Gordon Ryan Is Gone. Who Is Actually the Best No-Gi Grappler in the World Now?

For about a decade this question had a boring answer. You asked who the best no-gi grappler in the world was, someone said Gordon Ryan, and the conversation was over before it started. There was nothing to argue about. The ledger settled it.

Then he retired at 30, his gut rather than any opponent finally taking the belt off him, and the question went from boring to genuinely open for the first time since most of us started paying attention. So let me actually answer it. Not with a diplomatic ten-way tie, but with a real pick, the names I think are overrated, and the case for each. This is my honest read on who is the best no-gi grappler alive in the middle of 2026.

First, separate two questions people keep merging

The mistake almost everyone makes in this debate is treating "best" and "biggest" as the same word. They were the same person for ten years, so we got lazy. Ryan was the best competitor and the biggest draw at the same time, in the same body, and we forgot those are two different jobs.

They have now split. The biggest draw in grappling today is probably Craig Jones, and it is not especially close. He has the personality, the millions in prize money he keeps setting on fire for content, and the platform. But Craig himself would tell you, loudly and with a joke attached, that being the most watched grappler and being the best grappler are no longer the same thing on his end. He is a brilliant competitor having the time of his life as a promoter and a troll. That is a different lane.

So when I pick a best, I am picking the person I would bet on to win a high-level no-gi match tomorrow against anyone on earth. Not the person who sells the most tickets. Keep that straight and the rest of this gets a lot clearer.

My pick: Tye Ruotolo

I will just say it. If I had to put money on one man to win a no-gi superfight against a fully prepared field right now, I am taking Tye Ruotolo.

Here is the reasoning, because the name on its own is not an argument. Tye has the one thing that survived the entire Ryan era unbothered, which is a finishing rate that does not care who is across from him. He does not point-fight, he does not stall in a safe position and bank the lead, he hunts the submission from the first exchange to the last. In a sport that has spent years drifting toward cautious positional chess, he is the rare elite who still treats a match like a problem to be ended rather than managed.

He has the ADCC pedigree to back the eye test. He has beaten genuinely great people without the gi, the format where this question actually lives. And he is doing it at an age where most grapplers are still figuring out their A-game, which is the part that should scare the rest of the division. He is not a finished product peaking. He is a frightening product still improving.

Is he unbeatable? No. That is rather the point of this whole article. Nobody is, which is exactly why it is fun again. But best means the safest single bet, and the safest single bet is the guy who can finish anyone and is getting better every camp.

The strongest cases against me

I would be doing the cheap version of this if I just crowned my guy and moved on, so here are the names with a real claim, and why I have each one where I have them.

Mica Galvao is the one who keeps me up at night about this pick. He might have the highest ceiling of anyone on this list, gi or no-gi, and on his best day he beats my pick. The reason he is not my number one yet is consistency at the very top against the very best, not talent. Give it eighteen months and this article may need rewriting with his name at the top. I would not argue hard against anyone who has him first today.

Kaynan Duarte has the ADCC hardware, the size, and the systematic game that travels to the biggest stage. He is the most "complete" grappler in the conversation in the technical sense. My honest issue is that complete and dangerous are not identical, and in a one-match bet I want the higher finishing threat.

Nicholas Meregali is the best pure jiu-jitsu player of the bunch, and in the gi I might even take him over my no-gi pick. But the question is specifically no-gi, where his margins shrink against the faster, scramble-heavy killers, and that is enough to move him down a slot here.

Mikey Musumeci deserves a paragraph of his own because the search traffic tells me half of you came here expecting his name at the top. Mikey is the best technician alive, full stop, and pound for pound he is a nightmare. The honest asterisk is weight. He operates at the lightest end of the sport, and "best no-gi grappler in the world" in the open-weight sense ADCC made the gold standard is a different question to "most technically perfect grappler in the world." On the second question he is my number one without hesitation. On the first, size still matters more than fans want to admit.

The names I think are overrated in this specific debate

If I am going to be honest, I have to do this part too, and it is the part that gets me angry replies.

The successor talk around the New Wave production line is a little ahead of the results. The system that John Danaher built is real and it is still the best lab in the sport, but "trained in the room that made Gordon" is a starting point, not a coronation. A few names get floated as the next king largely because of the address on their gym rather than wins over the actual best people. The room produces contenders reliably. Whether it produces another literal kingpin is still an open bet, and I covered why in the retirement breakdown.

I would also gently push back on the people anointing whoever wins the next big event as the new best in the world. One tournament is not a reign. Ryan's claim was built on years of stacking the same result against everyone they put in front of him. The next person to genuinely own this title has to do the boring thing, which is win and keep winning when they are the one with the target on their back. We have not seen anyone do that yet, because the target only just came free.

The women's answer is clearer than the men's

Worth saying plainly, because the men's side is a genuine scramble and the women's side has more separation at the top. Danielle Kelly has built exactly the kind of consistent, finish-oriented résumé on a major platform that the men are currently fighting over. The women's no-gi picture is not a free-for-all in the same way, and she is a big reason why. If you want a safe "best in the world" bet across all of grappling right now, hers is arguably steadier than any single name on the men's side.

Why ADCC 2026 is the real referee

Everything above is informed opinion, and I want to be honest that it is opinion. The thing that actually settles it is a bracket, and we happen to have the biggest one in the sport landing in a few months.

ADCC 2026 in September is the first edition in years without Ryan as the gravitational centre, which means it is also the first one that can genuinely crown a new best in the world rather than just decide who finishes second to him. I dug into the full bracket and my pre-event picks in the preview, and the short version is that the throne is sitting there for someone to actually take. If my pick wins it, I look clever. If Mica takes double gold, I happily rewrite this. If someone from outside this entire list runs through the field, even better, because that is the kind of chaos the sport has not been able to produce while one man occupied the top of the mountain.

That is what makes this the most interesting time to ask the question in a decade. For more context on where the rest of the sport sits, the state of BJJ in 2026 field report maps the wider terrain, the heel hook takeover explains the meta that produced these athletes, and the case for Gordon as the best grappler alive is worth a reread as a benchmark for what "best in the world" used to mean before the seat came free.

Where I actually land

My honest answer, today, in writing, so you can hold me to it: the best no-gi grappler in the world right now is Tye Ruotolo, the highest ceiling belongs to Mica Galvao, the best technician alive is Mikey Musumeci, and the biggest draw is Craig Jones. Four different men doing four different jobs that used to belong to one.

That is not a hedge, it is the actual answer. For ten years this sport had a single name at the top because one athlete was genuinely better than everyone at everything at once. He is gone, the jobs have split back apart, and we get to argue about it like adults again. I will take my pick into ADCC and live with being wrong if the bracket says so.

The king stepped down. The honest truth is nobody has earned the crown yet, only the right to fight for it. That is a far more exciting place to be than the decade of certainty we just left behind.