Gordon Ryan is currently undisputed on the no-gi submission grappling scene… And many have taken notice of that – including the UFC, which recently held the UFC Fight Pass Invitational 3 event, built around Ryan’s match.
In other words, it appears that the UFC is trying to expand the popularity of submission grappling to the masses.
Here’s what Gordon thinks of it:
I think they’re going to start pushing a lot more of their marketing and money into grappling. I think this is like their tester….after ADCC, everyone’s eyes are kind of open now.
This is like a test run to see how much revenue the biggest star can generate.
Given that Ryan considers himself as the biggest star in that regard, he expects a lot of effort from the UFC’s marketing team:
All I want is the Paddy Pimblett marketing. This guy gets his Instagram deleted like every other week and he’s got three million followers the next day.
That’s the kind of marketing I need from you guys.
It is said that Pimblett’s issues with Instagram date all the way back to when he had just 150.000 followers – and when he had a dispute with a Manchester City fan in Bristol, which led to the suspension of his account.
