Gordon Ryan is a controversial personality but he’s also the most dominant grappler in this decade. He’s not shying away from discussing plenty of topics that were previously taboo. Among them is PED use, which Ryan is fairly open about.
Ryan shared that USADA type testing would be very hard to pull of in the BJJ scene, because no single organization governs all the competitions. In fact, he claimed PED testing might even ruin a promotion.
“If USADA were to step into events like fight pass, for example, it would ruin those events. The reason is that if you’re competing in a fight pass event and getting randomly tested, you would be the only person in the sport undergoing testing. Meanwhile, competitors in organizations like flograppling or one championship wouldn’t be tested. So, you would have to compete naturally while others in the sport could be on PEDs.”
“This would put you at a significant disadvantage without any real reason or compensation, especially if you’re an exclusive athlete who wouldn’t compete in other events anyway.”
In a separate part of the conversation, Ryan also alleged that a natural competitor asked him for advice on PED use, which is no surprise to any of us that have seen Ryan’s incredible body transformation.
“But I think that, you know, just being authentic and actually talking about s**t that people don’t want to talk about can go a long way. And being fake about it, I think it’s the worst thing. Like you have, and all the time, like people who are the people who are most against ste*ids are always the people who take ste*ids.”
“Like we have like people who like used to be on our team who are like talking s**t about ste*ids or like claim their natural and it’s like, bro, you’ve asked me for ste*ids advice. Like I know you’re not f***ing natural.”
Presumably, Ryan is shading Nick Rodriguez here, who is a former teammate and has since been tested for PEDs – only to discover he’s got high cholesterol, diabetes markers and is PED free within reason.
