Gordon Ryan was seen grappling with Hafthor Julius Bjornsson prior to participating in the UFC Grappling Invitational 3.
Bjornsson is a highly qualified professional strongman who appeared on HBO’s Game of Thrones and had a number of interesting boxing outings including 2022 boxing match against fellow strongman Eddie Hall.
In an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Ryan discussed his encounter with Bjornsson.
“This is actually perfect for me because now whenever I get into an argument with an idiot who’s like, ‘I’m just too strong for that s**t to work on me.’ I can be like, well, I literally grappled the strongest person on the planet, and I can assure you that it worked…”
Ryan added the following:
“First of all, it was probably the dumbest and most risky career choice I’ve ever made. It was the day before I was supposed to compete. I was like, man, if I get hurt, John [Danaher] is gonna kill me…”
“Now I’m trying to convince them to do like six months of training and do a jiu-jitsu match with another strongman ’cause that’ll be great for the sport. They are coming to Austin in January to train with us a little more. They are kinda into it now.”
Thor Bjornsson recently announced his retirement from boxing. Bjornsson became a household name thanks to a stint on the worldwide hit show Game of Thrones and has since tried to capitalize on his infamy.
Despite Heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury being interested in a boxing match up with Bjornsson – he decided to retire. He revealed this revelation on his youtube channel:
“I’ll admit there was a time when there was talks between Tyson Fury and I, his team and my team, there was build-up but that never went through.”
“Now I’ve made a hard decision and the reason why it took me so long to make this video was because this is actually a very difficult thing to talk about.”
“I’ve made a decision to move on from boxing, to not compete in boxing again, to say goodbye to boxing and just not fight again.”
Bjornsson plans to shatter the world record he established in 2019 by tossing a 25 kg weight over a 20-foot tall bar in return to strong man competition.