Gordon Ryan has been absent from competition for quite some time now, but he’s been able to provide a more concrete update on his recovery time after surgery now. He hasn’t competed at all in 2023 and recently revealed the reasons behind it, explaining a series of illnesses that have resulted in him needing extensive antibiotic treatment. Not only have these issues kept him off the mats anyway, but the treatment for them has also resulted in the resurgence of the stomach issues that kept him out of competition in the past.
The last time that fans were able to see Ryan competing was just at the end of 2022, when he defeated Nicky Rodriguez in EBI overtime at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 3. He wasn’t originally supposed to take anywhere near this amount of time off though, as he was originally booked to compete in the fourth match against Felipe Pena at the end of February. This would only have been around 3 months between matches but during the final few days leading up to the match, disaster struck. Ryan came down with an illness that forced him to withdraw from the match and he was replaced at the last minute.
He’s been dealing with a series of different issues since then and it wasn’t clear when he’d be returning to competition, but Gordon Ryan has been able to provide a more detailed update on the timeline for his recovery after surgery. He isn’t able to start lifting weights for another 3 weeks and can’t return to training for another 2 months, putting his return to the mats in general at around the late June or early August mark. He’ll obviously have to spend some time working to get back into competition-shape and will likely want a proper training camp leading up to his next match too. With that in mind it seems like his return to competition would be placed at some time around the end of 2023 at the very earliest, but maybe even not until 2024.
Gordon Ryan shared the update on his recovery time after surgery in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
