Key Takeaways
- A No-Gi anti-meta instructional built around shutting down Octopus Guard/overback style attacks before they turn into scrambles.
- Strongest value is the positional logic: knee positioning, hip control, and “thresholds” that keep you from getting dragged into weird angles.
- The middle volumes give a very specific map for dealing with overback from half guard and from side control (two places people love to get cute).
- Bonus sections cover buggy choke counters and a D’arce escape module, plus rolling footage with commentary to see the ideas under stress.
- Rating: 6.5/10
DOWNLOAD DISMANTLING OCTOPUS GUARD GORDON RYAN DVD
Counter instructionals are tricky to judge, because they’re never supposed to feel like a complete game. They’re more like insurance: you buy them because you’re tired of one specific problem showing up in the room and hijacking your rounds.
That’s exactly what the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD is. The theme is simple: stop letting trendy, overhyped positions force you into frantic exchanges. Gordon frames this as a system of denial—deny the structure first, then deny the movement, and only then worry about passing or advancing. At a high level, the DVD earns its keep when you already understand the basics and you want specific answers to specific problems—without guessing.
Why Bother With the Octopus Guard?
Octopus Guard is one of those positions that looks creative, but the reason it spreads is simple: it gives bottom players a way to come up and threaten reversals when your top pressure is slightly lazy. In practice, it often shows up as an overback-style connection—your opponent clamps around your upper body and tries to climb to your back or off-balance you into a scramble.
The hard part isn’t knowing the name. It’s recognizing the moment it becomes dangerous. People usually try to solve it late—when the bottom player already has their hips turned, their knees positioned, and their torso glued to you. That’s when you start doing the classic BJJ thing: try harder and hope balance saves you.
The smarter solution (and the one this instructional leans on) is preemption: win the battle of knees, keep your hips in the correct lane, and treat the position like a set of checkpoints. If you’re hunting for octopus guard counters, you’ll notice a pattern across the material: Gordon keeps coming back to structure and alignment—where your hips sit relative to your opponent’s knees, and how you prevent them from building height.
The Retired “King” Gordon Ryan
Gordon Ryan is one of the defining No-Gi competitors of his era, rising through the Danaher Death Squad ecosystem before competing under the New Wave banner. He’s widely known for a competition style that blends ruthless position control with a very clinical finishing approach—especially in leg entanglements and dominant upper-body control.
He was born in 1995 in New Jersey and earned his black belt through the Danaher/Tonon lineage. His resume includes major titles across the top end of submission grappling, with repeated success at ADCC (including multiple wins across weight and absolute/superfight contexts) and other elite formats.
In February 2026, Ryan publicly announced a retirement from competition, citing ongoing stomach/immune-system related health issues that have impacted his ability to train and compete the way he wants. That context matters for this DVD, because it reinforces what you feel throughout the material: it’s “thinking-first” Jiu-Jitsu. Even when he’s talking about chaotic positions, the goal is to remove chaos—not win chaos.
Systematically Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD Review
This Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD is organized into eight volumes and runs roughly 5.5+ hours total. The structure is consistent: a core conceptual foundation, then situational problem-solving (half guard and side control), then a few “low-percentage move” counters, followed by rolling footage and commentary.
Volume 1 – Over Back Theory
Volume 1 is the philosophical and mechanical backbone. It opens with the tone-setter mindset and then quickly gets into over back theory and the battle of the knees from both top and neutral/bottom contexts.
This is where you’ll either buy in or bounce off. Gordon isn’t trying to entertain—he’s trying to give you a framework that applies before the position fully develops. Chapters like “Hips Between Knees,” “Dilemma Games,” and “Position Threshold” are basically telling you: if you can control these relationships early, you don’t need a heroic late escape later. For the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD, this volume is the why that makes the later how make sense.
Volume 2 – Overback From Half Guard
Part 2 gets very specific with a chain of counters depending on what the bottom player is doing with their grips and secondary controls. This is one of the more practically useful sections because it lives in a high-frequency problem area.
A lot of people run Octopus/overback ideas from half guard specifically because it’s easier to connect your upper body while your legs stall the pass. Here, Gordon’s answers are largely about stripping the route—not just reacting to the moment. It’s also where you’ll get a clearer picture of overback from half guard as a repeatable situation, not a random scramble.
Volume 3 – Passing & Pinning
The next volume continues the half-guard battle, but shifts into what happens when the bottom player tries to bridge and force movement. It starts with a back take counter and then follows the consequences: to mount, and pinning domination.
The connective tissue here is pin-building. Once Gordon frames a solution, he tries to land in a control that keeps you from re-entering the same mess. It’s also one of the better places to study how he thinks about heists and opponents returning to their knees.
