Nicky Ryan is often regarded as an incredibly-talented grappler but he isn’t seen competing anywhere near as often as some of his peers. He recently appeared on an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast alongside two of his B-Team Jiu-Jitsu teammates, Nicky Rodriguez and Craig Jones, and pretty early on in the interview Fridman asked all three grapplers whether they loved winning more than they hated losing. Ryan’s answer was actually incredibly illuminating and he got pretty introspective with it:
“I’m a very competitive person so I for sure hate losing more than I like winning. I do think it’s something that’s kinda held me back over the past few years because it makes it so that I’m not as active as I should be. It’s like I really hate that feeling of, you know after a match that you just lost, so it kinda prevents me from competing. So it’s definitely something I need to work past.”
To Fridman’s credit, he probed Nicky Ryan further on his answer and asked whether the possibility of losing when competing is something that weighs heavy on him:
“Yeah. My whole life, my financial stability, everything depends on my ability to go out there and compete and my ability to teach. It’s a huge hit to the brand if you lose so leading up to matches that’s definitely something that’s on my mind.”
While Nicky Ryan opened up about the mental aspect of competition, that isn’t the only thing that has stopped him from competing as often as he’d like either. It’s well-known that Ryan has had a few issues with knee injuries over the years as well, and one of them actually hit at quite possibly the worst time imaginable:
“About one week prior to this last ADCC (2022), I was wrestling with this guy named Kenta (Iwamoto) who was also competing and I went to go lift him from a rear-bodylock, and he hooked the outside of my leg, and we just felt something pop, you know he felt a shift with his leg. When it first happened it hurt for the first 30 seconds and I honestly debated, I was like ‘maybe it’s just some freak thing’. I literally thought about continuing the session, then the next day I woke up and it was super sore. I was limping around and couldn’t do a full squat. It pretty much killed all of my training for the entire week leading up to the event. I couldn’t train or anything, messed up my cut, obviously there’s added nerves with that too. You’re not in the gym every day leading up to the competition.”
It turned out that he had torn his ACL during the lead-up to ADCC 2022, which obviously impacted both his preparation for the tournament and his performance during it. He was competing in the 77kg division for the first time after moving up in weight and met Renato Canuto in the opening round of the bracket, losing on points. Ryan also took the time to break down how that match went:
“I wasn’t really able to pull guard because I couldn’t get full heel-to-butt connection, which is inevitable with playing guard. I was very hesitant to shoot as well, so I came out with the idea of just trying to use handfighting to tire my first opponent out and then mainly look to get to underhooks or overhooks and do mostly upper-body wrestling. In the beginning of the match I successfully got to an underhook, got to a rear-bodylock, he tried to roll and I ended up in top position in side control. But it was during the no points period and as the match went on I gassed out, and eventually he ended up taking me down and scoring with two hooks on the back.”
The full interview with Nicky Ryan, Craig Jones, and Nicky Rodriguez where they discussed their lives competing at the highest level was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Lex Fridman podcast:
