Gordon Ryan has been studying under John Danaher for almost his entire BJJ career but footage of the pair rolling together is actually very rare. Danaher’s students are famous for not taking any days off and Ryan is still very much in the prime of his athletic career, so there’s quite a lot of footage of him training of course. He regularly rolls with the top competitors on the New Wave Jiu-Jitsu competition team like Nicholas Meregali, Luke Griffith, and Dan Manasoiu, but he also spends plenty of time training with other elite grapplers when he gets the opportunity too.
While some of those guest training partners might be active competitors at the top of their games, he’s also been able to get rounds in with some of the biggest legends in the history of the sport like Roger Gracie. The reason that there is hardly any footage of Gordon Ryan and John Danaher rolling together is largely because of the injuries that Danaher has suffered over the course of his training and coaching career. It’s pretty common knowledge at this point, but Danaher has suffered several injuries to his lower body that have severely limited his ability to roll with fully resisting partners.
That means that there’s very little footage of Danaher in action at all, other than in instructionals or in the form of some short clips dating back well over a decade. Like any older grappler who has to work around long-term injuries, Danaher will obviously be very careful about who he rolls with. Not only is Ryan his most successful student but this footage shows that he has also clearly been a trusted training partner too. He’s shown the same on other occasions too, as there’s other footage of him getting light rounds in with older BJJ legends like Royce Gracie too.
The footage of Gordon Ryan and John Danaher rolling together was uploaded to the official Instagram account of Edy Franco:
