Instructor Accused Of Filming Gordon Ryan Seminar Gives His Side Of The Story

03 Nov, 2017

Yesterday, ADCC champion Gordon Ryan created multiple videos and posts on social media detailing an incident at his recent seminar at Central PA Mixed Martial Arts in State College, Pennsylvania. Ryan accused academy owner Ryan Gruhn of trying to record him teaching the techniques even though Ryan had stated that recording him doing the movements was not permitted (although attendees were allowed to film themselves practicing the techniques).

I reached out to Gruhn on behalf of the Jiu-Jitsu Times on Friday to ask for his side of the story, and he informed me that he would be making a post about the incident later that night. This is how he described the incident in his public Facebook post:

“To address the Gordon Ryan Seminar…

While we were initially recording, like we always do for seminars, when he clearly stated no video taping and asked us to stop recording, we stopped. We deleted the video and showed his girlfriend that it was no longer on the camera. We were then told pictures were okay but then were told pictures were no longer okay. The video and pictures were taken with a big Sony SLR camera out in plain sight which once he said no more at the beginning, we stopped using it. Any of the 30+ seminar attendees can attest to this fact.

Gordon is stating that I placed my phone in my belt line with myself and the camera facing him at the end of the seminar. Our Sonos sound system is controlled by our phones, which I was controlling; pausing the music for him to teach and unpausing the music during drilling. When I wasn’t using my phone, I was setting it down on our boxing ring or keeping it in my waistband.—As my students can attest, I often store my phone in my shorts/belt.

Here is a picture from a few days ago (October 31st, 2017) of me with my phone in the exact same position. It’s just a phone hanging out. Nothing more, nothing less. If this is what Gordon is getting upset about then we can all move on. I would like to apologize to Gordon and the people who attended the seminar for the confusion and assure him no footage was recorded with my phone. This situation could have been very easily handled if he would have asked me, on the spot, and I would have gladly shown him that it wasn’t recording. The phone wasn’t even on.

For those who attended the seminar, if you feel like this situation took away from your experience in any way, please shoot us an email or message CPAMMA on Facebook and we will make it right. We are constantly having high level competitors come in for seminars and will gladly invite you to one of them.

I would not go against anyone’s wishes not to tape and didn’t not. I get it and respected his wishes. He’s a high level competitor that doesn’t want footage of him leaking out. He wants people to attend his seminars and not just watch videos of him online. This was understood from the beginning when he stated it and respected.

Now, let’s get back to what we love doing and go train! “