From master of the mats to king of the cage: Garry Tonon plots his path to ONE Championship glory

Garry Tonon has forged a well-earned reputation on the mats as one of the world’s elite grapplers while a member of the notorious “Danaher Death Squad,” but the latest chapter of the New Jersey native’s martial arts career has seen “The Lion Killer” turn his hand to MMA. Now, five fights, five wins and five finishes into his MMA career with Asian promotion ONE Championship, he says the time is right to fight for a title.

Tonon (5-0) recently took to social media to call for a shot at ONE featherweight champion Martin Nguyen (13-3) and, during an extended chat with MMA Junkie, the grappling ace-turned-MMA contender says he’s hopeful that the matchup can be made for his next appearance.

“Basically, I have it fairly concretely confirmed that I’ll be fighting sometime in April, but no opponent is confirmed,” he said. “Nobody has said anything to me about anything else other than, ‘Hey, are you interested in a title shot?’ So if I am going to end up fighting somebody else, like they say is a possibility, they haven’t shot any names my way. So, to me, that makes it lean towards, ‘Hey, we’re probably going to be doing this title fight.’

“Martin certainly didn’t respond in a way that indicated to me that he wasn’t interested, or that he was going to deny the fight if they offered it to him. So I think that if everything gets set in motion the right way and everything works out, nobody gets hurt or anything like that, we should be looking at a title fight in April sometime.”

That timeline would put Tonon on a collision course with Nguyen at either ONE Infinity 1 in Jakarta on April 10, or “ONE Championship 111: Kings & Queens” in Kuala Lumpur the following weekend, and would give Tonon the opportunity to capture a major title in only his sixth professional MMA fight. It’s been a rapid rise for the 28-year-old, who has been building his MMA skills under the tutelage of head coach John Danaher at Renzo Gracie Academy in New York.

New sport, new skills

Tonon raised eyebrows on his ONE Championship debut when, rather than going to his grappling against opponent Richard Corminal, he stood and traded, scoring an eye-catching first-round TKO finish. For a man making his professional MMA debut, it was a nerve-shredding experience, but he said he was glad he took the unfamiliar path to victory, despite the risks.

“It was really exciting for me; I was glad I was able to pull that off,” he admitted. “It’s not like that was 100 percent guaranteed. Those skills I was working on were brand new.

“Man, there were a lot of elements going into that first fight that made that an especially mentally shaky thing for me, because there were so many unknowns, there were so many questions. I’d never even competed under a ruleset like that before, where you’re allowed to do so many different things. So would the smart move probably have been to use the skills I was already fairly confident in? Probably, but I don’t know, man. I get so excited, honestly, by the new things that I am learning at any given point in time, I often will try to carry them over into whatever competition I’m doing, even if they’re 100 percent not perfect yet. I want to try it out in a real scenario.”

The risk paid off for Tonon, but he said that he is confident that if things hadn’t gone so well in his initial striking exchanges, he would have had the in-fight smarts to switch gears and go back to his bread and butter on the mats to secure the victory.

“If something had happened in that fight that made me say to myself, ‘All right, you’re in more danger than you thought you were in. These skills that you’re trying are not 100 percent ready yet. You need to fall back on what you’re good at,’ I think I would have,” Tonon said. “I don’t think I would have been stupid enough to get knocked down a bunch of times and just keep trying to stay stand up and risk getting knocked out and lose the fight. But at the same time, I think it was worthwhile for me to at least give it a shot. That’s what I did, and it ended up working really well.”

Making the transition

Tonon’s victorious MMA debut showed that not only was he ready for the fray, but he was determined to make sure he wasn’t just a one-trick pony, a grappler competing under an MMA ruleset. But he admitted that broadening his skillset from being a pure grappler to a fully-fledged mixed martial artist has been a tough task.

“It’s been pretty difficult, especially at the beginning,” he explained. “It’s very hard to go from feeling like you’ve gotten really good at something, then transitioning to a new skill where you don’t feel that way. Of course jiu-jitsu plays an integral role in mixed martial arts, but to say that it’s the same thing is insane – it’s obviously not. It was definitely a difficult transition.

“There’s a lot of skills, things like shootboxing, fence wrestling and things, that didn’t 100 percent come naturally. I had to learn a lot of new information, I had to practice a lot and create new habits. I had to completely change the way I think of even the grappling aspect of things, because your goals are a little bit different compared to when you’re in a jiu-jitsu match. There are different things to think about, like getting punched in the face, for instance! It’s been a fun ride.”

Tonon explained that one of the most fun aspects of switching to MMA has been a return to the problem-solving days of his earlier years learning his trade in jiu-jitsu, as he has gone from an elite-level grappler to a developing mixed martial artist.

