Demetrious Johnson regularly seeks out the best sparring partners in the world and he has recently managed to get a good training session in with both of the Ruotolo brothers. It appears as though they decided to work on both gi Jiu-Jitsu and MMA together, finding a way for all three of them to benefit and learn things from the session. The Ruotolo brothers are both comfortably among the best professional grapplers in the world and Johnson is one of the greatest MMA fighters to ever live, so naturally there was a lot that they could learn from one another.
The Ruotolo brothers have actually reached the highest level of both gi and no gi grappling, as Tye Ruotolo is the youngest person to ever win an IBJJF World Championship and Kade Ruotolo is the youngest person to ever win an ADCC world championship. Johnson has always been an MMA fighter first and foremost but he actually started to compete in the gi himself recently and even won an IBJJF Master World Championship at brown belt just last year. Johnson’s primary focus is still his MMA career of course but he has been putting more time into grappling and was recently promoted to BJJ black belt, so now is a great time to learn from the Ruotolo brothers.
While Demetrious Johnson has branched out from MMA and into grappling, the Ruotolo brothers are actually about to do the exact opposite. Kade Ruotolo is just a few weeks away from making his professional MMA debut at ONE 167 and even a single session with a legendary fighter like Johnson will no doubt help him prepare for the fight. Although Tye Ruotolo doesn’t have anything booked just yet, both brothers have previously said that they intend to make the transition to MMA. It’s always great to see elite combat sports athletes training together but it becomes even more interesting when they are actually going to be competing in each other’s area of expertise.
Demetrious Johnson shared some of the footage from his sparring session with the Ruotolo brothers in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
