JRE MMA Show #129 with Gordon Ryan & Mo Jassim

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. All right, what's happening?

Gordon Ryan (0:13)

Not much.

Joe Rogan (0:14)

Good to see you, good to see you. Mo, introduce yourself.

Mo Jassim (0:17)

My name is Mo Jassim, I'm the head organizer of ADCC 2019

Joe Rogan (0:21)

And for people who don't know what ADCC is, Abu Dhabi Combat Club, when was that founded in 2000?

Mo Jassim (0:27)

1998 was the inaugural one.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

That was the first one.

Mo Jassim (0:31)

Yeah, way back in the day.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

That's pretty wild. When you think about like the UFC starting in 93, and that's where everybody really got excited about Jiu Jitsu.

And then Abu Dhabi only five years later.

Mo Jassim (0:41)

Yeah, because I mean, the owner and creator-

Joe Rogan (0:43)

Pull the sucker right up your face. It moves around, you can grab it.

Mo Jassim (0:47)

Is that good?

Joe Rogan (0:47)

Yeah, perfect. Hold on one second, sorry. What's the matter?

Gordon Ryan (0:53)

Wrong one.

Joe Rogan (0:55)

Start again?

Did you record it at all? But was he recorded before?

Gordon Ryan (1:00)

It was just going through the wrong input. I have it on a different thing, I'll take care of it.

Joe Rogan (1:05)

Oh, okay, okay. All right, we're good.

So 1998, it started, and why did they, no gi back then was very unpopular.

Mo Jassim (1:16)

100%, it's sort of an interesting story, how it started. So the owner and creator of ADCC is Sheik Tahnoun, and he was going to college in the 90s in San Diego.

UFC comes out in 1993, he gets hooked on it, and he just starts training, walks into a jujitsu school in San Diego and starts training. He hides his identity, no one knows who he is, not even his instructor, he just goes by the name of Ben.

Joe Rogan (1:46)

That's pretty gangster.

Mo Jassim (1:48)

Yeah, like literally no one knows who he is except a few people. So he graduates, I believe in 1995, goes back and then tells everybody who he actually really is.

And, you know, he starts creating this rule set, and you're right, no gi back then was just pretty much non-existent. So he went against the grain and he did something interesting, sort of like what the UFC did. You know, the original UFCs, it wasn't mixed martial arts. It was art versus art, and that was the concept of ADCC. Judo guys versus Jiu Jitsu guys versus Sambo, et cetera, et cetera. So he created this rule set, and in 1998, the first ADCC happened in Abu Dhabi.

Joe Rogan (2:32)

It was really interesting because back in the day, it was frowned upon to have no gi competitions. Like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guys wanted you to train and compete only in the gi.

Yeah. Did you start in the gi, right?

Gordon Ryan (2:46)

I started in the gi. The first two and a half years was only in the gi, and then I made a transition to no gi.

Joe Rogan (2:51)

What year did you make the transition?

Gordon Ryan (2:53)

I started in 2011, so 2014 is when I really started to make the transition.

Then by late 2014, 2015, then it was pretty much all no gi because I didn't have any gi training partners. Eddie Cummings, Gary, all the competitors at Henzo's, at least John's students were all no gi guys.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

Eddie Cummings, has he vanished?

Gordon Ryan (3:15)

I have no idea what happened.

Joe Rogan (3:16)

I went to his Instagram the other day to see what he was up to.

Gordon Ryan (3:19)

He posted like three years ago.

Joe Rogan (3:20)

Yeah.

Gordon Ryan (3:20)

Yeah, he stopped training with us, and then he was training for a while at Unity, and then I haven't talked to him. I don't even know if he's still training. He had a PhD in physics, so I heard he started teaching again. He's got a normal job now. I have no idea.

So maybe he trains, maybe he doesn't, but he definitely doesn't compete anymore.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

So weird. He was so talented.

Gordon Ryan (3:40)

He was. He was. He went in and was crushing EBI's and had really good, tough ADCC matches. He had that super close match against Tanquino.

And then after the EBI with Gio, where he lost to Gio, we didn't see him anymore after that.

Joe Rogan (3:59)

Crazy.

But it's such a wild sport, and it does so much damage to your body. You know, so many guys, I mean, everybody that I talk to years later, like, oh, I got two discs replaced in my neck, I got this going on, I got that going on.