Nicky Ryan is an elite grappler and ADCC veteran who also happens to be the younger brother of Gordon Ryan, and he recently opened up about what it was like growing up with him. Both of them have managed to reach the biggest stages of the sport, but Nicky is still chasing his first major title at that level. Gordon on the other hand has won three different regular weight classes and the absolute division at ADCC, capping off his run by defeating Andre Galvao to become the superfight champion in 2022. Nicky also competed at the same event in the 77kg division, although he went out in the opening round against Renato Canuto.
Nicky Ryan recently appeared on an episode of The Simple Man podcast, and was asked about what it was like growing up with his older brother Gordon:
“We were pretty close growing up. Like, I would hang out with him and his friends and stuff… But yeah, I mean he just got super into Jiu-Jitsu at like 16. He would be doing 3-4 classes per day. Yeah, we were close growing up.”
There’s a 6-year difference between the two brothers, so Nicky was still just a child when Gordon first found the sport back then. Naturally the conversation turned to when Nicky discovered the sport:
“I started when I was 13, so when he was 19. I mean, we were always involved in it as kids. Because we had the daycare teacher, who would make us just do no-time limit matches on a concrete floor. Yeah, that’s what got him into it… And then, I was 13 and he kept trying to convince me to go. And I eventually, one day, just decided to do it as a way to lose weight. Because I was fat as f*ck as a kid… And then I just got addicted to it.”
Of course, nobody could have foreseen the huge amount of success that they’ve found in the years since they first started training. Like most young grapplers, it’s not as if they started out on day 1 with the idea of becoming a world champion years later. According to Nicky Ryan, Gordon wasn’t taking that sport as seriously as he does today when he was growing up and it was only after one particular tournament win that it all changed:
“I mean, we were both kinda the same like we just got obsessed with it so we were just doing it all day. I think like probably when he won EBI is when he’s like ‘all right, I can make good money doing this’ you know because he just won like 20 grand, he won a few EBIs in a row. So he’s like ‘all right, I can actually make a living off of it’ and that’s probably when he like fully committed.”
While there’s some money to be made at the highest levels of the sport, what Gordon Ryan manages to make significantly outshines those around him. No grappler starts out making thousands of dollars though of course, and Nicky Ryan also shared the ways that they used to make money growing up as young competitors:
“He worked for like, one or two summers I think. I could be wrong but I think it was just like one or two summers, like picking up trash. You just stand on the back of a garbage truck and like pick up the bins. That and we would work at the field of terror for one or two months of the year.”
The full episode of The Simple Man podcast where Nicky Ryan opens up about life growing up with Gordon and how he started BJJ was uploaded to their official YouTube channel:
