Marcelo Garcia in prime vs Gordon Ryan now, who's better?

mataleaos said:
Exactly. It's also worth noting that Marcelo is the smallest athlete to make the Absolute finals at ADCC and he did it by submitting all 7 of his opponents on the way there. 24 out of 27 of his wins at ADCC are by submission and he also did his final 2 ADCCs while posting all of his classes online and his training camp footage. This was unheard of at the time. All of his opponents had a chance to study his game and they still couldn't stop him.

One final point. Marcelo gets bonus points for being a creative on top of being an elite competitor. It's one thing to be an innovator and it's one thing to be a great competitor. It's rare that someone is good enough to dominate the game while at the same time evolving the sport and pushing the art forward on his own.

This isn't even touching on the fact that in the gi Marcelo is a 5x Worlds and a Pans champ.

@JustOnce Marcelo will always be the goat.
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Well said. Excellent post.

Gordon Ryan, as good as he is, is no where near the all around talent that Marcelo was and maybe even still is. Marcellos accomplishments are in both gi and no gi.
 
No Skill Gap said:
They definitely innovated the leg-lock game. Whether you want to call that a system or not, fine, but it's not like everyone was attacking the legs 10-20 years ago. Now every single high level no-gi match is more or less centered around leg attacks or it's a big part.
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I am not saying that they didn't make leg locks relevant but let's give Marcelo his due respect. In his time everything he was was doing was " off meta" and is now considered normal for high level bjj especially no gi.

I am not speaking in absolutes because i am not a sith I am just saying that gordon owes a lot of his bread and butter game to Marcelo.
 
thugpoet said:
I am not saying that they didn't make leg locks relevant but let's give Marcelo his due respect. In his time everything he was was doing was " off meta" and is now considered normal for high level bjj especially no gi.

I am not speaking in absolutes because i am not a sith I am just saying that gordon owes a lot of his bread and butter game to Marcelo.
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Yeah I mean if you go back and watch Marcelo's 1st two adcc runs (but especially his first two) in many instances it looks like he's playing a different sport than his opponents are. I can't think of the last time I saw someone ht the scene and look that far ahead of everyone. Rafa Mendes at the 2009 adcc had a similar vibe but still not quite the same.

And Marcelo might have even been a brown belt when he won his first adcc. Maybe someone can confirm that. If he wasn't a brown belt then he was so newly black belt that the starch hadn't washed out of the new belt yet.
 
mataleaos said:
Yeah I mean if you go back and watch Marcelo's 1st two adcc runs (but especially his first two) in many instances it looks like he's playing a different sport than his opponents are. I can't think of the last time I saw someone ht the scene and look that far ahead of everyone. Rafa Mendes at the 2009 adcc had a similar vibe but still not quite the same.

And Marcelo might have even been a brown belt when he won his first adcc. Maybe someone can confirm that. If he wasn't a brown belt then he was so newly black belt that the starch hadn't washed out of the new belt yet.
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i'm pretty sure he was a black belt, i think terere beat him earlier that year at black belt in the mundials finals. i remember reading an interview in which marcelo said he was so disappointed to lose there, and didn't even expect to compete at ADCC in 2003... and i think he wouldn't have been invited had terere not had his downfall (not sure about the timeline here though).

and yeah, you're absolutely right. he literally burst onto the scene by choking shaolin unconscious in 30 seconds. marcelo appeared out of nowhere and just owned everyone.

edit: i was wrong. from bjj heros:
Always willing to compete as often as possible, when the Brazilian ADCC trials came up, Marcelo decided to sign up for the famous competition. He fought well and made it to the final, losing it by -1 point (guard pull) against Daniel Moraes. By ADCC rules, he would not make it to the final stage because he did not win the trials, but as Denis Hallman pulled out, he was called in at the last minute as a replacement.

 
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Thats not fair because the dds had the benefit of marcelos innovations/advances.

Could a in prime marcelo train got 6 months with modern information and beat gordon? Yes i really believe so, but gordon is a very tough competitor and i wouldnt be suprised if he beat marcelo also.
 
kenetics said:
This. Marcelo able to win at the top in both gi and nogi shuts down any goat talk from Gordon.
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I love Gordon Ryan, he's very good at what he does, even insanely good at what he does. He's got everything to win and dominate in No Gi.

