ADCC champion Gordon Ryan signed up for his first tournament in the gi as a black belt.

Ryan, a Renzo Gracie team member and noted submission specialist with victories over major names such as Keenan Cornelius, Yuri Simoes and more, put his name forward for the ultra heavyweight division at the IBJJF Washington DC Open on April 7-8. 

Unfortunately those of us awaiting his black belt gi debut will have to hang on a bit longer. 

Gordon has decided that as he only has one other person in his division– TLI's Mahamed Aly– that he's not willing to make the drive down and will sit this one out. 

UPDATED: 

Gordon has obviously had a flood of messages about this, so he took to Instagram to set a few things straight. 

Just to clear things up, everyone's asking what's happening with this IBJJF registration. I just registered without checking who else is in my division, like I always do because I don't give a fuck about who I compete against. 

Rookie mistake. For my gi division there was nobody in it. Mahamed Aly and Tim Spriggs were in super-heavyweight, there was nobody in ultra-heavyweight. 

A few reasons I'm not going to compete in it: 

Number one, I don't want to drive all that way to only have one match and then possible a couple of absolute matches. 

And number two, because Mahamed Aly has the most explosive game in the entire sporting theist thing I want to happen is for him to try to jump past my guard and put a four-inch cut in my face a few weeks before I have to fight Vinny Magalhaes, and actually get paid for it. 

But I promise that I'm going to compete in the gi soon. It's getting to the point now here I'm just really frustrated, but I don't want to compete suicide every time I train in the gi. We're moving on up.