What does Ryan Hall actually think about Brazilian jiu-jitsu memes? Mostly that Reddit needs to do better — but a few of them hit uncomfortably close to home. In a meme review segment filmed after a longer podcast conversation, Hall rated a stack of printed-out BJJ memes on a scale of 1 to 12, cracked jokes, pushed back on lazy ones, and somehow turned the whole exercise into a genuine conversation about talent, discipline, and the humbling reality of training with the best grapplers in the world.
How Did Ryan Hall Rate These BJJ Memes?
The setup was simple: a printed stack of Reddit memes, a 1-to-12 rating scale, and Ryan Hall being asked to be silly on command. The results were mixed in the best possible way.
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Ryan Hall reacting to the sobbing-after-adult-class meme and debating whether Tobias from Arrested Development is the subject
Watch at 02:15 →
Hall opened strong, declaring that any meme featuring the mustachioed "fisticuffs gentleman" is automatically entertaining regardless of content. From there the ratings got interesting. A meme about sobbing after adult BJJ class — featuring what appeared to be Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development biting a bar of soap — earned a 4. Not bad, not great. Hall noted that a 4 might actually be high depending on the universe of memes being compared against.
A meme suggesting the best defense against a body triangle is to "get really fat" pulled a 2. Technically accurate, Hall admitted, but accuracy alone doesn't earn points when he came for the jokes. The highest scores went to memes that combined accuracy with genuine wit. A meme about getting promoted during COVID and then waiting to actually roll in the new belt got a 1 — brutal. A meme skewering the production value of most BJJ instructionals earned a 6 for being, as Hall put it, "disturbingly accurate."
The clear winner of the session was a meme about the coronavirus being defeated by putting a blue belt on it — a reference to the well-known phenomenon of students quitting en masse after receiving their blue belt. Hall initially missed the joke entirely, then laughed and bumped it all the way to a 10. That one, he said, was earned.
Why Do So Many Students Quit After Blue Belt?
The blue belt dropout meme landed hardest in the room because it points at something every instructor knows is real. Blue belt represents the first major milestone in BJJ — enough skill to understand what is happening but nowhere near enough to feel comfortable. The novelty has worn off. The ego has taken repeated damage. The path forward looks long.
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Ryan Hall missing the blue belt coronavirus meme joke, then laughing and revising his score upward to a 10
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Hall didn't dive deep into solutions here, but his reaction said enough. The laugh of recognition, the upward revision to a 10, the acknowledgment that this one "went over his head" before clicking — it all pointed to someone who has watched this pattern play out dozens of times from the instructor's side of the mat.
Is BJJ Talent Real or Just Hard Work?
A meme about a student insisting someone's skill must be an "innate gift from God" while the practitioner responds "it's practice" triggered one of the more honest exchanges of the segment. Hall was asked directly: do you think you're talented?
His answer was immediate. No. Or at least — not in the ways people assume.
"I just do nothing but martial arts all day every day," he said. But pressed further, he acknowledged there might be one genuine talent at work: discipline. The inability to be talked out of something. He referenced a line that stuck with him — if someone can talk you out of your dream, you didn't really want your dream — and framed his own stubbornness not as a character flaw but as the engine behind everything else.
He also named it honestly: even if that belief isn't objectively true, it's a facilitative belief. Believing that persistence is the variable makes you more likely to persist. Whether it's nature or nurture almost doesn't matter if the output is showing up every single day for decades.
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Hall describing his first roll with a white belt at Ronin Athletics in New York in 2004 — the moment he fell in love with BJJ
Watch at 14:20 →
Should BJJ Techniques Use Japanese or English Names?
A meme about a judo practitioner cracking open a book of terminology to figure out what move was just used prompted Hall to weigh in on one of the low-key ongoing debates in grappling: Japanese terms versus English, and where Eddie Bravo's entirely custom naming system fits into that spectrum.
Hall's take was measured but clear. He uses Japanese terminology when speaking to judo or Japanese-language practitioners because that's the appropriate context. When speaking to English speakers, he uses English. An arm lock is an arm lock.
On Bravo's approach of renaming techniques entirely — creating a whole new vocabulary for moves that already have names — Hall said it felt weird to him too, but acknowledged that if the branding helps someone remember and apply a technique, that's a legitimate outcome. What he pushed back on was the broader trend of branding in jiu-jitsu for its own sake. "I struggle with the branding going on that I see in jiu-jitsu," he said, without naming names beyond what was already on the table.
What Hooked Ryan Hall on Jiu-Jitsu the First Time?
A meme about the gap between what a deadly mat assassin looks like mid-roll versus how they appear in regular life prompted Hall to tell the story of his first real day of jiu-jitsu training — the moment the art went from interesting to all-consuming.
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Hall recounting the Marcelo Garcia session in December 2009 and the silence that followed on the bus home
Watch at 19:50 →
It was 2004 at Ronin Athletics in New York. A white belt named Eric Ryerson, probably 130 pounds soaking wet, only eight months into training, proceeded to completely dismantle Hall on the mat. Hall's reaction wasn't frustration. It was the opposite.
"Holy crap, this is literally the coolest thing I've ever experienced in my life. This is like magic."
The fact that it wasn't a seasoned black belt doing it made it more powerful, not less. Eight months of training had produced something that looked and felt like a superpower to an outside eye. Hall says he was mentally handing over all his money before the roll was even finished. There was no getting rid of him after that.
What Happened When Ryan Hall Rolled With Marcelo Garcia?
The most memorable story of the meme review came attached to a meme about driving home in silence after jiu-jitsu destroys you — no music, no podcast, just the road and a quiet existential reckoning.
Hall knew that feeling. But the specific story he told involved Marcelo Garcia showing up at his gym in Arlington, Virginia in December 2009, shortly after ADCC. Garcia had family in the DC area, wore what Hall described as a Fidel Castro hat and a massive beard, and knocked on the door of the gym asking to train.
Hall was coming off a solid ADCC performance — third place at 66 kilos, competitive match against Leiber. He felt, if not confident, at least oriented. Then he rolled with Marcelo.
"I feel like I'm being let off the hook." He kept telling Garcia to actually try. Garcia, being Garcia, was polite about it. Then he tried a little harder. Hall described his guard being passed approximately 35 times. Not in a playful back-and-forth way. In a way that felt like being thrown around by someone operating on a completely different level of understanding.
The drive — or in this case, the bus ride — home was exactly what the meme described. Silence. A thousand-yard stare. Reevaluation of everything. Hall and his teammates, he recalled, would sometimes sit in the back of his beat-up Honda Civic after similar sessions and just stare out the window together. No words needed.
He described Marcelo Garcia as one of the best he has ever encountered — not just as a competitor but as an instructor and a human being — and noted that even as he got better over time, the gap stayed roughly the same. He called that inspiring rather than discouraging. The gap was the lesson.
What Does It Feel Like to Roll With an Elite Grappler?
What Hall articulated across multiple stories in this session is something most people who train jiu-jitsu will recognize but struggle to describe: the feeling of encountering someone whose skill so completely exceeds yours that the normal rules seem suspended. It isn't frustrating in the way losing a competitive match is frustrating. It's clarifying. Almost spiritual, in the way the Eric Ryerson story framed it — magic, not mechanics.
The memes gave Hall a funny, low-stakes way to surface that. Even the ones he rated a 1 or a 2 were doing something real — they were encoding shared experience into a format that travels. And Hall, who rated accuracy highly even when he claimed to only be there for the jokes, clearly respected that more than his tough grading suggested.
The Reddit BJJ community may need to do better, per Hall's official verdict. But a few of those memes earned their upvotes.
