Gordon Ryan Says He Was Jumped After ADCC Brawl in Krakow
Gordon Ryan walked back to his chair at ADCC 2026 and called the matside brawl fight of the night. The retired grappling star said he did not start it, then described getting tackled, punched, and soccer-kicked after Dorian Olivarez’s opening-round win over Bekzat Kapashov in Krakow.
“Alright, so here’s my perspective of what just transpired, when it was transpiring,” Ryan said in the video he posted after the incident.
He was not in Olivarez’s immediate corner when the match boiled over. Ryan said he was coaching Dominic Mejia on the next mat and only knew that Olivarez and “the Kazakh kid” had already been in some kind of argument.
“I have no idea what’s going on, I’m just coaching Dominic,” he said. “Still, I don’t know what’s going on.”
What he could see was the numbers. Ryan said it was John Danaher, Mike Olivarez, and Dorian on one side, with a large group from Kazakhstan on the other.
“When this match is over, there’s gonna be a fight, 100%,” he said. “So I angle my chair towards that mat while I’m still coaching Dominic.”
The match ended. Olivarez had submitted Kapashov in the 66-kilogram opening round at TAURON Arena after a chaotic exchange that included a biting allegation and a slap. Then the fight Ryan expected started.
“Fifteen Kozak dudes jump John and Mike and Dorian,” Ryan said. “So I jump in.”
He said the group turned as soon as they realized who had entered.
“They immediately tackled me, like two guys like grabbed my legs, one guy pushed me over, so I just fell over,” Ryan said. “And then like five or six of them just started hitting me in the head.”
He said some were punching and some were soccer-kicking him. He still tried to stand.
“I still managed to heist back up to my knees,” Ryan said. “I came up on a single leg … even though like it was like literally between four and six of them.”
When it broke up, he treated it as over.
“Fight’s done, everyone’s f*cking cool, so I just ran back, sat down, started coaching Dominic, and that was the event,” he said.
The caption matched the close of the video. Ryan wrote that he did not start it, thanked “the Kazakh guys for the scrap,” and added the line he has used for years: fight of the night, every night.
He also left an opening. “If any of the boys wanna fight 1 on 1 in the parking lot, just let me know,” he wrote. “Otherwise, no hard feelings.”
ADCC did not treat it as a joke. Officials disqualified Olivarez and Kapashov from the World Championship and suspended both for one year for conduct on and off the mat. Reports from the venue also said Mike Olivarez, Dorian’s father, received a longer ban. Owen Jones was listed as the replacement in the bracket.
Ryan is not competing in Poland. He has been at ADCC as a coach after stepping away from matches again earlier this year, and the clip is his first full account of how he ended up on the floor.
The bite-and-slap sequence inside the match is still being argued on video. Olivarez has said Kapashov bit his finger in mount and that he slapped to create space. The result stood long enough for Olivarez to finish the submission, then the tournament took both men out anyway.
Ryan’s version does not settle who threw first after the handshake. It does fix his role in the story he wanted told: he saw a mismatch in numbers, stepped across, got dropped, stood up on a single leg, and went back to coaching.
That is why the clip moved as fast as the official ruling. ADCC 2026’s first day in Krakow will be remembered less for the 66-kilogram bracket than for the coach who called a multi-man scrap fun and then sat down to work the next match.