The Ruotolo Experiment

Tye and Kade Ruotolo have captivated the grappling world for so long that it is hard to believe the twins are only twenty-three years old. Tye stepped out of the shadows seven years ago, on day one of the 2019 ADCC World Championship. He made an excellent impression with his foot trapping guard pass attempts and his high pace. Kade did not compete at the ADCC World Championship that year because he had gone out to a seventeen year old Nicky Ryan in the finals of the North American trials.

The diverging paths of Nicky Ryan and the Ruotolos are two roads away from the brief instant of being a Jiu Jitsu prodigy. To a great many middle-aged, middle-class people, Jiu Jitsu is the most important and interesting thing in the world. To excel at grappling from an early age can be a wonderful gift, but it is one that many young phenoms are still trying to convert into lasting employment and long-term success. Nicky Ryan burned out on training like an athlete quite quickly in spite of his incredible talent and now competes sporadically and seems content coaching. In spite of Kade Ruotolo picking up the million-dollar prize at the Craig Jones Invitational in 2024, the brothers Ruotolo have made the decision that the next step for them is in mixed martial arts: real fighting. This is a tough choice to make and many (mainly Mikey Musumeci) tease the move for the best part of a decade before it comes time to shit or get off the pot.

The Musumeci example is particularly fitting because the Ruotolos signed with the circus of the East, ONE Championship. There they were able to compete as grapplers, and then start their MMA careers in earnest. ONE Championship’s move has been to sign elite grapplers and then market their matches to uninterested audiences by saying “imagine if they did MMA… they might!” When they signed Gordon Ryan five years ago and tried to tease an MMA move, he promptly shut down their nonsense and in fact never ended up even grappling under their banner.

Garry Tonon did transition from grappling to begin competing in MMA in ONE Championship, and had a successful run there. Though their lack of a division eventually stalled out his progress and now he is returning to grappling superfights after becoming yet another fighter to complain about ONE not offering him dates. The Ruotolos find themselves in the extremely strange position of having their MMA careers become ONE Championship’s pet project, but right at the moment when the promotion is jettisoning all of its MMA fighters to focus on Muay Thai and kickboxing. And that is how we arrive at the weekend’s main event: a title fight between ONE Championship golden boy, Christian Lee, and Tye Ruotolo, with just two MMA fights to his name.

Perhaps understanding a little mixed martial arts history, the Ruotolo brothers made the decision to take their talent to the great Erik Paulson. Paulson is MMA royalty, having been Shooto champion back in 1996 when no one knew anything about what was then mostly called No Holds Barred. As a coach, Paulson’s most famous charges have been Josh Barnett and Brock Lesnar. If you knew nothing else about him, he’s proven to be a man who can take a grappler and make him into something nastier.  You will recall Lesnar’s work pinning Frank Mir’s hands with the stockade and hammering him with punches; that was all Paulson.

Figure 1 shows Lesnar using his right hand to pin Mir’s wrist to the mat, as he feeds his left hand behind Mir’s neck and into his armpit. He can then let go with his right hand and begin punching as Mir’s left hand is pinned above his head.

Fig. 1

Here is Kade Ruotolo pinning a wrist from top mount, working his hand into the armpit behind his opponent’s neck, and catching an arm triangle as his opponent squirms to prevent a good stockade grip.

Fig. 2

Similarly, Tye Ruotolo’s ground and pound against Adrian Lee was often led by controlling his hands. Here he performs a wrist pin, to slip a quick elbow inside with the same arm. This is one Arman Tsarukyan used to score a peach of an elbow against Dan Hooker.

Fig. 3

Kade and Tye were both primarily top players throughout their gi and no-gi jiu jitsu careers, and much of their matches is the two brothers jogging around guard players and trying to tire them out. With as dull as that can be, it has been extremely rewarding to watch both brothers achieve top position in MMA and immediately begin bludgeoning their opponents with well-placed elbows and body shots, varying the angle in reaction to the opponent’s cover up.

Fig. 4

Of course, a world class grappler is going to have success in MMA when put on top of his opponent, but getting there is the tricky part. I used to point to the great Andre Galvao running up against NCAA All American, Tyron Woodley and having no hope after realizing he could not get the takedown, but in recent years it has taken even less of a wrestling pedigree to undo jiu jitsu savants. Yuri Simoes is one of the better top players of all time going by grappling accolades, but his MMA career amounted to two decision losses in ONE Championship as he failed to get competent wall wrestlers off their feet or capitalize when he did. The key problem of the Ruotolo experiment is going to be how well they can get their opponents down, and how well they can handle themselves on the feet until they are able to achieve that.

I was expecting the Ruotolos to be able to “out-athlete” most of the opponents that ONE could offer them. There has been an entertaining contrast in the way that the two brothers approach their fights though. Tye has continued to confirm the accusations from his grappling days: he has “spazzed out with skill.” Yet Kade has seemed intent on trying to show a more measured, technical mixed martial arts game, and it has worked to make him look the worse of the two brothers.

Tye has opted to fight as a right-handed southpaw, and has had good success in his short career landing the right hook both on the lead and as a one-size-fits-all counter. His very first action as a professional MMA fighter was to throw an inside-out kick / uchi-mawashigeri and duck into a counter right hook and single leg as Adrian Lee came back at him.

Fig. 5

Meanwhile Kade fights orthodox and has set to work flicking out jabs, trying to get down behind his lead shoulder, throwing up body kicks and high kicks. The trouble is that both brothers are rough around the edges in the ways you would expect this early on—the high chin, the laboured high kicks, the telegraphs on everything after the first two minutes of action—but Tye’s aggression hides this and Kade’s desire to fight properly exposes it.

And this extends into the wrestling. Here is an example of Tye Ruotolo’s aggression paying off in heaps, when he is not necessarily making the best tactical decisions. He swings on the opponent, ends up conceding underhooks, but head posts and lands good knees to the midsection.

Fig. 6

After scoring these knees, Tye launches his opponent with an uchimata.

Fig. 7

Certainly, Erik Paulson knows the value of the clinch and of striking therein. His student, Josh Barnett had two of the best clinch striking performances in MMA history against Roy Nelson and Frank Mir. But no good MMA fighter is going out to seek double overhooks with the opponent’s back to the fence if they want a takedown.

Kade’s most recent match against Hiroyuki Tetsuka was the toughest test either Ruotolo has faced. Tetsuka is not a particularly good fighter, but he is experienced. Kade attempted to strike and set up level changes but ended up shooting double legs from a mile away and not being able to “athlete” his way through them.

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

Here he gets pulled up off Tetsuka’s hips, attempts an inside trip, and then a power twist that accidentally lands him underneath Tetsuka.

Fig. 10

Yes, Ruotolo is a world class grappler but the idea of the fighter who “doesn’t care if he’s on his back because he’s so dangerous there” does not exist in modern MMA. Mediocre fighters like Hiroyuki Tetsuka can stall out the best grappler in the world at their weight on the mat, if they are given top position and grindy, smudging elbows.

The mechanics of both Ruotolos striking often shows their inexperience—both love throwing the high kick because they are young and athletic and have the flexibility, but both telegraph it with a day’s march on the front end. If we set aside mechanics altogether the inexperience shows through the intangibles. Both Kade and Tye, when put under fire, will immediately retreat on a straight line until their rump hits the cage or ropes. They both show signs of good coaching because they immediately side step, and sometimes catch the opponent with their own strikes on the pivot, but the fact that they do not have control over or regard for their ring position, before the thud of the boundary reminds them, is telling.

Fig. 11

The majority of the problems that the Ruotolos are likely to encounter will be down to their decision making. In grappling they have tried everything and normally gotten away with it, and there are already elements of that showing in their MMA fights. Shooting long double legs to your knees is a bad tactical decision, but the question is whether ONE Championship has any fighters good enough to punish the Ruotolos sufficiently without being overwhelmed by the next burst of offence.

Tye has at least shown a willingness to go to the traditional dogfight game. All jiu jitsu can really be boiled down to the half guard and dogfight, and Garry Tonon, Demian Maia and Rafael Lovato all arrived at this conclusion as they did more MMA. Attacking the single leg and then stepping over into the dogfight when you meet resistance is a great way to turn the mat battle technical when you cannot time or complete the takedown cleanly in one attempt.

