Gordon Ryan recently went on an episode of Jake Shields’ podcast and the topic of conversation eventually turned to the breakup of his former team, the Danaher Death Squad (DDS), and what he thinks about B-Team Jiu-Jitsu. Although it’s not entirely surprising that he would start talking about one of the biggest storylines in his professional Jiu-Jitsu and the other team that spawned out of that breakup, it is one of the few times he’s spoken about it so candidly. He started out by giving a little background on the breakup of DDS, and he explained that it was Nicky Rodriguez who inadvertently inspired him to talk about the topic:
“When the team split we had this internal agreement that we wanted to remain publicly cordial. I think it’s stupid to air family drama publicly, because what is it, Keeping up with the Kardashians? It’s like when AOJ (Art of Jiu-Jitsu) and ATOS split, they were like ‘we’re splitting but everything’s cool’… So then (Nicky Rodriguez) just goes out and just starts doing interviews like blatantly lying, saying that he used to make me quit in training and I never taught him anything, all this s**t.”
Rodriguez was indeed the first one to open up about the reasons behind the team’s breakup and he’s since talked about it at length on a number of different podcasts and platforms. To give his side of why DDS broke up, Gordon Ryan started by giving his thoughts on what B-Team Jiu-Jitsu is like as a training environment:
“If you look at what they have now, it’s basically just a frat house where they all just kind’ve have fun. You know, Craig (Jones) hasn’t been to the gym in a year and a half, I don’t even know how that works… Nicky (Rodriguez) is willing to do hard work, Ethan (Crelinsten) is willing to do like hard physical work but they’re just both so dumb that they don’t really get any better. They just get more physical and more intuitive. But to have John (Danaher) like a Drill Sargeant, and John’s not like ‘you gotta be there every day’ but the fact that John’s presence, like John’s there everyday so his presence, it’s constant.”
He didn’t just stop there either, Ryan went on to explain what he sees as the key difference between him and the competitors training at B-Team:
“Craig’s whole brand is based on being a loser. Like they had the B-team thing. I think those guys kinda just want to have a laid-back life and have more fun than anything, which is fine. That’s fine with me, but what’s fun for me is winning. I want to train with John and I want to win, I don’t want to be a clown who has fun or does funny stuff on Instagram. I want to leave a legacy when I die, that’s my prerogative.”
He finished off that section of the interview by talking specifically about Craig Jones, even referencing the recent star-studded Craig Jones Invitational too:
“Craig’s whole thing is that if he can’t beat you, like if he can’t beat something or win at something, he’ll just try to destroy it. He couldn’t beat me so he joined the team and then he broke the team up, he couldn’t win ADCC so he tried to crush ADCC. He’s just very vindictive, Craig’s Instagram persona is the exact opposite of what Craig is in real life.”
The full interview with Gordon Ryan where he discusses the DDS split and gives his take on B-Team Jiu-Jitsu was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Jake Shields:
