In the wide-ranging interview with Brandon Reed, a three-time NIA wrestling champion, four-time All-American, ADCC World Championships veteran, and newly promoted brown belt, Reed shared his perspective on various aspects of grappling, including his views on Gordon Ryan.
Reed’s comments about Gordon Ryan came up when discussing instructional content and how he decides what to cover in his own educational materials. While explaining his approach to creating instructionals that address “pain points” in jiu-jitsu, Reed mentioned that he tries not to follow trends. This led him to discuss Gordon Ryan’s recent instructional on what Ryan calls “scrimmage wrestling.”
“What’s made me cringe lately has been like Gordon Ryan consistently saying scrimmage wrestling,” Reed stated. “I’m like dude, what the [expletive] is that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Reed didn’t stop there, continuing his critique of the multiple-time ADCC champion: “Gordon’s okay like he’s a weirdo but… everyone knows my opinion because I’m like, man, he’s just weird.”
The former wrestler particularly took issue with Ryan’s marketing approach to jiu-jitsu instructionals. “He kind of low-key disses all the wrestlers in jiu-jitsu,” Reed claimed. “He’s like ‘guys, you’re getting these instructionals from wrestlers in jiu-jitsu, you need to get my scrimmage wrestling instructional, this is the real stuff for jiu-jitsu.’ I’m like Gordon, what are you talking about bro?”
Ryan, never one to let criticism go unanswered, fired back with a detailed account of their previous training session.
“Remember the 1 time we trained in a 20-minute round, and I beat the piss out of you so bad that you couldn’t get up at the end of the round?” Ryan wrote. “That was only wrestling and basically no jiu-jitsu because I kept letting you stand up.”
The reigning ADCC champion continued his response by challenging Reed’s wrestling credentials: “Remember how I scored about 847 points on you under ADCC takedown rules, and you scored 0 on me because you have no idea how to scrimmage? You wanna market wrestling, fine by me, but don’t come at me knowing how our wrestling exchanges went. Come at me with your not even D1 skills, gtfo lol.”
Ryan went on to add:
“When you say you wrestle, you need to specify what kind of wrestling. Is it freestyle? Is It greco? Is It folkstyle? ADCC wrestling is a form of wrestling. You “scrimmage” for the 1st point. It’s way different than any other form of wrestling. There’s a reason pat Downey got heel hooked off a wrestling exchange at trials. There’s a reason that I win all the scrimmages for top position against the sports “best” wrestlers like Downey, Andre, Yuri, etc It’s completely different. I’m not the weirdo. YOURE the weirdo for being a purple belt and not understanding the difference. 🤣. Also, I still have no hard feelings against Brandon, but to call me a weirdo and say idk what I’m talking about… that’s why you allowed Pena to sweep you twice, because you didn’t turn it into a scrimmage 🤷♂️”
Reed is not the only person to side eye Ryan’s take on ‘mastering wrestling’ but he’s certainly the one that got the biggest response from Ryan on social media.
