Keenan Cornelius had a no time limit match against Gordon Ryan back in 2016…
But how did the match come to be? He revealed in a recent conversation with Craig Jones.
Cornelius shared:
So, Gordon was like this skinny kid from New Jersey and he was talking a bunch of sh*t to Andre (Galvao), as like an internet troll.
Like, he didn’t really have a following or a fanbase back then, and no one wanted to fight him.He was trying to challenge people to get fights, and I saw the kid had spunk, you know?
I was, like: “I’ll fight the guy! He looks like a tough kid, I’ll fight him.”
When the match came to fruition, Ryan had only been a black belt for just a few months, whereas Cornelius had won an IBJJF No Gi World Championship, among other titles and successes…
But Ryan won in the end, after about a hour and a half into the match!
Cornelius was impressed by his performance:
He had probably one of the best guards I ever felt at that time. Because like I could pass anyone’s guard at that time, or at least I felt like I could, and I couldn’t pass his guard that whole match.
I trained hard and I put it on him for an hour, the last half hour I kinda slowed down.
Basically I kinda just gave up, he beat me on an endurance level.If you think about it that’s really Gordon’s main strength – it’s just an insane, bull-headed persistence, right?
Like he’ll just keep going forever.
