It’s official, John Danaher has decided to uproot his life and move to Puerto Rico to continue training with and coaching his elite team of grapplers, the Danaher Death Squad. News broke a few days ago that the top two competitors from the squad would be moving to Puerto Rico together, Gordon Ryan and Craig Jones. It’s been well known that Gordon’s younger brother Nicky has been living with him for some time so it made sense when it was revealed that both he and fellow recent Danaher black belt Ethan Crelinsten would be moving to Puerto Rico with them.
However, despite all of his best students leaving the tri-state area for the sunnier shores of Puerto Rico, it never seemed feasible that John Danaher himself would uproot and leave the place that he’d called home for so long. After all, Craig Jones had only recently moved over from Australia and both of the Ryan brothers were used to travelling from New Jersey to train at Renzo Gracie’s New York gym. Danaher on the other hand, he had been a fixture of the blue basement for a quarter of a century. He was part of that gym from the very beginning and had worked his way up to become the head coach, it seemed crazy that he would make such a drastic change so late in his career.
And yet, here we are. Aside from some of the younger training partners and the hobbyist grapplers who no doubt make up the bulk of Renzo Gracie New York, it seems that Puerto Rico will be gaining a virtual carbon copy of the blue basement somewhere. This should be enough to create a new hub of Jiu-Jitsu in the area as it’s likely that plenty of competitors will take the opportunity to travel and train alongside some of the best grapplers on the planet. Danaher announced the move on his official Instagram account in the below post:
