JRE MMA Show #109 with Gordon Ryan

**Joe Rogan** (0:04)
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Well, welcome, man. Thanks for doing this, appreciate it. Long time coming. How the fuck did you rise so far ahead of everyone else in the Jiu Jitsu world? Let me just tell everybody before things get started.
Gordon is undeniably the best pound for pound Jiu Jitsu player on earth. Not just the best, but pretty, pretty, it's a pretty good statement to say that you're the best ever. Well, you're only 25 That's crazy. How the fuck does that happen?

**Gordon Ryan** (0:50)
So I'm gonna go ahead and give credit to John.
I mean, I think that without him, I maybe would have been successful. I would have been, you know, maybe the best in the world at some point in my career, but I don't think that without John, I would be where I am right now, and I don't think that I would have gotten this good in this amount of time. You know, I've been training 10 years, I've been competing professionally for five years, and I think that, you know, a big part of the reason why I am where I am is because of John's coaching.

**Joe Rogan** (1:20)
Yeah, and we're talking about John Donoher for people who don't know who is a literal genius and a mastermind in Jiu Jitsu and a true mad scientist. And watching him coach you guys is very fascinating because he's so serious and stoic, and Gordon Ryan, pass over the left leg, Gordon Ryan, post, like the way he talks, like, it's really interesting. He says your full name, too. It's very interesting.

**Gordon Ryan** (1:44)
Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonan, Craig Jones. It's always the full name.

**Joe Rogan** (1:47)
Yeah, why would he? He's such an odd duck.

**Gordon Ryan** (1:50)
He does it to address us because a lot of times, like, if you've got, like, Nicky, for example, like, there's a lot of guys named Nicky, so he makes sure that you know he's talking to you when he says Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rod, Craig Jones, Gordon Ryan. So you know that when you hear your name being called, your first and last name, you know that, okay, this person is addressing you in a room of, you know, five, 10,000 people.

**Joe Rogan** (2:10)
He's such an unusual human being. There is not a single person on the planet Earth like John Donahue. One of the most brilliant guys I've ever met, obsessed with jujitsu, mostly.
Like, that's, if you got a pie chart of his brain, it would be like, it's like 20% room for other shit, 80% of his brain is jujitsu.

**Gordon Ryan** (2:29)
Yeah, I mean, it's not even just jujitsu, it's just martial arts in general. Like, I mean, people who know John on a personal level and have trained with John know that John knows just as much about MMA as he does, or even more about MMA than he does about jujitsu.
He's been coaching MMA with George and with Chris Wideman for longer than he's been coaching jujitsu. I mean, he's only been coaching professional jujitsu athletes for five years. And I've watched him personally teach judo privates to judo Olympians, watch, teach him, have him, I watched him teach wrestling privates to wrestling world team members, wrestling Olympians. You know, he knows just as much about the other martial arts as he does about jujitsu, it's crazy.

**Joe Rogan** (3:10)
Yeah, and never walks around without a rash guard on.

**Gordon Ryan** (3:13)
That's also correct.
I've seen him one time ever with a t-shirt on because we went to Long Island to train with Chris Wybmon one time, and he forgot his change of rash guards. So he had a street rash guard on, and he didn't have a second rash guard to change into, and Chris didn't have a rash guard for him, so they gave him like this pink flamingo t-shirt that he ended up, we did a whole session with Chris Wybmon. It was right before he was gonna fight Luke Rockhold the second time, which ended up never happening. But we did this whole session with John with like this pink tropical t-shirt on, and then he changed out of the t-shirt to get back into his street rash guard and leave to go home. Like it was just like, I'm just like, okay, this is happening. I posted it, everyone was freaking out about it.

**Joe Rogan** (3:56)
Just how crazy is it that he has a street rash guard?

**Gordon Ryan** (3:59)
Yeah, he's got street rash guards, he's got training rash guards, and he's got like his nighttime like dinner date rash guards. Like he's got like a date rash guard, he's got a dinner rash guard.