Gordon Ryan Reveals He Tried to Book Chimaev for ADCC Super Fight
Gordon Ryan just confirmed something the BJJ world has been speculating about for two years: the biggest crossover super fight ADCC never got was very nearly real. Speaking with Tim Kennedy on the…
Gordon Ryan just confirmed something the BJJ world has been speculating about for two years: the biggest crossover super fight ADCC never got was very nearly real. Speaking with Tim Kennedy on the Overdogs USA podcast, the seven-time ADCC champion revealed he personally reached out to UFC welterweight Khamzat Chimaev about grappling him in the promotion's second super fight slot at ADCC 2024.
Watch the full conversation on YouTube if you want it straight from Ryan, but the short version is this: ADCC was building out its super fight card, Ryan was already locked into one, and he decided to shoot his shot at the other. "I actually asked because we were going to do the second super fight for ADCC 2024. And I asked Khamzat if he wanted to do it," Ryan said. According to Ryan, Chimaev turned it down — citing a conflicting camp or a health issue — but told him he wanted to train together instead.
Why this super fight would have mattered
It's worth remembering just how rare it is for a genuine two-way star crossover to even get discussed seriously, let alone almost happen. Chimaev is one of the few fighters on the UFC roster whose grappling résumé — a wrestling and combat sambo background, married to some of the nastiest top control in MMA — invites comparison to the pure grapplers rather than dismissal by them. Ryan is the sport's most dominant submission grappler of the last decade, a multiple-time ADCC absolute champion who has made a career out of dismantling the assumption that size and athleticism alone win jiu jitsu matches. A match between the two wouldn't have just been a spectacle; it would have been a real answer to a question the grappling and MMA worlds argue about constantly — how does elite no-gi jiu jitsu actually hold up against elite wrestling-based control from the cage?
ADCC's super fights exist precisely for moments like this. They're the one place in the sport where a match can be built purely on interest rather than bracket logic, and the promotion has used the format before to pull in crossover names and settle rivalries the regular divisions can't. A Ryan-Chimaev pairing would have been the most-watched grappling match of the year by a wide margin, inside or outside the BJJ community.
Ryan's scouting report tells you as much as the fight would have
What makes this story more than just "match that didn't happen" is what Ryan said next. Asked to break down Chimaev's grappling, Ryan didn't hedge the way fighters usually do about a potential opponent. He praised Chimaev's chest-to-back control specifically, and his ability to stop opponents from standing out of turtle or referee's position — a detail that shows Ryan has actually studied tape, not just formed an opinion from highlight reels. Ryan credited Chimaev's capacity to track movement, drag opponents back to the mat, and maintain pressure as the core of what makes him so hard to escape.
He did offer one critique, though: that Chimaev's game leans on chasing movement rather than shutting it down before it starts. "If Khamzat was better at negating movement, like he's very good at following movement, but if he was better at negating movement, he would make guys carry body weight a lot more," Ryan said, according to BJJEE.
That's a genuinely useful piece of jiu jitsu instruction hiding inside a piece of gossip. "Negating movement before it starts" versus "chasing movement after it happens" is a distinction every grappler wrestles with on the mats every single week, whether you're a white belt trying to keep top position or a black belt working control against a scrambling opponent. Pressure that anticipates is categorically better than pressure that reacts — Chimaev is elite at the second and, per Ryan, still developing the first.
What it means for the rest of us
Most of us will never grapple anyone remotely like Khamzat Chimaev, and that's fine — the value here isn't the fantasy matchup, it's the framework. Ryan's breakdown is a reminder that the highest level of BJJ analysis isn't about highlight reels or finishing rates, it's about specific mechanical questions: where does control come from, what's it built to stop, and where does it still leak. Next time you're stuck under someone's chest-to-back control, or you're the one applying it, ask yourself the same question Ryan asked about Chimaev — are you negating your opponent's movement, or just following it around the mat? That gap is often the whole difference between staying stuck and getting out.
The super fight itself may be dead for now, but Chimaev telling Ryan he wants to train together leaves the door open. Given how much these two clearly respect each other's games, don't be surprised if this isn't the last time their names get mentioned in the same sentence. See you on the mats.
Original report via BJJEE.