New Wave Jiu-Jitsu has just undergone a complete rebrand and one of the world’s best no gi teams will now be known as Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu instead from now on. It’s a pretty big change but it isn’t actually the first time that the same unit of competitors has decided to go by a different name. John Danaher has been their coach and Gordon Ryan has been their top competitor since the very beginning, but the other members of the team have changed as elite grapplers have either joined or left. Starting as the Danaher Death Squad, that was the name they were known by when they were originally training in the legendary blue basement at Renzo Gracie Academy New York City.
From there the team moved to Puerto Rico and that was when relationships began to fracture and Danaher announced that DDS had decided to split up. It took a little while for things to settle but the best grapplers competing under the DDS banner went in two different directions, with many of them creating B-Team Jiu-Jitsu while Danaher and Ryan founded New Wave. They relocated once again and this time made a home in Austin, Texas, although they weren’t able to find an academy of their own and instead starting training out of the local Roka gym while they rebuilt the competition team.
The team left ADCC 2024 with multiple medals and that tournament served as a sign that the rebuilding phase was over, and New Wave had a deep squad of elite competitors once again. Then Ryan announced that the team was finally going to have a space of their own, as they were planning on opening their headquarters at some point in 2025. It was a huge move and Ryan wasted no time in sharing updates of how the lengthy project was going. New Wave have decided to celebrate the new headquarters with a rebrand and have no doubt chosen the name Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu as a nod to Ryan’s nickname; ‘King’.
Gordon Ryan announced the news that New Wave had undergone a rebrand and would now be known as Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
