Despite being widely regarded as the best grappler on the planet, Gordon Ryan admitted that his personal expectations for a black belt are so extreme that he himself wouldn’t qualify.
As he put it:
I don’t have any black belts – like, my standard for a black belt is so unrealistically high that even I don’t have a black belt.
This surprising admission came up while discussing Derek Moneyberg—a wealthy self-help figure whose rapid promotion to black belt by Jake Shields in just three and a half years has stirred up controversy across the BJJ community.
Critics argue that promotions given at such an accelerated pace diminish the meaning of the belt.
Ryan, however, dismissed the belt debate entirely, insisting that the obsession with timelines misses the point.
For him, only skill matters:
It’s the thing that doesn’t f*cking matter. Like, just get better at Jiu-Jitsu.
The belts are irrelevant for good point.
Like, there’s just focus on getting better at Jiu-Jitsu.The belts are irrelevant.
He went on to elaborate on Moneyberg’s skillset:
If he had to compete against an average black belt who’s been doing jiu-jitsu for, you know, 10 years and he does it for an hour at a random gym in Kentucky, he would hold his own.
Like, he would.
I mean, he would probably beat him up, to be honest.
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