Gordon Ryan is a successful Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competitor at elite levels. Much of his earlier success came in competitions with rulesets allowing use of a range of leglock techniques which are banned by the most popular sport Jiu Jitsu body, the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation (IBJJF).
Gordon Ryan trains under John Danaher, a celebrated Jiu Jitsu and MMA coach operating out of the Renzo Gracie academy in New York. Several of John Danaher’s students have done very well using his leglock system in professional matches, most notably Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonon, and Eddie Cummings. These students are sometimes referred to as the Danaher Death Squad (DDS).
Some in the Jiu Jitsu community regard the IBJJF Jiu Jitsu competitions as the pinnacle, and imply that the DDS’s supposed “avoidance” of IBJJF competitions, and preference for lower profile (though not necessarily less challenging) competitions, meant they had yet to be tested at the top levels of the sport. Also, that as leglock specialists they were in effect “one trick ponies”, who had not developed the fully rounded Jiu Jitsu skills required to be regarded as truly elite.
Gordon Ryan recently put such criticisms to bed by winning double gold at the 2018 Pan Jiu-Jitsu IBJJF No Gi Championship. This under IBJJF rules, which allow no “knee reaping” or heel hooks, which are the DDS’ bread and butter in non-IBJJF competitions, though they have highly developed skill sets in other areas of Jiu Jitsu as well.
Interestingly, Gordon Ryan enquired about and addressed the various issues surrounding the legality of various leglocks, especially from the cross ashi garami (411 / honey hole / inside sankaku) position, after a detailed discussion of the rules with the Pan’s head referee.
This article contains a couple of videos where Gordon explains what he learned. Unfortunately the sound quality is not great, and, despite what the article claims, is no better if you view the videos on Instagram, where they were originally published.
The takeaways are:
The cross ashi position is only illegal if the foot of the opponent’s leg trapped by your legs, the “inside” or primary foot, is also trapped between your armpit and hip.
So an underhook or “scoop ” grip on the inside leg in cross ashi is perfectly legal.
Overhooking the “outside” or secondary ankle, the one on the leg not trapped by your legs, is also legal in cross ashi. This is John Danaher’s “double trouble” position, so called because you are controlling both legs.
BUT … combining the outside leg overhook and inside leg underhook in the “Texas Cloverleaf” submission is illegal and will get you disqualified.
This seems to be contradictory and inconsistent. I queried this via Facebook Messenger with David “Silver Fox” Karcher, “The Grappling Referee” on social media. While he is not the IBJJF head referee, he did attend an IBJJF rules meeting in Boston recently where the subject was discussed in detail. I have corresponded with him on Facebook for a while and respect his opinions, though quite often he seems as perplexed as anyone about certain match situations shown on video. That last statement is not a criticism.
According to Mr Karcher:
It’s about isolating the reaped leg, either by attacking the foot, clamping the foot, or trapping the foot in the Cloverleaf.
if you can move the foot or escape the foot, its legal.
the thought process is, if the foot is trapped, you can hurt the knee.
There are Youtube videos of IBJJF athletes winning matches with the Texas Cloverleaf, but as far as I can tell these all happened before the current knee reaping rules were introduced in 2015. I read somewhere where a person on social media claimed a referee disqualified him for a Texas Cloverleaf in 2018, and the referee told him afterwards that the submission was legal in 2017, but not 2018. I have no way of determining the veracity of these claims.
The rules remain inconsistent, and arguably even contradictory, in places, and leave grey areas in a number of situations. This is likely to always be the case in a constantly changing sport with almost infinite possibilities. We referees just have to keep doing the best we possibly can for the competitors, I guess.