While the MMA aces are too busy arguing if the Oscars slap was staged – the Jiu jitsu community took it as a good excuse to unearth an old incident.
During the ceremony, Chris Rock was presenting the award for “Best Documentary”. The comedian was cracking jokes about the celebrities in the audience and decided to crack a joke about Will Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
After a joke about her hair loss made her uncomfortable, Will Smith decided to get up on stage and slap Chris Rock in front of the whole world.
However, according to the UFC veteran , that whole ordeal was staged by the two celebrities.
BJJ phenom Gordon Ryan recently reacted to the scuffle between the two actors. Ryan posted on his Instagram account an image of the viral moment between Will Smith and Chris Rock, and then he mentioned that he’s “seen this somewhere before”.
The Brazilian jiu-jitsu multiple-time world champion was obviously comparing the Hollywood celebrity viral slap to his own slap on Andre Galvao.
Ryan and Galvao shared a heated rivalry for several years now. The two Jiu-Jitsu champions have always had bad blood between them.
The trash-talking escalated when the two grapplers met in person backstage at a grappling event in 2021.
Galvao was caught on video approaching Ryan. As the two got close, Galvao pushed him away.
In response, Ryan landed two solid slaps on Galvão. The slaps were so hard that the sound of them echoed across the room.
In an interview with MMAFighting, Ryan talked about the case and mentioned that he had no regrets about slapping Galvao.
“I turn around and tell him I’m not running, and he kept walking up to me and pushed me. That’s the most you can do before there’s a fight so I’m assuming there’s gonna be a fistfight.”
“So let me start off this fistfight with a smack and see how he responds. I smacked him the first time and there was no retaliation of any kind so I knew this guy doesn’t want to fight.”
Ryan said that he thinks his response was appropriate for the situation.
“I think it was an appropriate response… To send a clear message that you can’t just bully me around, but it wasn’t enough to seriously injure him… It was a clear message, just like the internet, if you start with me, I’m gonna retaliate. If you walk up to me in person and try to fight me then we can fight.”
Andre Galvao and Gordon Ryan are scheduled to face off in one of the most anticipated grappling matches in history.
Galvao is the current “Super Fight” ADCC Champion. He will be defending his title against Gordon Ryan at the upcoming ADCC event to be held in September 2022, at Thomas & Mack in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.