JRE MMA Show #129 with Gordon Ryan & Mo Jassim
Narrator, Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Mo Jassim (guest), Gordon Ryan (guest), Gordon Ryan (guest)
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Narrator, JRE MMA Show #129 with Gordon Ryan & Mo Jassim explores gordon Ryan, ADCC, and Jiu-Jitsu’s Future: Dominance, Discipline, and Drama This episode centers on ADCC head organizer Mo Jassim and grappling phenom Gordon Ryan discussing the evolution of no-gi jiu-jitsu, ADCC’s explosive growth, and what truly drives elite performance. They dive into the origin story of ADCC, the technical and business innovations pushing grappling forward, and why most champions still treat the sport like a hobby. Ryan breaks down his training philosophy, his rivalry with Felipe Pena, his health struggles, and the Danaher system’s obsessive approach to technical development. The conversation also explores broader combat sports topics like bare-knuckle fighting, wrestling, leg locks, and how to make grappling spectator-friendly without losing its purity.
Gordon Ryan, ADCC, and Jiu-Jitsu’s Future: Dominance, Discipline, and Drama
This episode centers on ADCC head organizer Mo Jassim and grappling phenom Gordon Ryan discussing the evolution of no-gi jiu-jitsu, ADCC’s explosive growth, and what truly drives elite performance. They dive into the origin story of ADCC, the technical and business innovations pushing grappling forward, and why most champions still treat the sport like a hobby. Ryan breaks down his training philosophy, his rivalry with Felipe Pena, his health struggles, and the Danaher system’s obsessive approach to technical development. The conversation also explores broader combat sports topics like bare-knuckle fighting, wrestling, leg locks, and how to make grappling spectator-friendly without losing its purity.
Key Takeaways
Hard, daily, systematized training separates true elites from ‘talented’ peers.
Ryan trains seven days a week, combines brutal mat time with deep technical study under Danaher, and treats jiu-jitsu as a full-time intellectual craft, not just a workout—something he says most world champions simply don’t do.
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Brand-building and talking shit massively amplify earning power—if you can win.
Ryan openly acknowledges that his arrogance and trash talk draw both fans and haters, but all of them tune in; without winning, though, that same strategy just turns you into a clown, as seen with other personalities.
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Passive income (instructionals) lets athletes train like real professionals.
Instead of constant seminar tours that destroy training consistency, Ryan built a seven-figure passive revenue stream via BJJ Fanatics, which frees him to prioritize development and competition—something he says almost no one else has solved.
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Modern no-gi success hinges on leg locks plus wrestling adapted to rulesets.
Jassim and Ryan emphasize that North American athletes surged ahead by embracing Danaher-style leg locks and wrestling integrated for ADCC rules, while many Brazilians and traditional schools lagged by rejecting or underdeveloping these areas.
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Technical ‘superpowers’ define the new generation of stars.
Ryan breaks down why the Ruotolo brothers and Mica Galvão are so successful: they’re good everywhere but have specific, elite weapons (e. ...
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ADCC is transitioning from niche tournament to real spectator product.
2019 ADCC drew 4,000 fans; the 2022 edition sold over 7,000 tickets and $1M in sales in a day, driven by higher production values, storytelling, and stars like Ryan that non-practitioners will pay to watch.
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Jiu-jitsu’s future dominance will come from tech access and wrestling-heavy countries.
Ryan predicts that as instructionals spread and money grows, Americans, Europeans, and eventually Russians with high-level wrestling plus systematic jiu-jitsu will overtake Brazil’s historical dominance—especially as many Brazilian champs move to the U.S.
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Notable Quotes
““Most black belt ADCC world champions train three, four times a week… I know hobbyists who train more than them.””
— Gordon Ryan
““He’s really selfless… he doesn’t ask us for anything. No money, no nothing. He just wants you to show up to training.””
— Gordon Ryan on John Danaher
““Technology always wins. The people with the most technology are going to win over X amount of years.””
— Gordon Ryan
““If you can just show up, you’re already ahead of like 90% of people, because most people are just inherently lazy.””
— Gordon Ryan
““The days of just winning is not enough. It’s how you win.””
— Mo Jassim
Questions Answered in This Episode
How much of Gordon Ryan’s dominance is replicable if another athlete truly copied his training, study, and branding model?
This episode centers on ADCC head organizer Mo Jassim and grappling phenom Gordon Ryan discussing the evolution of no-gi jiu-jitsu, ADCC’s explosive growth, and what truly drives elite performance. ...
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What concrete rule and format changes would make elite jiu-jitsu consistently entertaining for casual viewers without ruining its technical depth?
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Can Brazil realistically close the leg lock and wrestling gap, or will economic constraints around instructional ‘technology’ permanently shift power to the U.S. and Europe?
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How do coaches like John Danaher sustain obsessive, decades-long focus without the direct glory that competitors get—and can that be taught?
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Where is the ethical line between effective self-promotion (trash talk, rivalries) and behavior that genuinely damages a sport’s culture long term?
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Transcript Preview
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience. (rock music)
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. All right, what's happening?
Not much.
Good to see you, good to see you. Mo, introduce yourself.
My name is Mo Jassim. I'm the head organizer of ADCC 2019. And-
And for people who don't know what ADC, ADCC is, Abu Dhabi Combat Club. When, when was that founded? In 2000...
No, 1998 was the-
'98.
... inaugural one.
That was the first one.
Yeah, way back in the day.
That's pretty wild when you think about like the UFC starting in '93 and that's where everybody really got excited about JuJitsu.
Yeah.
And then Abu Dhabi only five, five years later.
Yeah, because, I mean, the owner and creator-
Pull this sucker right up-
Sorry.
... to your face. And you see, it moves around.
Okay.
You can grab it. You don't have to-
Hold on one second. Sorry.
What's the matter?
I'm not recording his mic on accident.
Oh. Hmm.
Wrong one. There you go.
Start again.
No, it's good.
Did you record it at all?
It's going now.
But was he recorded before?
It was going through the wrong, it was just going through the wrong s- um, input. I have it on a different thing, I'll take care of it.
Oh, okay.
But yeah, it's good.
All right. We're good.
All right.
So, um, so 1998 it started, and why, why did they, why... No Gi back then was very unpopular.
100%. It's sort of an interesting story how it started. So the owner and creator of ADCC is Sheikh Tahnoun, and he was going to college, uh, 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. (laughs) Um, (laughs) and then-
That's pretty gangster. (laughs)
Yeah. (laughs) 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 nonexistent. So he went against the grain, and he did something interesting, sort of like what the UFC did. Um, 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 Jujitsu guys versus, um, Sambo, et cetera, et cetera. So he created this rule set, and in 1998, the, the first ADCC, uh, happened in Abu Dhabi.
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