“It’s kindof cool to all of a sudden be able to tackle a bunch of new problems,” he said. “Every day I go into the gym and I struggle with something, and there’s something new to overcome and something new to learn in pursuit of that. The more you train, the more you cover all of those bases and then, almost towards the end, those problems become a little bit smaller, they become a little bit easier to figure out. It’s more of a sharpening after a while, rather than building an entirely new knife. Doing mixed martial arts and having no background whatsoever other than the grappling aspect was kind of like building an entirely new knife. It’s a little bit more exciting than just the sharpening aspect.

“As far as the transition’s concerned, it was definitely very disorientating at first, a lot of hardship. But the more I do it, the more comfortable it gets, and I’m kind of in a phase now where I’m probably going to be happiest about my training, because I have so much to learn, but I have enough prerequisite skills now in mixed martial arts to keep myself safe. I’m not going to have as many days where I go into the gym and just get pummeled to death where I can’t defend myself like I did when I first started. But I’m not at the point where I know so much that it’s like, ‘Ah yeah, I’m just sharpening some skills,’ and there’s not so much to learn.”

Eyes on the prize

Now blessed with the skillset he believes can take him to the ONE featherweight title, Tonon has respectfully called for a shot at the reigning champion Nguyen, who won the featherweight and lightweight titles in back-to-back fights in 2017 to become ONE’s first “champ-champ.” In his next fight, the Australian nearly went one better and became a simultaneous three-division champ, but narrowly missed out after finding himself on the wrong end of a split decision to then-bantamweight champ Bibiano Fernandes in 2018.

Tonon said he would normally expect to have to go through a top contender before facing Nguyen, but his unique position within the ONE featherweight division might mean handing him a title shot now makes more sense for the promotion.

“The next opponent I’m going to fight, even if it wasn’t for the title, it’s going to be somebody that’s either fought for the title before, or is just about to do it,” he said. “And fighting somebody like me, who’s undefeated, who brings a lot of question marks to the table, I don’t think it’s a smart fight for a lot of these guys and I honestly can’t blame them for being a little hesitant to go, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll take that Garry Tonon fight,’ because there’s a little less to gain and a little bit more to risk now for these guys.

“But as far as the titleholder’s concerned, Martin, I would say he probably has to look at what I’m doing and say, ‘All right, it’s inevitable. I’m going to have to fight this guy sometime in the near future. Whether it’s tomorrow or two years from now, I’m going to be fighting this guy. He’s getting better, it’s quite clear he is developing his skills. If I fight him two years from now, or a year from now, it’s only going to be harder than it would be if I fought him right now.’ So I’m thinking to myself I might have a better chance of calling out the titleholder than I do somebody that’s underneath him who’s a contender for the title, because he’ll look at it as an opportunity to beat me early. I’m willing to risk that, because I’m very confident in what I do and I work really really hard. So hopefully that works out for me.”

The championship test

Tonon acknowledges that his opponent has much more top-level experience in MMA than he does, but says that he’s kept close tabs on Nguyen’s career ever since joining ONE Championship in the knowledge that their paths would have to cross before he achieves his goal of becoming a champion. He knows he has a tough test on his hands.

“If things went his way (in the Fernandes fight), we’re looking at a three-division champion. We’re dealing with a really tough dude here. That’s a really hard thing to do,” he said. “I think he has done a whole lot in this sport and in this organization and really proved himself. Anybody that doesn’t acknowledge that this is a really difficult contest for me is crazy. They just didn’t do their research if that’s the case.

“I’ve been watching him my entire career. There are some athletes in mixed martial arts where you can point to a direct hole and you can say, ‘Hey, that guy’s just not really very good in that particular area.’ I really would have a tough time saying that about Martin. He’s been successful from everywhere. I will say this, though. In his fights he seems very fallible. It’s not that invincibility you see from a Khabib (Nurmagomedov), for example. I don’t see the same type of qualities in Martin from that sense. I see a really tough dude who’s overcome a lot of hardships in a lot of different areas.”

That observation gives Tonon the confidence to think that he can plot a route to victory against “The Situ-Asian,” and he says that he’d relish the chance to share the cage with the Australian and throw himself into the toughest test of his martial arts career.

“There’s going to be opportunities to win in many different areas. It’s a question of whether or not I’m able to execute when I have those opportunities during the fight, and I really think I’m going to be able to do that,” he said. “I’m prepared in a lot of different dimensions of mixed martial arts, and I’m prepared to take advantage of those opportunities. We’ll see on fight night.

“I would like to believe inside three rounds that I’m either able to get a submission or a TKO. I haven’t been known to knock anybody out cold on the feet yet. I believe I could do it, but I have no proof of that yet. So I’ll say I’ll get a submission or TKO inside three rounds. There’s a lot of question marks for me, but that’s what I would say.”