Roger Gracie was recently asked about his time training with Gordon Ryan and although he wasn’t willing to go into deep detail, he was very complementary about his fellow elite grappler. Raphaella Amorim sat down with Roger to talk about several different topics over the course of their interview, including his opinions on the rivalry between ADCC and CJI. It isn’t too surprising that the conversation eventually turned to Roger’s training sessions with Ryan, as it was fairly surprising to see the two of them on the mats together. Roger started out by explaining that it was only ever a friendly training session:
“I don’t tell nothing. Well, I have nothing to comment. It was, you know, it was a friendly sparring. A gym training. We didn’t try to kill each other, it wasn’t a checker. It wasn’t one trying to prove anything to the other. I think, you know, there’s nothing to say… It wasn’t a fight, it was training. We even trained more in the gi than no gi.”
It was surprising that the training session even came about too, because Roger Gracie lives in the UK while Gordon Ryan is based in Austin, Texas. Roger explained that he didn’t go there solely to train though, and the opportunity actually came about by chance:
“I went there to do the podcast with Lex Fridman, then I spent a few days down there. I even wanted to train with him too. And a friend of mine, Rafael Langhi, who is preparing for a match, he wanted to go there and train with me too. Then we ended up training at the same time that they were training gi.”
Obviously Ryan has always focused on being a no gi grappler and has never competed in the gi at a high level, so Roger would have a distinct advantage seeing as he won 10 gold medals at the IBJJF World Championship. According to Roger, Ryan is actually good in the gi as well:
“He’s tough too. It’s obvious that in no gi he is much better, but he’s tough in the gi too.”
Raphaella Amorim shared the interview with Roger Gracie where he discusses his time training with Gordon Ryan in a recent post to her official Instagram account:
