Craig Jones just turned Gordon Ryan's wife's arrest into a merch drop.

Backstory: Nathalia Santoro, Ryan's wife, was arrested in Texas last October after a high-speed police chase. Officers tracked her green Porsche above 120 mph before eventually ramming the vehicle to stop it. At the station she failed sobriety tests. Bodycam footage — now public — shows her telling officers she was "allergic to gay people" and threatening to punch someone. She was booked and charged.

Ryan did not publicly address the arrest.

What he posted instead, around the same period, was a call for the public execution of politicians.

"Public hangings of politicians who do nothing but raise cost of living through terrible policy, lie, steal from you, and infringe on your rights all while blaming whites, Putin, billionaires, and others would be one of the things that actually fixes this Country."

Those are real Instagram words, posted while his wife's arrest was circulating through the grappling and MMA press. Ryan chose that moment to issue a statement — just not about the thing the press was writing about him. He stayed silent on Santoro's arrest and filled that silence with a manifesto about executing government officials. We're noting the timing and moving on. There's more ground to cover.

Craig Jones filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the bodycam footage. Got it. Posted the full video to his YouTube channel. Then started selling merchandise based on the arrest.

MMA journalist Anton Tabuena confirmed it: "Craig Jones' very personal beef with Gordon Ryan and his wife Nathalia Santoro continues. He made FOIA requests, posted these videos on his YouTube page, and even started selling merch of the arrest."

The FOIA step is worth pausing on. Filing a public records request means identifying the right government agency, submitting a formal request citing the applicable statute, waiting for a response, following up when nothing comes. Investigative journalists do this for a living. Most people who have a grudge against a former training partner don't. Craig Jones — who has spent several years making Gordon Ryan's life difficult in every format available — added "submitted public records request for ex-training partner's wife's arrest footage" to the list. Then designed the merch.

The footage covers the incident: 120 mph chase, the Porsche getting rammed, sobriety tests, the "allergic to gay people" exchange, the arrest. All of it is on YouTube now. The merch exists if you want a physical artifact of this particular chapter.

For those keeping score: Jones has called Ryan out across interviews, built the Craig Jones Invitational partly as an ongoing provocation, and split from Simple Man, the same team Ryan eventually departed. He's been at this through multiple institutional breakdowns. The FOIA move is something different — not a callout, not trash talk on a podcast. That's civil records law. Craig Jones spent enough time in a government database to have his name on a formal public records request about his ex-training partner's wife's arrest. That's a very specific kind of petty.

Jones and Ryan trained together at DDS — the Danaher Death Squad — back when Ryan was building the résumé that made him the most dominant submission grappler alive. They were on the same team. Not anymore. Whatever fell apart between them has generated a feud that's outlasted Jones's time at DDS, his run at Simple Man, his working relationship with FloGrappling. The FOIA request is the latest chapter. Also the most labor-intensive.

Ryan posted about politicians failing the public — corrupt, lying, raising the cost of living, pointing fingers everywhere. Meanwhile Jones used public records law to document something that happened in Ryan's personal life. Squint at it long enough and Jones is the investigative reporter of this story. Ryan is the Instagram pundit.

Ryan had opinions about political accountability. Jones filed the paperwork.

The footage is on YouTube. The merch exists. The only real public accounting of what happened in Texas last October came from the last person Gordon Ryan would have wanted on the case. Everyone picks their lane.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

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