pic by @pizzajitsu
Garry Tonon is embarking on a new journey in his career – he is starting MMA under the ONE Championship banner. Of course the grappling ace also talked about the active rivalry with another notorious grappler – Dillon Danis.
Tonon told mmafighting:
“I have expressed that I wanted to fight him (Danis) and other people like A.J. Agazarm and I put a bunch of attention out there, but it really didn’t get any attention from any American promotions that were really interested in it,” Tonon said. “I kind of put it out there openly and I contacted a couple of people that knew some people and it didn’t really end up working out. But maybe, I don’t know, one day down the line.
“I really want things to work out with ONE, to be honest, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t. I’m very happy with them as of now and I plan on fighting for them for a while. So unless somehow one picks up either of those guys, I don’t see the fight happening. But will there be talk back-and-forth during each of our MMA careers? Probably, I’m sure.”
Danis is also looking to debut over at Bellator in the near future.
However Tonon also talked about what this means for his grappling career:
“I will be able to do grappling matches,” Tonon said. “Obviously, they’re going to be dependent of my fight schedule. I’m not going to take a grappling match a week before my fight or something, and I would never do that to myself, first of all. They (ONE Championship) wouldn’t want that either, there is too much risk of getting hurt. But who knows, maybe they put on another grappling show in their organization and they seem very open to that idea.
“It definitely means things are going to slow down in terms of the number of times I compete in a year,” Tonon added. “Usually, I compete pretty heavily throughout the year. I think this last year I slowed things down towards the end because of ADCC, as I wanted to focus on that. But usually, I would say the year before that, I was competing once or twice a month, which that’s a lot of matches. I certainly won’t be able to do that while I’m fighting.”
