Garry Tonon’s transition from elite Jiu-Jitsu competitor to professional MMA fighter has been a successful one — but it didn’t come easy.

While Tonon brought world-class grappling skills to the cage, that only covered a fraction of what MMA demands.
Striking — which plays a massive role in MMA — was entirely new to him. And although his wrestling was decent by Jiu-Jitsu standards, the jump in competition level was steep.

But the biggest challenge wasn’t just the techniques.
It was the training environment:

Some of the first full sparring sessions I had were with (Jake Shields) and it was for, like, I don’t know how long we were training…
I don’t know if it was a week straight, two weeks straight or something like that.

But it was just like I would do three rounds with Jake every day.

Being thrown straight into the fire with a UFC and Strikeforce veteran might seem harsh — but it wasn’t by accident.
Tonon believes his longtime coach John Danaher had something else in mind.

I don’t think John will ever say it, you know come out straight out and say it, but I don’t think John ever really wanted me to do MMA.

I was thinking that he was hoping that I would just consistently stick with grappling.

Tonon gets why.
MMA carries far more risk than grappling — both physically and professionally:

MMA’s risky, man.
You know, I could have gone in there and just, like, embarrassed myself.

Not that I necessarily thought that that’s what he thought was going to happen, but there’s a lot of risk involved.
It’s a tough sport, it’s not easy to make a name for (yourself), and all these things.

He knew it was going to be a difficult thing.

In Tonon’s view, those early rounds with Shields weren’t just hard training.
They were a test:

He knew that I was already doing really well in grappling and it’s like, why mess that up you know?
I think that part of his way of making sure that I was really into this and I really wanted to do it was making the early part of my training very difficult.

So it’s, like, if I didn’t really want to do it, I wasn’t going to stick with it because it was tough to do those training sessions.

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