Tonon also revealed he’ll most likely make his MMA debut in 2018:
“I don’t have a date, but they were asking me when I’d be ready and I think I gave them March, so sometime around March.
This is a brand new sport for me. I don’t really have experience in mixed martial arts. Tonon said. I’m pretty motivated, because I’m going to be locked in a cage with someone who wants to punch and kick my head off. So I better get good fast!”
Tonon also explained we might just live to see bjj in the Olympics:
“I think it might now because it’s possibly going to be backed by the Arab Emirates,” Tonon told The MMA Hour‘s Ariel Helwani when asked if BJJ will ever become an Olympic sport. “And they’ve [the UAE] done quite a bit with the development of jiu-jitsu in their country. It’s like, basically, it’s like the national sport. Their kids are learning it in school, et cetera, so I think they have a great ability to get things done, as opposed to kind of the previous conversation was, ‘Well, let’s get jiu-jitsu in the Olympics’ and it’s just a bunch of Facebook posts. I didn’t really feel like anybody [with] any driving force was behind that. But now I think that it’s possible.”
Tonon added:
” As to whether or not it’s good for the sport it’s good for the sport or whatever the case may be, I can’t really comment yet because I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but I mean I’m always happy to see different rule sets and different promotions take on events. I think that’s what our sport needs more than anything is just growth.”
Tonon also weighed in on the chance of seeing him grappling in future:
“I’m obviously headed more towards MMA now but jiu-jitsu will always be my roots.
That was a big part in negotiating the contract with ONE, I definitely still want to be able to grapple. They are in line with what my wants are. They are open to potentially having other grappling matches like the one I had against Shinya (Aoki). You may even see me grapple there again next year, who knows.”
