Marcelo Garcia explains why Gordon Ryan isn’t the grappling GOAT

Gordon Ryan is viewed by many as the greatest grappler all-time in no-gi jiu-jitsu, but Marcelo Garcia begs to differ.

The Brazilian icon has defeated bigger and heavier opponents despite weighing around 170 pounds, claiming four ADCC gold medals, plus five IBJJF world titles, as a black belt between 2003 and 2011. Now back to competition under the ONE Championship banner after more than a decade since his last match, facing Masakazu Imanari on Jan. 24, Garcia explained to MMA Fighting why Ryan can’t be named the grappling GOAT.

Garcia said “only time” would allow Ryan to enter the conversation as the grappling GOAT. The John Danaher protégé hasn’t lost in nearly six years, a run that includes 56 wins and two draws. That said, Garcia struggles to accept his presence in the discussing since they disagree on the topic steroid use in jiu-jitsu.

“He’s at the top right now, but it’s hard to say he’s the greatest of all-time,” Garcia said. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite here. I know I’ve done a lot. I’ve done a lot being the size I am, 170 pounds, and facing the best in my weight class and the absolute, guys that were bigger than me, and imagining that many people were using steroids. And I imagine many of this new generation out there are using steroids.”

Ryan said on a recent UFC media day that “the problem is that if one organization makes it so that PEDs are illegal, but then all of the other organizations that you’re competing at throughout the rest of the year say they’re legal, now I have to be clean throughout the year to compete [for] your one organization.”

“If he continues to compete and no one beats him, and continues to have the performances he’s putting on, you can’t say [he’s not the GOAT],” Garcia said. “And he’s young, too, of course he can be that guy. But I can say all I’ve done was steroid-free. I don’t know that’s the case with Gordon [laughs]. To me, that’s a decisive point, if someone needed extra help or not. Like people say, ‘that person didn’t come alone’ [to compete]. I was alone every single time, only with my training and my technique. And when people say, ‘Oh, but everybody uses it.’ Not to me. That excuse doesn’t make sense to me.

“And that’s one of the reasons why I’m coming back to fighting because I want to prove you don’t need that. And how do we prove that? To me, if someone has used [steroids] once, he’s already contaminated. You’ve cheated the game. I have to defend that because that’s how it always was for me. I wish the young ones — my children, if one day they decide to compete and be successful, I don’t want them to depend on that.”

“Marcelinho” will return to the mats a week after turning 42 and beating stomach cancer, and said that watching his adoptive mother deal with the same disease was one of the reasons why he stayed away from steroids at young age.

“I lost my mother to stomach cancer as well,” Garcia said. “It’s not connected [to mine] because I was adopted, but I lived cancer and remember someone telling me when I was young that using steroids, HGH, could increase the odds of having cancer. As a teenager, that was enough for me to say, ‘No, why would I risk it?’ I lost my mom when I was young and had to deal with cancer a different way before, and I don’t want anything that could hurt my health and my family. I have to defend that until the end because it worked for me. I was very successful, not only in my division, but in the absolute, without steroids.”