Garry Tonon is gearing up for his next fight. The bjj standout and mma hopefully recently shed some light on what it’s like to have the infamous coach in his corner. He told sportskeeda.com:

I absolutely believe it makes a difference, maybe not necessarily who is in the corner for the fight because it’s pretty hard to hear whats going on at your corner but it’s really helpful to have John Danaher in there and Tom DeBlass, I have my sparring partner Jon Bianco. But I think the biggest difference is the coaching I have leading up to the fight.

So far people only know that John Danaher is so knowledgeable about Jiu-Jitsu and they know a little bit about his MMA knowledge from him coaching other athletes like Georges St-Pierre (GSP). And now I’ll be the first athlete that John has produced in terms of mixed martial arts where he gets to work with me every day, so it will be a good test for people to see what he can do with me as an athlete in my development time by getting to see him every day.

Normally, with most of his athletes, they don’t get to train with him full time. Guys like GSP, they gotta go back and forth between Montreal and go to places, maybe he gets to train with him once a week during a fight camp or twice a week tops. But he gets to see me every day of the week and is constantly working with me on drills and sparring etc.

Tonon will be fighting the ‘Kerala Krusher’ Rahul Raju next in Manila, Philippines during the ONE: Reign of the Kings event on July 27th ie later today.

Tonon also weighed in on a hot topic of sambo vs bjj:

Which BJJ phenom would you like to fight in MMA? Maia? Ortega? Dillon? Or is it anybody else?

Tonon: In terms of fighting someone who is highly skilled at Jiu-Jitsu, there are definitely lot of guys out there who I would love to test myself against. Honestly, I think It’s kind of interesting to be paired up with strikers more so than any Jiu-Jitsu guys at the current moment because I get to test the new things I am learning.

There is nobody, particularly that I’m hunting after in the jiu-jitsu world or anything like that. I’ve mentioned a few times about the idea of fighting Kron (Kron Gracie). since I haven’t had an opportunity to have that rematch with him and it will be a really cool Mixed martial arts fight. But the other guys have signed up with other organizations and there’s no real point in talking about guys like that.

What do you have to say about the BJJ Vs SAMBO Debate? You are one of the greatest BJJ practitioners to fight in MMA. Will you ever fight Khabib or any high-level Sambo athlete in MMA and establish BJJ’s superiority?

Tonon: Honestly, I don’t really know too much about Sambo, I have never really studied any matches or anything like that. I’ve just seen some combat sambo, the kinds of stuff that show up on Instagram feed or something like that. I don’t really know too much about the martial art. I think, nowadays any grappling martial arts that doesn’t incorporate little bits and pieces from each different martial arts that also does grappling is kind of inefficient at not really keeping up with the times.

I think the important thing is that whatever grappling styles is it that you do, you are incorporating what works, If something works from wrestling, you do that. If something works from Sambo or whatever you want to be that other martial art. I think at this point in human development, with how connected everybody is with social media and everything like that, I think it will be very unlikely that any of these other martial arts didn’t adapt to one another’s skills that are the most efficient for that particular movement.

So, at this point, I don’t think there is much of a reason to debate it. But ultimately you will be debating like the rules of sports when it comes to competition, I don’t really think it makes much sense to debate that unless you are planning to fight somebody with what you learned from this martial arts. I’m sure that I’ll end up fighting someone who learned Sambo, and I don’t necessarily think or claim that Jiu-Jitsu is superior or whatever.

I’m just gonna claim that my grappling is superiority, my submission grappling abilities and that is including any amalgamation of skills from whatever martial arts that people claim Wrestling, Judo, all these different things. I think at this point everybody that’s grappling should be taking whats best. And I’ll go up against, that I’m sure that is famous for Sambo or whatever, so people will think or it shows Jiu-Jitsu’s superiority over Sambo but ultimately it shows my grapplings superiority.