Fascinating match: Gordon Ryan was scheduled to do a bout with the great Rodolfo Viera at the third coast grappling championships but Mr Viera ended up pulling out. So did his replacement Erbeth Santos. Now he will face one of the very best wrestlers in the world today – the great Bo Nickal – three time NCAA champion who is transitioning to International freestyle wrestling – winning the U23 World Championship. Mr Nickal also has a strong interest in grappling and MMA and asked for a match with Mr Ryan. Finding a rule set that gave something to both athletes was interesting. Mr Nickal is apparently not so familiar with leg locking – one of Mr Ryan's strengths, so we agreed no leg locks. Obviously he is a truly gifted wrestler and his best chance of victory is through takedowns – if Mr Ryan simply sat down to guard position he could not use his best skill set – so Mr Ryan agreed to no guard pulling. Even so this match is still predominantly a Jiu Jitsu match – so Mr Ryan has offered to do a second match at a later date (probably after the Olympic Games of 2020 since Mr Nickals main focus next year is the Olympics) in which they do a match that is almost all standing grappling with little ground work so that both athletes get a match that is predominantly in their domain. This should be a really interesting cross over event between two athletes at the top of their respective sports that allows them to showcase the interface between grappling and wrestling. It's just two weeks away now – Mr Ryan has been inactive due to a rib injury but is now back in training to get ready for what should be a really interesting match!
