Gordon Ryan’s girlfriend, Nathalia Santoro, has just become the second woman ever to receive a BJJ brown belt from John Danaher. She has been an avid practitioner of the sport for several years now and has been training among some of the best grapplers on the planet on a daily basis. While Santoro has never decided to attempt to make it to the highest levels of the sport, she has competed on several occasions in the past including shows like Fight 2 Win.
Santoro has been training alongside her boyfriend Gordon Ryan under one of the greatest coaches in the sport, John Danaher, for quite some time. In fact, Santoro actually received her purple belt from Danaher around 18 months ago. She’s been with Danaher and Ryan through thick and thin, from moving the early days with the Death Squad in the blue basement to Puerto Rico and all the way back to Austin, Texas to start New Wave Jiu-Jitsu. Throughout all of that time, Santoro has been training alongside the more competitive members of the team and developing the exact same knowledge-base as the rest of them.
At the moment the team at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu is no doubt working to improve off the back of their performance at the 2022 ADCC World Championships, where Gordon Ryan won the over 99kg division and the superfight against the legendary Andre Galvao. Giancarlo Bodoni won the 88kg division at ADCC 2022 and their newest member, Nicholas Meregali, managed to come away with a bronze medal in the under 99kg division and a silver medal in the absolute division. While that might seem like cause for celebration for most, Danaher’s team are known for training every single day and they will already be hard at work to develop their skills even further moving forward.
Gordon Ryan announced the news of his girlfriend, Nathalia Santoro, receiving her BJJ brown belt from John Danaher in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
