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[Music] John Danaher's New Wave Jiu Jitsu has made an effective and systematic style of stand-up grappling for the currency of the sport. We saw Nicholas Marigali able to take down and control former world champions in high-level competition, despite only having a few months of training in no-gi grappling, by following the systematic approach to jiu jitsu stand-up.
While Marigoli has been successful, the best at using this systematic style has been none other than Gordon Ryan. Excluding his ADCC matches, Gordon has recently been showing off this system, starting with his posture. Gordon tends to stand quite tall compared to his opponent, and due to a mixture of the front headlock threats and wrestling defense, Gordon normally forces his opponent into long wrestling exchanges where his height and weight come into effect.
By being higher than his opponent, he is able to more easily pressure the head from above and bully his opponent's neck. By constantly harassing the neck while having a less draining posture, he is able to save energy while forcing the opponent to tire themselves out through the stress on the neck muscles, their own disengagements, and frustration, causing them to shoot from disadvantageous positions where Gordon is able to counter it and/or return to neutral.
When fighting grips, Gordon follows his normal patient mindset, which means that he normally refuses to attack until he feels that he has everything right. If he feels his opponent getting grips that he dislikes, he will use a mixture of shoulder rolls and angling off to escape the position. This helps him remove the opponent's grips while spending less energy than his opponents normally do by pushing him away or ducking and giving themselves away for Gordon to attack their neck.
By constantly shutting off his opponent's attacks and going for his grips, we see many times that an opponent will grow frustrated and end up accepting Gordon's grips so that they can try to work their game from there. This is a simple and effective strategy that we see Gordon use everywhere in his stand-up and groundwork, and it's one that we can incorporate into our game to cause our opponent to give us the advantage.
If the opponent stays patient and defensive in the grip fight, Gordon starts to add further attack methods to gain his preferred grips. The main attack is foot sweeps. He uses them to unbalance the opponent and then gain his grip off of them regaining their footing. He will do that, or he will feint a grip attack simply to attack with the other hand.
Once he wins the initial grip fight, he tends to enter the single collar tie with a wrist grip or with the fingers interlocked. This weakens attacks that may come, as well as helps Gordon control his opponent's positions. He then angles towards his collar tie with his hips kept at distance, and by putting his body weight into it, he causes the opponent to carry more while making it difficult for them to both attack and disengage.
For the opponent to push Gordon off, they have to fight against his collar tie and extra weight with multiple muscle groups. By ducking under the tie, they'd leave themselves open for him to harass their head from distance or enter the front headlock if they are within distance. In these exchanges, Gordon will rarely commit to an attack early on. We must remember that everyone is very powerful in the first few minutes of a match. However, once that initial gas is spent, they become far easier to take down.
By watching a Gordon match in 1.5 or 2x speed, we can see how much he forces his opponent to move in comparison to how much he moves. By making them spend more energy than him, as much as possible during stand-up, he can keep a cardio advantage throughout the match while keeping the possible ramifications to being taken down where now his opponent has to deal with one of the best guards in Jiu Jitsu.
If the opponent tries to foot sweep Gordon for either a takedown or to take him out of position, he will use his collar tie to hang onto the opponent for just enough time to regain his footing. If the foot sweep unbalances him, this disrupts the balance of the opponent as well and makes their attacks less useful, as well as making them carry even more of his weight, further exhausting them.
To keep his grips, he uses a variety of methods and reactions to his opponent's attacks. Whenever an opponent begins to reach outside of his collar tie for his head, he will flare his elbow out, making their grip overextended and weak. If the opponent does the opposite and tries to swim his arm to the inside for a collar tie, Gordon will rotate his elbow inwards to block the tie. However, if the opponent gets the upper hand, Gordon has pushed people off to force the fight back to neutral instead of giving them the advantageous grip.
When an opponent loses patience and tries to rush into attack, he will use the collar tie to pose his elbow against their neck and shoulder. This keeps a distance and allows him an opportunity to attack. When covering his attacks, we realize it depends heavily on the grips he has beforehand due to his specific preferences when attacking. We rarely see him do the same attack from multiple positions if one of the positions is more advantageous than the others.
Starting with his attacks from a single collar tie with wrist control, Gordon moves the opponent's grip from the same side to his cross shoulder. With the opponent's arm across it, this gives Gordon an easier path to their back. Gordon then pushes the opponent towards the cross side grip. The opponent naturally moves in the opposite direction, however, this is exactly where Gordon needs them to move. While they move, he pushes their cross grip arm further across while tripping their far leg. The opponent, being unable to make distance, is forced to stop the fall. Gordon circles around to the opponent's back and gains a back body lock. From this position, he can attack with trips, lifts, or force downs.
Gordon shucks the opponent down while they regain their foot and he rotates around the near side and puts a hook in to stay connected while he gets a back body lock. Gordon will roll his shoulder to break the grip while at the same time tripping the same side leg to the inside. This can also be done from a Russian two-on-one.
When Gordon swims his arm in for the underhook, his attack patterns change due to being lower than the opponent and the opponent's ability to grab an overhook. Gordon now attacks with more leg-oriented attacks where he can manipulate the opponent's upper body with his underhook. When an opponent's legs are close enough, Gordon will reach for the far leg while shoving his underhook over it. This forces the opponent down or forces them to turn around, exposing their back for attacks.
When an opponent makes distance and stretches Gordon's underhook, he will swim his arm to the inside and across to the opponent's own. He'd then arm drag the opponent while blocking their path with his foot. Gordon uses overhooks to help Craig Jones and many other high-level grapplers use it. A strong overhook using a judo thrust to unbalance the opponent shuts off many basic wrestling attacks while preventing them direct access to our back. The position allows you to heavily pressure the shoulder jaw while threatening attacks until you either land one or are able to unbalance the opponent and escape back to neutral.
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