How was Nicky Ryan introduced to Jiu-Jitsu?
Well, the story might surprise you – because he had his first “rolls” in a daycare center!
Yup, that’s right. Both Nicky and his older brother, Gordon Ryan, were going to a daycare center when they were kids.
And that’s where they got their first BJJ lessons… Though from an unqualified coach.
Nicky shared the story on the recent episode of The Simple Man Podcast:
Both me and my brother, when we were younger, we would go to this daycare center.
And this guy, who has actually never done any Jiu-Jitsu in his life, would just watch UFCs… And he’d see some dude hit, like, a Triangle from Closed Guard.
And then you’d come in [to the daycare center] – and he’d make all of the kids at this, like, preschool, drill moves that he’d see people hit on the UFC.
Eventually, it escalated into doing full no-time limit matches on the concrete floor.
One of the podcast co-hosts, Ethan Crelinsten, commented that it sounds like a fight club.
Nicky confirmed:
Yeah, yeah… I got the back of my head just split wide open once.
I was going [to the daycare center] with this kid that was older and bigger than me.
And he just hits an Osoto Gari and he just wracks the back of my head into this concrete floor.
Of course, he’d go on to start training “for real” later on:
So that was what, like, got me and my brother interested in it. And then eventually, later down the line, he started going to a gym.
A few years later, I joined.
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