Gordon Ryan sat down with Tim Kennedy on Overdogs USA podcast and made clear that while Brazil’s legacy in jiu-jitsu is not going anywhere soon, its dominance over the sport is quietly eroding.
Speaking from the perspective of someone who has competed at the highest levels, Ryan offered a measured but pointed forecast for where the sport is headed.
“I think Brazil has such a head start and they have so many people, so many champions already, that they’ll probably be prominent for the next decade,” Ryan said.
“But if the Brazilians don’t start making adjustments, if they just are hard-headed and they do everything they’ve been doing for the last 30 years that has worked because the sport wasn’t really progressing that much, they’ll be phased out.”
A shift is already underway. The American Trials, once considered secondary to Brazil’s domestic competition circuit, have overtaken their Brazilian counterpart in both prestige and depth.
“Back when I started, when you were competing, the Brazilian Trials was the big trials,” Ryan told Kennedy. “Now it’s the American Trials. If you win the American Trials, you’re seated way higher. The American Trials has so much more talent now.”
Part of what is driving that shift, according to Ryan, is access to information. The growth of instructional content, subscription services, and match footage has leveled the playing field for athletes in the United States in a way that has not translated equally to Brazil.
“The conversion rate in Brazil is so tough,” he said. “For most Brazilians, it’s hard to afford. So they just don’t have the access to the information that you would in America.”
Ryan also flagged a threat that few in the jiu-jitsu world have addressed directly: Russian athletes.
“I’m very interested to see what it will be like when the Russians start getting involved, because that’s going to be a problem for everybody,” he said.
His reasoning was straightforward. Russian wrestlers already compete at Olympic-level caliber, and once they layer world-class jiu-jitsu on top of that foundation, the combination becomes a different kind of challenge entirely.
“Once you get guys who are just that good at wrestling and also really envelop themselves in jiu-jitsu, so they’re like world-level black belt jiu-jitsu and Olympic level at wrestling, that’s going to be an issue for everyone.”
