Grappling Industries has had some trouble finding an opponent for Gordon Ryan. The self proclaimed king first issued a challenge to the top 3 Marcelo Garcia black belts.
Ryan is still not quite over the fact this won’t be happening in the near future as evidenced by this recent post:
When that didn’t take and the ensuing call out war produced no leads Grappling Industries became convinced that the solution will be the IBJJF champion Claudio Calasans. However Calasans then went on to ask to be paid in cash which was a request Grappling Industries could not accommodate. Grappling Industries was even planning a Gordon Ryan Demian Maia match at a certain point however the UFC star had a busy schedule.
In the mean time the card got it’s other fight in Florida bad boy Vagner Rocha agreeing to face off against Marcelo Garcia Dream Team’s Masher Khera.
Some time later they found a new adversary for Ryan in Todd Mueckenheim. If your unsure about Mueckenheim check out this clip of him facing off against ADCC medalist Rustam Chsiev
Mueckenheim recently finished first in Heavyweight category of NoGi PanAms having won opponents such as Lucas Rocha and others. His academy’s website bio:
Todd “Black Dynamit
e” Mueckenheim began training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in March of 2009. After some persuasion from his close friends (who were already a part of Black Hole), Todd started attending a few classes taught by Mike Wacker. However, Todd was a talented wrestler with dreams of pursuing a college wrestling career. Therefore, Jiu-Jitsu took a back seat to wrestling initially. After his senior year, the desire to wrestle in college died and the Jiu-Jitsu bug
completely “took over”. It was more than just the sport that pulled him in. “It was the people who are now some of my trusted and closest friends who pulled me in,” Todd says. Todd began to train almost every day. Todd’s laser-like focus, dedicated work ethic, ability to absorb knowledge quickly, and overall acumen of putting it all together…culminated in a most-valued result that perhaps only BJJ practitioners can attest to the difficulty of: Todd achieved his black belt in just over 5 years. He continues to train hard and is one of Black Hole’s most sought after instructors.
