Given that he’s arguably the best no-gi submission grappler of all time, many fans worldwide wonder whether or not Gordon Ryan will make the jump into MMA sometime in the future.

And, well, Ryan might make the transition one day, when one of his teammates wins the absolute at ADCC…
But nevertheless, it’s not what his coach, John Danaher, wants for him at the moment:

Yeah, maybe at a point when one of my teammates wins the ADCC absolute – and then I could, kinda, just give it to them…

But, to be honest with you, my coach John has never been wrong that much. He seems to think that I should stick with grappling. So, it’s tough to argue John, man… He’s always giving me advice. And then, 3 years, 5 years later I’m like: “Man, John was right.”

So, for now I’ll stick with grappling. And then, maybe if one of our guys wins the absolute and starts dominating people like I do, then maybe I’ll make the jump. But for now, I’ll stick with grappling.

When asked who from his team could win the absolutes, Gordon responded:

I think that Nicholas Meregali is a strong candidate. He’s been training no-gi for six months and he took silver this year against Yuri.
I think that Giancarlo Bodoni is another one who is super, super tough. He won the ADCC at his debut this year.

Luke Griffith is very young in his competition career, he’s only a brown belt. But he went toe-to-toe with Yuri, who won the absolute… He’s gonna be super tough, he’ll give a lot of problems to people in the next few years.

UFC vet Chael Sonnen believes that Gordon should not go to MMA. Sonnen is well placed to give his opinion as he had a rich MMA career and is a BJJ black belt and also runs his own Grappling organization (Submission Underground). He explains exactly why here: