There’s no denying that a lot of athletes who compete at the elite levels of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu are on one type of performance enhancing drugs or another… And Joe Rogan is well aware of that.

He discussed it in a recent Joe Rogan Experience episode with Dave Portnoy, pointing out Gordon Ryan as an example:

Gordon Ryan, who’s the greatest grappler of all time, openly admits to taking performance taking drugs. Openly talks about it. And that’s just because everyone’s doing it… And if you look at him, he looks like a guy who takes performance enhancing drugs! He looks like a fu*king Greek god.

And on top of that, he is the most dedicated, the most intelligent, the most technical… And he is trained by the best guy.
He’s the greatest no-gi Jiu-Jitsu competitor that has ever lived, for sure. Everybody admits it, everybody is scared of him, he dominates everybody… He’s won, like, 50+ matches in a row – which is unheard of.

He’s making million of dollars without fighting in MMA, without the brain damage, and he is dominating in his art, in what he is dedicated to.

You could say that it’s all performance enhancing drugs, but it’s not correct. It’s also his technique.

Rogan argues that a lot of ADCC competitors are on PEDs, including Gordon. And that is because PEDs, among other things, enable quicker recovery time:

And if you just look at all the elite guys in the sport… If you go to Abu Dhabi (ADCC) and if you look at the best guys that are competing – so many of them are on sh*t! Most of them are on sh*t.

To be able to train every day, like Gordon does… And I mean every day – he trains 365 days a year. Christmas, birthday, [it doesn’t matter] – show up…

So, to attribute that all to performance enhancing drugs is crazy. But to say that it doesn’t play a part of it is also not true.
It is a factor, because the way he is able to train…
One of the things, when taking performance enhancing drugs, is that your recovery is way better. So, you’re able to train far more than someone who is not on those things.