Gordon Ryan is now selling Gi instructionals

Plenty of prominent voices in the BJJ community have spoken out about the discrepancies between professional Gi and Nogi Jiu-jitsu.

Felipe Pena went on to explain that while the money in Nogi quadrupled over a short span of time, the gi competitions have remained at the same level. This is why he urged IBJJF to act and why there’s a lot of talk about ‘saving’ Gi BJJ.

The fact is, ADCC title has become more prestigious than IBJJF for a variety of reasons including the fact that IBJJF has so many divisions and types of competitions practically anyone you meet could claim to be a champion and they could theoretically be right. While ADCC has a limited number of divisions in which all belts are welcome to participate as long as they prove their skills through trials.

While Gordon Ryan is a proven Nogi competitor he’s never really professionally competed in the Gi.

While in Kazakhstan, Ryan was at a press conference of sorts when he elaborated on an interesting plan.

“So this is something that people have wanted to see for a long time. And I competed in the game all the way up until Black Belt and then kind of just focused on Nogi. ”

“I definitely want to teach in the Gi. I’m going to start actually training the Gi a little bit. Just be able to teach because I want to be able to just run a school and, you know, be a good coach and and and make instructionals with the Gi.”

“But at the same time, I also want to go out and prove that I can beat people the at some point. I think so. I don’t have any plans to compete in the Gi right now, but I want to at some point probably compete, whether in a local tournament or just, you know, putting content out there on YouTube for people to see.”

Pena then responded to Ryan saying:

“He promised to face me in the gi already 7 years ago after agreeing to a match according to his rules. We can do a nogi and a gi match on the same day, of course, if you don’t have to suddenly s**t in your pants”

But now, Ryan has mastered the gi sufficiently to provide an instructional. Ryan’s new instructional is built around Gi pressure passing. Which is interesting considering he personally admitted he doesn’t even train in the gi often.

Vagner Rocha recently poked holes into how profitable BJJ fanatics is becoming so it’s certainly interesting to see someone clearly go out of their lane and attempt to market a DVD that they can’t even prove works.

One high level competitor that vouched for Ryan’s gi skills is teammate Nicholas Meregali. Meregali publicly praised Ryan’s efforts and gave his endorsement.

It remains to be seen if this will create room for Ryan to compete in the gi considering how adversely a loss could impact his brand value, according to his own admission.