Gordon Ryan open to grappling match against the Ruotolo brothers

Gordon Ryan has never been a competitor who stays quiet when he is called out. Whilst he may be considered the greatest no-gi grappler of all time, there are two new kids on the block that want to take a shot at the ‘King’.

Kade and Tye Ruotolo have had breakout years in 2022. Whilst Kade became the youngest ever ADCC world champion and the inaugural ONE lightweight submission grappling world champion, Tye isn’t too far away from his twin after picking up two wins inside the circle.

With their sky-rocketing stock in submission grappling, it was only going to be a matter of time before talk about either brother facing off against Gordon Ryan at some point down the line emerged.

Whilst attending UFC 282, Ryan had a press conference backstage, during which the Ruotolo brothers were brought up.

Not one to back away from a challenge, Ryan said that he has the Ruotolo twins on his radar for some time and knew that these questions would be put to him at some point.

After praising their recent success, he said that Tye Ruotolo has been getting very confident lately and he broke down the deal that he offered to the twins. It included them putting their recently won $50,000 bonuses on the line, calling the matchup “Free money.”

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Tye Ruotolo responds to Gordon Ryan with paragraph-long rant, Ryan answers back with the same

The back and forth between ONE submission grappler and 2022 ADCC open-weight bronze medalist Tye Ruotolo and no-gi jiu-jitsu icon Gordon Ryan is nothing new.

It all started with a confident callout from Ruotolo that poked at the ‘King’ on social media:

“Remember that Darce at Modolfo? It would be competitive now and I’m 19 and natural. I guarantee you retire before I gain 15 pounds. Pure facts, no ill intent. Let’s do the same deal you did with Pena. No time limit.”

Tye was very particular about using the word “natural” to try and provoke Ryan. Having been accused of steroid use in the past, the 19-year old was clearly trying to get a bite, but Gordon Ryan mostly ignored his jab in his reply:

"How about you put up your 50k win bonus from ONE and I'll put up my same 100k that I did with pena? 2-1 odds no time limit. Just remember, I'm not Josh hinger, and you couldn't beat him."

A new development in the saga recently appeared when Ruotolo made another (lengthier) social media post pointing at Gordon Ryan:

"You said you would love a match with us and mentioned that if you were natural and I was roided that I would have no chance, which I took as (a call out) That post had nothing to do with you but you came to talk sh*t so I replied. I find it funny because you had never won anything before gaining 50+ lbs of synthetic muscle. I didn’t reply to your comment to get into a keyboard war. I was replying to have a match with you."

He continued:

"I said that our match would be 100% competitive and you disagreed. Your claim sounds stupid to me considering I beat Pedro in half the time you did, not to mention I’m 1-0 against Pena to your 1-2. I’ll give you the toughest fight you’ve had since your supernatural transformation. This isn’t about certain stipulations for me, I have never brought up numbers online and I never said."

The post went on for longer, but Ruotolo ended it with an ominous sentence:

"I have better things to do but if you want to keep up with the disrespect I hope you keep that same energy when I see you in person."

Here's the post: