John Danaher is often regarded as one of the greatest BJJ coaches in the world, and he recently shared his thoughts on who he would describe in the same way. He was taking part in an interview with Raphaella Amorim backstage at CJI 2 and she posed the question to him, but it was always going to be a difficult to answer. There are dozens of BJJ coaches all around the world who have developed incredible competitors, spanning across decades of the sport’s history. Although Danaher has enjoyed huge success with both the original Danaher Death Squad and New Wave Jiu-Jitsu, plenty of other coaches have produced just as many elite grapplers.
Danaher says as much himself too, but there was one name who sprang to mind almost immediately for him:
“There’s so many good candidates… I think if you look at just results, I think I don’t identify one person as like a dominant coach. One guy who I’ve always thought was really underrated in terms of coaching ability is Carlson Gracie. I think Carlson Gracie is, in the overall history of the sport, is being undervalued as a coach. He had a tremendous effect on Jiu-Jitsu in the early days and he’s one of the guys who really took Jiu-Jitsu from being a local sport practiced in a certain subset of Rio De Janeiro culture into a much wider sport. He kind’ve democratised the sport and he made a tremendous team in the middle of the 1990s. They did everything; gi, no gi, MMA, they were strong in every aspect. He’s someone I really look up to as a great coach.”
Carlson Gracie comes from a completely different generation and he helped shape the sport as the 21st century arrived, but Danaher also points to another pair of coaches who are far more recent:
”I also think there’s a lineage which culminates with Andre Galvao, but which really starts with Fernando ‘Terere’ (Augusto). I think Terere is always seen as a great athlete but he’s also a great coach, and he had a big effect on a lot of people, and one of them I believe is Andre Galvao… He’s had tremendous success with ATOS. ATOS itself of course is a split-off of other organizations, but you see like a chain of good coaching having effect through that group and they’ve been very, very successful.”
John Danaher finished off his answer by taking a moment to reflect the fact that there are plenty of other BJJ coaches who might be in the running for being the greatest:
“There are many great coaches. All of them are good in their own way. They all have strong points and they all have weak points.”
Raphaella Amorim shared the interview with John Danaher where he names his picks for the greatest BJJ coaches ever in a recent post to her official Instagram account:
