Garry Tonon has just received the second black belt of his martial arts career, in Judo, at the hands of one of the sport’s top competitors, Satoshi Ishii. The two men have been training together for a very long time now, as both men have been training under John Danaher in the various different iterations of his team. Although they come from different combat sports worlds initially, they now have a lot in common after both making the transition to MMA. Tonon was a Jiu-Jitsu competitor before moving in to MMA, while Ishii won a gold medal for Judo in the Olympics shortly before he made the same decision.
Not only have they trained together under the same coach for many years now but, as is common among elite competitors, they’ve obviously shared a lot of knowledge with each other too. Ishii has become famous as one of the most successful Judo competitors to ever put on a pair of gloves; largely down to his ability to make Judo techniques work without a gi and his mastery of techniques outside traditional Judo. Then with Tonon, he’s always been at the very forefront of technical development in the Jiu-Jitsu world and he has better standing grappling than many of his peers.
It’s been a very long time since Tonon has competed in the gi but, much like other members of Danaher’s team, he can be seen training in it fairly often. He’s also been seen executing a few Judo techniques throughout his career as well, and has developed his standing grappling to an even higher level since moving to MMA. Ishii has clearly seen this development over the years and he trained with Tonon yet again, when he dropped in to the new Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu academy to share his Judo skills with some of the team. That’s when he decided to present Tonon with his Judo black belt, more than a decade after he received his Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
Satoshi Ishii shared the news that he had promoted Garry Tonon to black belt in Judo in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
