State of Competitive No-Gi Grappling — 2026

Competitive meta content is time-sensitive and reflects competitive trends at the time of publication. Canon technique content is evergreen.

Competitive MetaState of Competitive No-Gi Grappling — 2026Annual analysis of competitive no-gi grappling — ADCC 2024 results, technical trends, format developments, and what the data means for the sport in 2026.

This is InGrappling’s first annual State of the Sport report — a document we intend to publish each year to give competitors, coaches, and students a coherent picture of where the competitive game stands, how it has moved, and what the data actually says versus what the discourse assumes. It will be updated annually and reviewed when significant events warrant it.

The competitive meta section is time-sensitive by design. Canon technique content is evergreen — the mechanical principles that make an armbar work are not changed by a WNO result. This section is different. What is working at elite level reflects who is competing, what defences have been developed, and which techniques have been tested at the highest pressure. It is necessarily a snapshot, not a permanent record.

Gordon Ryan announced his official retirement from competition in February 2026. He cited ongoing severe health struggles — long-term gastroparesis and related conditions that have limited his ability to train and compete for an extended period. His coach, John Danaher, stated publicly in early 2026 that Ryan was “very sick at this point” and that a competitive return was not expected.

Ryan’s final competitive appearance was ADCC 2024, where he won two superfights: defeating Felipe Pena 2-0 and Yuri Simoes 21-0 on points. His final record at ADCC stands at seven titles — a number unlikely to be approached for a generation. His retirement simultaneously vacated the WNO heavyweight title he had held since the belt’s inception.

The significance of Ryan’s departure extends beyond the results column. For nearly a decade, no-gi grappling discourse was organised, to an unusual degree, around what Ryan was doing and what his competitors were doing in response. The technical vocabulary of the modern game — the rear body lock as a back-take entry, the systematic development of the leg entanglement system, the institutional framing of the “both-ends” attack-and-defence approach — all carry his influence. The sport has absorbed and distributed that influence. The question heading into 2026 is not who replaces him — it is whether the competitive ecosystem that developed in response to him continues to generate the same level of technical development without a dominant figure as its organising principle.

The answer, based on the evidence so far, appears to be yes. But that is worth watching carefully.

ADCC 2024 took place in Las Vegas in August 2024. The headline results are documented elsewhere; what matters here is what the data from the event reveals about where the competitive game stands.

The dominant discourse in submission grappling for the past several years has been organised around heel hooks — their lethality, their rapid adoption, the way they reshaped position hierarchies. The 2024 ADCC data complicates this narrative significantly.

Heel hook finishes across the entire tournament numbered four. Lower-limb submissions as a share of all finishes dropped from approximately 28–30% in the 2016–2022 cycle to 22% in 2024. This is not a small variation — it is a directional shift, and it is consistent with what analytical observers had been noting: elite defences have caught up with elite attacks. The inside heel hook from saddle/cross-ashi, which was effectively a primary finishing position at the 2017 and 2019 ADCC events, is now defended at high rates by elite competitors who have trained the escapes systematically.

The implication is not that leg entanglements are declining in importance — they remain a mandatory component of any elite game, and the positional control they create is valuable regardless of whether they produce direct submissions. The implication is that heel hooks as a fast-track finishing mechanism, against opponents who have specifically prepared for them, are no longer reliable in the way they were. The leg entanglement game is mature. It requires increasingly sophisticated setup, combination attacks, and chaining to novel variants (the “Junny Lock” counter on the reaping leg, William Tackett and Owen Jones’s novel leg entanglement chains) to produce finishes against elite opponents.

For the majority of grapplers below elite level, this changes nothing about the curriculum priority of heel hooks — the gap between recreational and elite defence remains substantial. For coaches and competitors who want their training to reflect the current elite game rather than the 2019 elite game, it is important context.