Volume 4 – Butterfly Half Guard
Volume 4 pivots into the Butterfly Half Guard, which is a smart inclusion because many Octopus/overback threats show up when the bottom player has a butterfly hook that helps them build height. The key focus here is on controlling the space between the knees— basically, the entire game when you’re trying to stop someone from turning into you and climbing.
From there, it progresses throughstep over and cut through passing. The final chunk ties it back to the reality that people mix in off-balancing and hooking games to create the angle for the upper-body clamp. If you like instruction that gives you a small set of high-leverage ideas rather than endless variations, this volume will click.
Volume 5 – Overback From Side Control
This part is all about the overback from side control, and it’s one of the more underrated reasons to consider this course. Side control is supposed to be safe, which is why overback/Octopus-style counters from there feel extra annoying—like someone is stealing your turn.
The volume focuses on preventing the overback in the first place, plus what to do when the opponent starts the heist and tries to reinsert knees. The chapter list makes it clear Gordon is obsessed with the domino effect: if they bring the knee inside, it changes what’s easier or harder for both players.
Volume 6 – Countering the Buggy
Volume 6 is all about the Buggy choke, or rather, how to beat it. Gordon treats the buggy choke as a low percentage move that becomes a problem mostly when top players get careless with head and hip positioning. It breaks the subject into mechanics, head position, pinning hips, transitioning to north-south, and late escape ideas.
Even if you don’t see buggy attempts daily, the underlying lesson is valuable: a lot of viral attacks only work because the top player gives the bottom player two things at once—space and alignment. As a focused module on buggy choke defense, it’s solid and fairly digestible.
Volume 7 – D’arce Escapes
The penultimate part is a bonus covering Darce choke escapes. It covers a handful of scenarios like countering peak outs, and a couple of situations that resemble common grappling transitions. If you’ve been looking for a D’arce escape instructional that emphasizes positional logic over frantic hand-fighting, you’ll likely appreciate how this is framed.
Volume 8 – Narrarted Rolling
Volume 8 is rolling footage followed by rolling commentary. In a course that’s about preventing scrambles, it helps to see the concepts appear during live exchanges—especially when the opponent’s reactions aren’t scripted. If you like seeing real movement and hearing the thought process, it rounds out the package well.
Practical Application
The most effective way to use this course is to treat it like a troubleshooting manual, not a curriculum. Pick one position that keeps burning you—overback from half guard, overback from side control, or butterfly half guard connections—and build short training loops around it.
Start in half guard with the overback connection already in place. Your job is to win the knee/hip relationship before you try to pass. Then, explore side control with your opponent hunting the overback. Focus on preventing the entry and shutting down the heist. Be sure to add a failure rep round where you start late—then compare how much harder it feels when you skip the early checkpoints.
If you do it that way, the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD becomes a set of constraints you can plug directly into positional sparring. It’s also a very coach-friendly instructional: the chapter themes map cleanly to the kind of games you can run in class (space between knees, hips between knees, far-hip pin).
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Who Is This For?
This is best for blue belt through black belt, especially people who already pass and pin but get dragged into scrambles by “come-up” guards, No-Gi focused grapplers who deal with overhooks, overbacks, and butterfly half guard dilemmas regularly and competitors and coaches, because the material is built around eliminating high-variance exchanges.
I didn’t like it, and neither will brand-new white belts who don’t yet understand basic pinning and guard-passing posture (you’ll miss why the checkpoints matter) and Gi-only players looking for grip-specific solutions (the themes still apply, but the scenarios are clearly No-Gi rooted).
If your main pain point is exactly what the title suggests, the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD will feel targeted. However, if your problem is the Octopus guard, you need to figure out Jiu-Jitsu better, because it is so useless that it shouldn’t be.
Pros & Potential Drawbacks
Pros:
- Very clear positional logic. The recurring themes (knees, hips, space, thresholds) make it easier to troubleshoot in live rounds.
- High-frequency scenarios. Overback threats from half guard and side control are common problems, not niche edge cases.
- Teaches prevention, not just reaction. You’ll spend more time avoiding bad structure than learning flashy late escapes.
- Useful coaching material. The chapter themes translate well into positional sparring games.
- Bonus modules add practical room problems. Buggy choke counters and D’arce escapes are real issues people run into.
Potential Drawbacks:
- Narrow by design. If you don’t face Octopus Guard/overback attempts often, parts of this will feel like overkill.
- More defensive than offensive. It’s about shutting things down; it won’t build your top game from scratch.
A Needless Instructional
As a concept-driven counter manual, this is a good—not essential—addition to the library. The best parts of the Dismantling Octopus Guard Gordon Ryan DVD are the ones that turn a messy position into a checklist: win the knee line, keep your hips in the right lane, deny the heist, then stabilize and pass. For anyone who’s tired of being pulled into chaos by overback/Octopus-style movements, that’s real value.
