Gordon Ryan is one of the biggest stars in the world of competitive Brazilian jiu-jitsu and also one of the biggest proponents of open, honest PED use in sports. In a resurfaced YouTube video that’s generating a lot of conversation in mixed martial arts (MMA) circles, he argues that top UFC fighters are already using their resources to get away with performance-enhancing drug use, making things less fair for lower-level guys.
“You have USADA, you have WADA,” Ryan said. “These are multi-million, maybe hundreds of millions of dollar organizations looking to come in and catch you doing steroids. But the industry for beating steroid tests is a multi-billion dollar operation. Like, you have the country of Russia, the country of China, the country of America hiring doctors to beat these tests.
”So, you’re always gonna have guys that will beat the test,” he continued. “You’re always gonna have athletes on steroids. So if that’s the case, you may as well just come out and do more research on them so that the athletes can do them safely. Because athletes are always gonna be on PEDs.
“Do you think just because there’s testing in a certain event that that guys aren’t juiced out of their minds?” he continued. “Like, you must be so naïve to think that. You think guys are competing in the NFL in their late thirties, forties with traps from their AC joints up to their ears — you think those guys are natural? Are you out of your mind? So you may as well just make it easier for guys to do steroids than to just ban them and have guys do steroids anyway.
“The fact is, when you when you have testing, especially in a in a sport like MMA where the lowest level guys aren’t really paid that much money,” Ryan finished. “There’s a lot of expenses that go into this. So, those guys, if there’s steroid testing, those guys won’t have the resources or the money to hire the doctors necessary to beat the test. So, those guys are natural. The guys at the top who are making millions of dollars? Those guys will always have, or part of the big teams will always have, the resources and money available to them to hire the doctors to help them beat the test.”
“The whole purpose of steroid testing is so that you don’t have natural athletes competing against unnatural athletes,” Ryan said. “But you get that anyways because the guys at the bottom can’t afford to or don’t have the resources to beat the test, and the guys at the top do have the resources. So then you just end up with guys who are naturally competing against guys who are juiced up anyways.
“Whereas if you had a if you had an agreement where any athlete, if you had more research, so it could be done more safely than it is now, and you had an agreement where all the athletes could take steroids and they have to do it safely, then all the athletes can take an equal amount of steroids,” he concluded.
Ryan’s views on the subject may make a certain sort of sense, but they’re still outside the growing consensus in BJJ that PED usage need to be pushed out of the sport. The new UFC BJJ offshoot has publicly said Ryan will never compete in their clean division, but as Gordon has said: good luck catching the quiet PED users who will always be there in the mix … or at the very top of the sport.
