Ryan brothers dominate in Las Vegas: Gordon and Nicky Ryan were on fire at the Quintet 3 Team Grappling event last night. Nicky Ryan was up first, in a super match with Hideo Tokoro, Japanese MMA star who has gone the distance with Royce Gracie and has an interesting fast paced and scrappy style. Quintet has some strange and seemingly arbitrary rules – heel hooks are forbidden and their passivity/stalling criteria make little sense, so the plan was constant movement to upper body finishes – Nicky Ryan did exactly that – displaying a beautiful back system mastery to trap Mr Tokoro's arms helplessly and finish the strangle in a few minutes. Then the team competition began. The match up I was most interested in was Gordon Ryan against the great Josh Barnett. Mr Barnett is a legend in both grappling and MMA and represents the art of Catch Wrestling- the traditional American style of submission grappling. He has fought brilliantly against jiu jitsu players in the past and always impressed me with his effectiveness. I know very little about this fascinating historical style, I must improve my knowledge in this area, but I do know that it shares several philosophies in common with our approach to grappling and is very different to classical BJJ – so this was going to be interesting. Mr Ryan quickly swept and mounted Mr Barnett despite a 25-30 pound weight difference and in an ensuing scramble locked a triangle strangle to take an incredible win over a legend. Then Gordon Ryan went on a tear, submitting almost all his other opponents as the event progressed, including visiting team mate craig jones via back system strangle and jiu jitsu legend Vitor Shaolin Ribeiro via special arm bar variation that Mr Ryan developed himself. He took his team to victory largely by himself in a truly outstanding performance. These incredible brothers just keep improving and show that the will to learn and grow is the basis of continuing success on the big stage. I am so proud of their diligence, hard work and creativity as they walk the long path to mastery.
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