Fig. 12

New Looks

The Ruotolos are not simply great grapplers and athletes, they were extremely innovative in their grappling careers and this has extended into their short time in MMA. Both Ruotolos have long arms for their weight and quickly gravitated towards the D’arce choke. But they took it a step further and both have found great success with an arm triangle from the back that has been dubbed the “Ruotolotine.” Like the Mussolini lock that broke out at ADCC 2026, the Ruotolotine is more than a gimmick because it attacks the opponent from a different direction to one expected attack from a dominant position. The Mussolini lock comes in answer to an opponent defending the inside heel hook from 50/50, and the Ruotolotine comes from the “wrong” side of the opponent’s body in back mount. If all the opponent is focused on is getting both of his hands on Kade or Tye’s “choking arm”—the one over their shoulder—they can slip their underhook arm deep and attack a choke from an angle that no one else really uses.

Fig. 13

Discussing twins in combat sports it is always important to note that each is his own man, but the entire benefit of being a twin in combat sports is that you have an appropriately sized sparring partner around at all times. The Nogueiras, Miyaos, Charlos, they all end up having stylistic similarities. The Ruotolo brothers in fact both finished an opponent by Ruotolotine on the same night at ONE Fight Night 21 back in April 2024.

In Kade’s MMA debut, he took Blake Cooper’s back and immediately punched his arm deep from the underhook side. Cooper pulled his shoulders down and expanded his chest—as you would against most arm triangles. But from the back this just gave Kade an easier time punching his other hand under the chin from the opposite side. There’s also some cheeky finger holding going on in this clip.

Fig. 14

Another innovation from the Ruotolos is their use of the hip bump / sit up sweep in their brief moments on the bottom. Ryan Hall has also had great success with this in MMA but “success” must defined more broadly than completing the hip bump sweep. Most of the time the opponent will prevent that, but by using their weight to push the hip bumper back to the mat they give momentum to a secondary attack. Hall used it to climb for armbars, and Bia Mesquita did the same thing in a recent grappling match against Miesha Tate. Mikey Musumeci used it against Shinya Aoki to get his hand underneath Aoki’s rump in order to begin attacking the K guard.

After falling to the bottom by accident and being held there for a while against Tetsuka, Kade Ruotolo performed two attempts at a sit-up sweep, changing to a switch on Tetsuka’s leg and wrestling up on top of him as he reacted.

Fig. 15

The other way that you will see the hip bump attacked effectively is in transition. Levi Jones-Leary has had success attacking complicated berimbolo attempts, then locking his legs around the opponent and sitting up on this day one sweep as a change up. Here Tye Ruotolo attempts to throw Izaak Michell, who has a back bodylock on him. After the throw fails, Tye throws his leg behind him to enclose Michell in his guard, then rapidly performs a hip bump sweep as Michell is hunkered down with his hands locked underneath Ruotolo.

Fig. 16

A final interesting addition to the Ruotolo game is the consideration of the cage during top control. Glover Teixeira has competed at the highest levels in no gi competition, but Jiri Prochazka was able to walk up the fence and roll over with him numerous times during their fight. In Tye’s two MMA fights, both opponents have attempted to bridge and roll off the cage or ropes. Tye has reached back and used the crook of his elbow behind their knee to pull their knees together to the side. Against Isojima he was able to flatten the bridge and press back into mount. Against Lee, he was able to chase Lee up into a back bodylock and immediately jump onto the back of Lee’s knees and pull him down into crab ride. Both sequences were quickly followed by a rear naked choke victory for Tye.

Fig. 17

Earlier in the Lee fight, Tye Ruotolo reached back to hook the leg of the bucking Lee, and transitioned into a Z-armbar or “pillow armbar” that came close to getting him the submission. BJ Penn used to encourage his opponents to bridge when he mounted them, and hooked the leg to roll through onto a belly down armbar in a similar way.

Fig. 18

ONE Championship never had that many great MMA fighters, and they have since discarded most of them. With that said, Christian Lee is about as stiff a test as you could find outside the UFC and Tye Ruotolo is being tasked with fighting him in just his third professional bout. Kade has had more fights, and he’s had a longer, less impressive one where he had to work a bit. Everything about this screams “what is the rush?” but Tye Ruotolo might just be talented enough to blow through it with no questions asked.