’ Bjornsson, was uploaded to the official YouTube Channel of MMA Fighting:
