He’s known for his knee-shredding heelhooks and taking on all-comers under many different rulesets. So we were surprised when Garry Tonon revealed that preparing to compete under IBJJF rules for the No-Gi World Championships this weekend has actually made him a sharper, better grappler. 

In this interview the New Jersey lightweight tells us which submissions he’s been working on lately and why winning medals isn’t as important for him as you might think. 

FloGrappling: A few week after no-gi PanAms and we’re straight into Worlds. You had a great run in NYC at Pans, winning gold in your division and silver in the absolute. You and your team, particularly your coach John Danaher, are big on analyzing performances and assessing mistakes. What did you get out of that experience? 

Garry Tonon: I thought my performance at PanAms was pretty good. As for mistakes, I didn’t really see a huge number of mistakes, just more opportunities to improve and a greater chance of submitting. I think I needed to come up with some creative ways to enter into leglocks from bottom position, which I have done. Working without the ability to heelhook changes the transitions to attack the legs, so so I’ve just been working more and more on that. 

I haven’t really been correcting so many mistakes from PanAms, as I have been just expanding my game. I’ve been working on a lot of back triangle stuff and just trying to get better. There wasn’t anything that stuck out from PanAms that needed working on. 

You bounced between various rulesets over the last few months: FIVE Grappling, ADCC, sub only and of course IBJJF. You’ve admitted to struggling with IBJJF rules in the past, how do you feel about that now? 

Yeah, I mean I’ve told people many times that I believe that having different rules is a good thing for our sport. I don’t think there’s one right answer as to what are the best rules for submission grappling. I personally like submission only, it leaves me open to do a lot of different things, especially with rules that allow for heel hooks and things, it really expands the opportunities for attacks. I always like those better but I like the different rule sets, it makes you work on different things. 

My kneebars have gotten a lot better since I started working with the IBJJF ruleset this last month or two, so it’s not a terrible thing for my game for me to work on these things. It just makes you sharper in different ways. 

It affects my strategy a lot. It changes a few positions and a few ways you go into attack the legs. It just takes practice and some getting used to do. I haven’t been doing very many heelhooks at all the last two months. I’ve just been adapting to the ruleset and I’ve definitely had an adequate amount of time to prepare. 

As far as feeling one way or another about the rules, I always struggle with it more so than submission only just because it makes it a little tougher sometimes to open up or do the things that I want to do…  But it’s OK, I’ve also improved my guard passing since working with IBJJF rules. So it’s improved things in my game that I wouldn’t have worked on as much as I have. 

As usual I will try my best to find a way to win, if I really try to attack the guy but lose by 2 points or 4 points or something, or even 30 points, there’re things I need to work on but my goals in training and in competition are about finishing the guy, so it won’t be the end of the world for me if I lose by points,. There’ll be many more competitions and many more No-Gi Worlds to do. If I have the opportunity to win by points I will, but I’ll continue to have an attacking style no matter what. 

Are you the kind of guy who is more concerned about medals or performances? Like does being No-Gi World champion mean as much to you as going out there and subbing a bunch of guys and being known as a dangerous grappler? 

I’ve been a World No-Gi champion before – not at black belt yet, I placed third in the absolute at No-Gi Worlds last year, so that’s as close as I’ve gotten at No-Gi Worlds. I mean, it definitely means something, having the title is cool and everything. Me personally, I’ll always be focussed on getting better as a submission grappler and learning how to be dangerous just like you mentioned. Being a threat to my opponents is my primary objective, and I’m going to translate that over into MMA sometime soon in the future and that kind of goes along with my goals. My primary concern is to get better at jiu-jitsu, winning Worlds is important to be but I’m going to keep continuing to attack and that’s just due to my style. 

As you’ve kind of become known as a leglock guy, do you think people have forgotten about your monster rear naked choke or your savage guillotine? Personally I’m hoping to see them get broken out at No-Gi Worlds! 

I think that myself, Eddie [Cummings] and Gordon [Ryan] – all the guys training under John – have become known as leglock guys. But I think it’s just another group of submission holds, you know? We just happen to specialize in it because John has done a great deal of research into it, and it was an under-developed part of jiu-jitsu. That’s why it sticks out and we’re known for it. 

I think it’s a weakness for everybody right now, and everybody’s catching up. It’s been a little easier to submit certain people, so that’s why you’ve seen more leglock submissions. But we’re always focussed on submitting the whole body. I haven’t been working on my guillotines as much lately as I have in the past, I’ve been working more my upper-body submissions: triangles, back-triangles, kimuras, things like that. So I think you’re probably going to see some more of that. I’ve got a lot of different options, I’ve just been working on a lot of different submissions lately. 

I definitely think people forget though, they think ‘oh yeah this guy is just a leglock guy’. As people get better and better at leglocks, you’ll see some other submissions from us. 


Garry Tonon will compete at the No-Gi Worlds this weekend. Sign up to watch exclusively here on FloGrappling.com