But as you say, he needs to challenge himself in the gi also. He's not just a leg lock guy anymore, the ''I can't do heel hooks'' excuse isn't relevant anymore. I would love to see him train and compete, I think he has the potential to change the gi game if he puts his mind to it. This guy is a wonderful athlete with a superb winning attitude. He's the Lebron of grappling.



Like you say, you need to have credentials in both gi and no gi to be considered the GOAT.
 
nefti said:
i dont think gordon will do much more gi. I hope he does tho..
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I don't think he does either. He was good in the gi in training. Very similar game to his no-gi game. Lots of passing to the back and butterfly sweeps from guard. I think he said he found it very frustrating that pretty much any belt color with a strong grip could get a hold of his belt or lapel skirt and slow to a crawl all of his sequences. I think he could've worked through it to find success but apparently he got so little enjoyment out of it that he put it on the back burner. He's got plenty of time to change his mind but for the time being I don't see him putting the gi back on.
 
mataleaos said:
I don't think he does either. He was good in the gi in training. Very similar game to his no-gi game. Lots of passing to the back and butterfly sweeps from guard. I think he said he found it very frustrating that pretty much any belt color with a strong grip could get a hold of his belt or lapel skirt and slow to a crawl all of his sequences. I think he could've worked through it to find success but apparently he got so little enjoyment out of it that he put it on the back burner. He's got plenty of time to change his mind but for the time being I don't see him putting the gi back on.
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He's said a few times the score would have been even when him and Kaynan trained Gi. It seems believable, especially given Kaynans reaction and I think most heavier weights are more physical/less tactical.

He's got a good niche right now though, there's not much upside beside quieting the "haters".
I think he might drop some matches to advantage in Gi, I don't think anyone would crush him.
 
Quebec Nick said:
But as you say, he needs to challenge himself in the gi also.
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I would enjoy seeing that. His passing style actually should work well in the gi and reminds me a bit of my favorite grappler Bernardo Faria - very nice pressure and methodical, a joy to watch. I think his guard would need a lot of adjustment to work in the gi though - maybe he would use a half guard/x-guard type approach with a lot of imbalancing

I agree though, he will never be considered in the same class of the "holy trinity" of Marcelo/Jacare/Roger without dominating outside of no-gi. He's a fantastic specialist, but it seems the sport of submission grappling may have diverged too far for one person to be truly legendarily dominant in both sports at this point.
 
Overtures said:
rafa has a better record than both
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Debatable. Marcelo regularly entered the absolute div against legends and thats where most of his losses are.

We don't have an equal record to compare against for Rafa - Rafa/Rodolfo was a snoozefest.
 
Overtures said:
rafa has a better record than both
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Rafa has a better gi record by 1 gold medal. Marcelo has a better no-gi record by 2 ADCC gold medals and 2 ADCC Absolute medals.

I'll keep it 100 on Rafa. I'd rather watch Rafa grapple than anyone else. Gi or no-gi. I don't think anyone moves cleaner. It seemed clear to me that this thread was about no-gi. And I think Rafa's no-gi accomplishments and no-gi innovations to the game are surely overlooked. That being said: Rafa didn't compete enough in that arena to be compared to Marcelo or Gordon. Rafa's had maybe 20-25 total no-gi matches. Marcelo won almost 30 matches in his ADCC career and Gordon has already had more ADCC matches in 2 events than Rafa has total.

I think once Rafa lost to Cobrinha in 2013 he decided to put all his eggs in the gi basket and go for the featherweight record there. And I think he could be going for a 6th ADCC gold next year if it had been a big goal for him.
 
BJJ_Rage said:
that because rafa ruled his weight class, and his weight class alone. Marcelo competed in open weight many times, with great results.
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And if you just take their weight class results they've each only lost once at ADCC. Rafa and Marcelo each had a 2-0 win/loss record against Cobrinha and Pablo Popovitch going into their 3rd matches, and both lost very close matches.

And better record is subjective. Rafa has less losses than Marcelo at ADCC but he also has significantly less wins.

Marcelo shredded 7 out of 8 opponents in his weight class and the absolute division by submission in 2007, being the smallest man to ever make the absolute finals. I don't think we will ever see that again from anyone below 88 kilos.
 
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