Decorated submission grappling champion Gordon Ryan offered high praise when discussing former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and current UFC middleweight champion Khamzat Chimaev during a recent interview with MMA Uncensored.
Ryan, widely regarded as one of the most dominant competitors in modern no-gi grappling, made it clear that while Nurmagomedov (29-0 MMA, 13-0 UFC) and Chimaev (15-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) are elite in mixed martial arts, their skill sets are optimized for MMA, but not for pure grappling competition.
“They’re not the best wrestlers. They’re not the best freestyle wrestlers in the world. They’re not the best jiu-jitsu guys in the world,” Ryan said. “If you put those guys into ADCC, they would get beat pretty easily.”
ADCC (the Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Fighting World Championship) is widely considered the most prestigious no-gi grappling tournament in the sport. Ryan’s point, however, was not to diminish their abilities, but to contextualize them.
“But what they’re doing isn’t submission grappling,” Ryan explained. “They’re not supposed to be the best wrestlers. They’re not supposed to be the best jiu-jitsu guys. They’re supposed to be the best MMA fighters.”
According to Ryan, the specific grappling style employed by Nurmagomedov and Chimaev is uniquely tailored to the demands of the cage. He emphasized their ability to blend positional control with damage, a dynamic absent in pure grappling rule sets.
“They have the ability to take people down, they have the ability to follow them through transitions, and they have the ability to make them carry bodyweight, keep them on the floor or return them back to the floor when they get up, or hit them on the way up, do some damage with punches or submit them from top position,” Ryan said.
He described that approach as the most effective form of jiu-jitsu within MMA.
“That kind of ‘submission wrestling’ Jiu Jitsu where a guy can pin people down and then do damage from top position after keeping him down is the most important kind of Jiu Jitsu.”
