Bo Nickal Says 6 Months Of BJJ Is Enough To Beat Gordon Ryan

Bo Nickal has already lost to Gordon Ryan once at Third Coast Grappling 3 in a match contested under a hybrid ruleset that attempted to level the playing field between the 3 x NCAA Wrestling Champion and the BJJ Black Belt with three ADCC Gold Medals. It is worth mentioning that the wrestler, Nickal, took the fight on relatively short notice after Erberth Santos chose to withdraw and he claims in the above video that he only had time to take two Jiu-Jitsu lessons as a result.

Bo Nickal also mentions that he lasted thirteen minutes against Gordon Ryan, something that another NCAA champion Pat Downey also managed to do when he met Ryan at the BJJ Fanatics Grand Prix, and this certainly does seem impressive on the face of it! But something that Nickal conveniently leaves out of his recounting of the match is that Ryan was not allowed to pull guard and Heel Hooks were also banned. It’s pretty fair to say that when facing a world-class wrestler, pulling guard is a solid tactic to not allow them to gain the upper hand and heel hooks are essentially their biggest weakness as they’d have essentially zero knowledge of leg entanglements and effective leglock defense.

It’s shortly after the 10:20 mark in the above video that Nickal makes the claim that 6 month’s of BJJ is all he’d need to be able to beat Ryan in a BJJ match, but assuming they competed under a more complete ruleset like ADCC or EBI rules, it’s hard to imagine that half a year is anywhere near long enough for Nickal to learn how to not get heel hooked into oblivion.

The interview with Bo Nickal that got his comments on Gordon Ryan on record comes courtesy of James Lynch, an MMA journalist who’s YouTube Channel you can follow here.