Nicky Rodriguez has recently given an honest assessment of his performance in his recent match against Gordon Ryan at the third UFC Fight Pass Invitational. The two men met in the main event of the card after Vinny Magalhaes withdrew from his match against Ryan and Rodriguez took his place on short notice. They engaged in a tough match where neither man able to get the win during the regulation time period, but Ryan was able to secure his victory in EBI overtime. Rodriguez gave his thoughts on the match during a recent episode of The Simple Man Podcast, which he co-hosts:
“The biggest takeaway was that in ADCC I lost to a leg entanglement and now, a few weeks later, I won a leg entanglement, that’s the biggest takeaway. Besides that, he couldn’t do shit, he couldn’t sweep me, he couldn’t get on top, couldn’t do anything. He really just laid on his back, tried to grab grips, and couldn’t do much.”
Nicky Rodriguez was referring to his first match with Gordon Ryan in the final of the over 99kg division at ADCC 2022, which he lost by heelhook relatively early on. As he explained, his performance in their rematch was significantly better and he actually managed to cause some damage to Ryan’s ankle during a toehold attempt:
“When I’m getting the toehold, I hear it cracking and I’m like ‘Oh, I got this.’ So I go a little bit harder, crack it some more, and he kicks out. And I’m just thinking, like ‘fuck, if I had good mechanics, I would have took this foot home with me… I have like 6 out of 10 mechanics and I was still able to break the foot. So I’ll go back, refine some stuff.”
The toehold attempt wasn’t the only positive of the match for Rodriguez either, as he was also relentlessly pursuing his trademark bodylock passing as well. He seemed happy with how those passing attempts were progressing too:
“I was able to lock my hands in a body lock once or twice, which he was able to defend well… I got my hands locked twice in the match, and I could feel each time I got my hands locked he’s just a little bit softer. My personal opinion, the third or fourth time I got my hands locked around him, I believe I would have passed.”
“I think he was just getting really frustrated on bottom. He wasn’t able to engage or use his grips to his advantage. Usually from bottom he just moves guys around, start dragging them and whatnot and come on top, and he just wasn’t able to do that this time.”
All in all, many fans were impressed with how well Nicky Rodriguez managed to do against Gordon Ryan in their second match. Although he wasn’t able to get the win, he had what was undeniably the best performance against Ryan that anyone has had in a very long time. This has given Rodriguez a lot of confidence going into any future meetings:
“So [Ryan has] about three times the amount of jiu-jitsu training that I have. With one third of the training, I was able to put it on this guy, broke his foot, get a rear-naked choke locked up, and he wasn’t able to engage me at all… I think people see that he’s human now, and he knows I’m coming.”
The full episode of The Simple Man Podcast that the above comments are from can be found on their official YouTube channel:
