Firas Zahabi pushed back against Kron Gracie’s recent dismissal of John Danaher – defending his former coach in a discussion on the TriStar Gym YouTube channel.
Zahabi, a black belt under Danaher, didn’t mince words:
John Danaher, in my opinion, I’ve worked with him directly for many years. I’m a black belt under John Danaher.
He is the greatest Jiu-Jitsu coach of all time and arguably the greatest MMA coach of all time.
He grounded that assessment in Danaher’s track record.
In MMA, Danaher played a key role in developing Georges St-Pierre into one of the sport’s most dominant champions, working alongside Zahabi in that process, and also contributed significantly to the training of Chris Weidman and Frankie Edgar, among others throughout his career.
After St-Pierre’s retirement, Danaher shifted his focus entirely to Jiu-Jitsu competition, a move that led to what Zahabi describes as a genuine shift in the sport.
His team, the Danaher Death Squad, changed how leglocks are approached at the highest level:
The man applied his mind on one endeavor and changed the whole face of Jiu-Jitsu…
People started doing Kani Basami from the bottom, inside heel hook, it became a craze, and that was all John Danaher’s fine tuning.
I won’t say he invented it, but he fine tuned it.
Zahabi emphasized that his perspective isn’t secondhand:
I was there, I was live, I was in the practice room when he was doing it.
He was figuring out these leg lock issues from day one.
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