I mentioned this in an old thread, but I did a seminar with Tonon, Gordan (and a very young Nicky Ryan) about 5 years ago.
Super cool, and they hung out afterwards to roll with everyone and answer questions. Gary talked about the same thing:
“Garry talked a bit about Danaher’s teaching style. In that he won’t give you the complete picture at once . He’ll give you ‘pieces of the puzzles’. He’ll give you a bit and let you chew on it and figure that part out before he gives you the next piece. The order matters a lot. You need to master one part before you can move onto the next. He seems to put a premium on having his students figure things out for themselves also. Digest as you go.”
They had showed us the kipping mount escape and mentioned that John literally would show them pieces of the move weeks apart, and that Gary couldn’t get it to work optimally until John showed him a key detail after he’d been working on it all those weeks.
What I find differs from Danaher vs everyone else is he uses an almost cookie cutter approach (allowing you to add your flair) almost like a college wrestling room. Where other instructors just have you do your thing
Apologies for hijacking this thread, with what is likely a really stupid question.
Gordon mentioned on Rogan’s podcast in reference to Garry Tonon’s striking training, that Garry had solely trained standup with John. That John was apparently as skilled at striking as he was at jiu jitsu, that he started in boxing and Muay Thai…but never gave it up. How true is that? Or is that purely conjecture and bs from Gordon?
I never saw anybody teach striking but the striking coaches, Joe Sampieri etc. the Muay Thai program became a thing after the expansion and the coaches came from the Wat. I used to Train with Phil Nurse at the Wat before that as well. Before that guys on the MMA side of things like Jamal Paterson and such would go to Gleasons to box. I never saw John teach any of it. Could he have some top secret super high level striking knowledge? I suppose, but I never saw it.
John knows striking and he’s knows it well. The majority of mma striking coaches absolutely suck. In my opinion, I have never seen anything remotely close in any mma gym to what John shows for no-gi grappling and mma. No one I’ve seen honestly knows a fraction of what he knows.
When he first started helping Chris Weidman the stuff he would show him was better than anything I have ever seen anyone show.
The drills he does for striking are excellent. What’s even better than his striking is his ability to teach guys to time strikes and hit takedowns.
If I were fighting in the UFC I would feel very comfortable with John handling everything but I’d probably still want a kickboxing coach who knows a little bit about mma.
You can’t really codify striking the same way you can grappling. Everything John shows is pretty much part of a larger system. In a grappling match the better grappler wins most every time. The better guy doesn’t always win when guys are trading punches, especially with a 4 oz glove. No one I’ve ever seen who was great at BJJ is stupid. To get really good at grappling it takes a pretty smart person. Some of the best boxers I’ve seen are half fucking retarded. They couldn’t even tell you what they did. They just react to what they see and feel
You can probably ask John to show the moves of any of the greatest boxers of all time and he can show you everything they do. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t worked with him how much he really knows.
When GSP first started working John it was the first BJ Penn fight. This was before GSP even started training with zahabi. John pretty much saved GSP by convincing him to have a back up plan in case Penn actually got the better of him on the feet. All the stuff that GSP used to pin BJ Penn against the cage and put him down on that canvas was everything John showed him in the weeks prior to the fight. Pretty much everyone was afraid of taking Penn down at that point but John pointed out that BJ Penn does not one single submission from off his back in an mma fight. There is no doubt in my mind that GSP would have lost that fight if he had not been working with John
The folkstyle wrestling rides and breakdowns into ground and pound that he shows is unreal. The guy is literally a computer when it comes to instruction. You can ask him about any Olympic gold medalist in modern times in judo and freestyle wrestling and he can show you exactly what the guy does. I’ve never seen anything like it. He’ll show you demain Maia’s passing system if you ask for that or he’ll show you khabib’s system that he uses against the fence and on the ground. No one knows what he does.
For GSP’s fight against BJ Penn (first one), he was training takedowns with John against the wall (cage). John was just kimura-ing him over and over and over…
First of all, thanks for contributing to this thread. It’s so cool having an old school RGA guy here.
I have to ask, where did John learn so much about striking? And did anyone in his morning classes cross train with him on standup? I find it fascinating that this guy is so well versed in every area of the fight game.
And yes, Renzo might be the nicest person you’ll ever meet. Such a good guy.
Supposedly John did kickboxing in New Zealand. I never asked him. He absolutely knows boxing as well or better than anyone I have ever talked about boxing with.
He was running small group mma drilling and sparring sessions geared towards garry Tonon before he moved to Puerto Rico. They were excellent drills that he did.
Same. I signed up at an RGA affiliate after taking some time off for work and other things. Got my knee popped almost immediately, when just a year prior the culture was “no heel hooks!” It was a great school so I took it like a man and sat in the corner until I healed up, then kept going for a while. They taught everything, but eventually I got tired of stripping grips off of my legs all day every day because that’s what was in vogue. Just wasn’t fun any more, switched to muay thai. The owner did come up at RGA NYC and told me that gym’s loaded with absolute killers. Had tons of stories and seems like the place to be if you’re a BJJ person.
Although I was almost always at the main academy, I worked out at affiliates a couple of different times, I wasn’t awful at BJJ but this one scumbag happened to especially good at getting to my heel. I too also got sick of the leg locks. You could tell this scumbag was a complete spaz. I was tapping before he even put the hold on. I never went there again. In hindsight I wish I learned the leg attacks, if someone was trying to shred the ligaments in my knee, I should have just learned it better than they did and destroyed their knee instead.
The only time I ever really disagreed with him or even talked back to John was when we discussed leg locks. They are great for sport BJJ but I don’t think they will ever work quite as well in mma because you are committing both hands to the submission and can’t defend punches to the face. You are most likely losing position as well if you go for a heel hook and fail.
I don’t even watch BJJ anymore but I’d imagine they will be a part of no-gi grappling going forward. I don’t think they will ever be much more than a novelty in mma.
In my opinion, leg locks were just always too dangerous to practice constantly. (the only thing I disagreed with John about) leg locks also seemed to get away from the practicality of BJJ as something to use in a street fight or in mma.
After the leg locks came in to BJJ for good I saw someone with a rash guard that said, “make jiu-jitsu violent again” and I thought to myself, Exactly!!! The rashguard also made me think of Boris. Every time after grappling with Boris I usually had a little bit of a bloody lip or nose and I knew he was better than me and he would dominate me break me by the end of the session by smashing me. I think that’s what jiu-jitsu was about. Not flopping on your ass as soon as the match starts and trying to play footsies.
People are finally getting really good at hiding their heels, and so at the highest levels heel hooks are becoming a lot more uncommon.
They still happen when you catch someone who just hasn’t learned the defenses yet (Jacob Couch x Roberto Jimenez is a good example of this), but most of the times good guys are trying to find ways to threaten the heel hook and heist and pass.
You still see a lot of them at local advanced divisions where the defenses and positional awareness just aren’t there
Keith Krikorian at trials is a notable exception. He heel hooked a lot of really good guys on his way to winning trials.
But the days of the knee destroyer tearing through events of ebi level by heel hooking people really quickly are over.
I train mostly nogi these days, and there isn’t the huge emphasis on leg attacks like there was a few years back. Nowadays it’s more top/positional control, grabbing a choke from the back, etc. Then again, I train at a more MMA centric gym.
This was the moment for me when it jumped the shark:
I’m a huge Ryan Hall fan, and love watching his fights, but his constant spamming of heel hooks and Imanari roll was really cringe. Wasn’t shocked at the outcome.
Gary Tonon recently was KTFO in an MMA event while going for a heel hook on a standing opponent. If someone at that skill level of leg locking can get caught when punches are involved, I think it says something about leg locks in MMA and self-defense.
