Gordon Ryan recently shared a tour of the trophy room in his house, breaking down a few of the highlights of his career so far. Although he’s still in his athletic prime at present, he’s achieved a huge amount in his career and that’s reflected by the sheer size of his trophy room. It’s a whole room dedicated to his Jiu-Jitsu career and the main cabinet takes up an entire wall, with plenty of titles and medals that aren’t able to fit in there as well. He’s managed to keep hold of a huge number of the titles he’s won throughout the early days of his career, but obviously his biggest accomplishments take centre-stage.
Before breaking down some of the biggest highlights of his career like his multiple ADCC world titles, Gordon Ryan stopped at one wall of his trophy room that holds a series of knives and swords. He explained that this section actually comes from his coach:
“When we either win a big competition, or we get promoted, or do something that warrants it; John (Danaher) will gift us with knives. He draws a lot of symmetries between knives and Jiu-Jitsu. He says things like ‘a knife-blade is like Jiu-Jitsu in so far as if you don’t take care of it, it will become dull. If you don’t keep your skills up to par, they’ll become dull.’… ‘a knife can be used for good or for bad, Jiu-Jitsu can also be used for good or for bad.’ So he draws a lot of parallels between knives and he’s big into knives, so he’ll give you a lot of knives and swords as gifts.”
While going through some of the smaller titles and medals that he won earlier in his career, Ryan took a moment to reflect on one particular silver trophy that holds a special memory for him:
“This is the biggest heartbreak of my life… I did the first ADCC Trials and I beat (Richie Martinez) from 10th Planet in the first round in 2014 and then I got submitted by Josh Hayden. One of three times I’ve ever been submitted in my entire career from white belt to black belt, in the second match and I was real heartbroken about that. But then on top of that, I went to the second Trials and I was like ‘this is my chance, this is my opportunity to get into ADCC’. I beat a bunch of ADCC vets, I beat James Brasco, I beat Kyle Griffin in that. And then I lost by a back-take in like the last 30 seconds to Mike Perez from ATOS, who was also a purple belt at the time, and I missed out on my chance to go to 2015 ADCC. Which probably actually was a good thing because then it would have messed up my ADCC stats, because in 2015 I never would have won ADCC.”
There’s another specific promotion that appears multiple times in his trophy room too, as Gordon Ryan won multiple EBI titles and produced the earliest highlights of his career there. He wasn’t alone of course, as many of his teammates in the original Danaher Death Squad also found success there. Ryan won four EBI titles and he explained that there was a unique story behind the lightest division he entered:
“The only reason I did 170lbs was it was always Eddie (Cummings) at 135/45, Garry (Tonon) at 155 and 170, and then me at 185, 205, and absolute. Because Eddie Bravo let every other team put two guys in the tournament except for us… for no reason, just because he doesn’t like us. As we started winning he would only let one guy in, so we were just allowed to have one guy. So when I was gonna do the 205lbs EBI, I was training with spazzy idiot AJ Agazarm and he tried to cartwheel out of a kimura like a moron,and he slit my eye open and put this big gash on my eye. I couldn’t compete at 205 so I sat that one out, Garry did 205, he won 205, and then he let me do the next 170.“
Although he’s won multiple titles at most of the promotions he’s competed for, there’s one particular organization that he never intended on competing for as a black belt. His only venture in to IBJJF competition other than during his time as a colored belt was in 2018 and although he won four gold medals there that year, he doesn’t intend on ever doing it again:
“I won the ultra-heavyweight and the openweight for them because everyone, after I won ADCC in 2017, said that there was no way that I could win the IBJJF without heel hooks because no heel hooks were allowed back then, no reaping was allowed. They said there was no way you could win that, going through a whole tournament beating the best guys in the world without heel hooks. So I said ‘I’m gonna do this one time and never do it again’, so I did the (IBJJF No Gi Pan Championship) and the (IBJJF No Gi World Championship) in 2017, I double-golded in both of them, and then I never did them again just like I said I was going to do.”
He also talked through the multiple ADCC world titles in his cabinet, along with several other belts like his Who’s Number One heavyweight titles. The final section of the trophy room tour saw Gordon Ryan sharing some of the gifts he’s received from fans over his career, along with a few other pieces of memorabilia. It’s no surprise that he needs a whole room to store his achievements in when he talks through them, as it’s much more than anyone would have pictured. Ryan has been actively competing for well over a decade now though and he’s won pretty much all of the major events in the world.
Gordon Ryan gave fans a tour of his trophy room and shared the highlights of his career so far in a recent video uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
