Garry Tonon

As a child, Tonon was identified as having ADHD by his mother, an employee of a non-profit organization for children with special needs.[9] Tonon had his first introduction to grappling when he joined the wrestling team at his school in 5th grade. Tonon continued to wrestle for several more years, through his freshman year of high school. Tonon has credited wrestling & martial arts with helping him to cope with his ADHD, and partially attributes his particular style of grappling to the disorder.[10] He attended Lacey Township High School in Lacey Township, New Jersey, where he later graduated in 2009.[11]

At age 14, a friend decided to bring Tonon to a local jiu-jitsu tournament, which interested Tonon. He soon began taking classes at his friend's jiu-jitsu academy, but lost interest after several months due to the school's focus on mixed martial arts, as opposed to jiu-jitsu. Shortly after leaving that school, Tonon found an advertisement for Tom DeBlass' academy, Ocean County Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and decided to continue his training there. While still attending high school, Tonon would consistently attend two classes per day at DeBlass' academy. DeBlass, noticing Tonon's interest in the sport, began bringing Tonon to Ricardo Almeida's academy for additional training.[12]

In 2008, after about a year of consistent jiu-jitsu training with DeBlass and Almeida, Tonon won his first title at the IBJJF World Championships in the Blue Belt Juvenile Division.[13] After graduating high school in 2009, Tonon began pursuing a degree in exercise science at Rutgers University.[14] While studying at Rutgers, Tonon maintained a rigorous training schedule and continued to compete in both local and international competitions, mostly competing in the gi for the first 5 years of his training, but later beginning to seek out more specialized, no-gi instruction from John Danaher. He was awarded his black belt by Tom DeBlass and Ricardo Almeida in September 2013.[15] One month later, Tonon went on to compete for the first time in the ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championship in Beijing, China, where he had matches with Kron Gracie, Marcus Almeida, Roberto 'Cyborg' Abreu, and other well-known jiu-jitsu competitors.[16][17]

From 2013 to 2017, Tonon went on to compete in numerous jiu-jitsu competitions as a black belt, including the IBJJF World & Pan American Championships, Eddie Bravo Invitational, Metamoris, Grappler's Quest, North American Grappling Association (NAGA), Kasai Grappling, Polaris Pro Grappling, ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championship, and others. His most notable wins include matches against AJ Agazarm,[18] Joao Miyao,[19] Dillon Danis,[20] Ralek Gracie,[21] and Vinny Magalhaes.[22]

• List of current ONE fighters

• "Garry Tonon - BJJ Heroes". BJJ Heroes.
• "ONE Championship 70 highlights: Garry Tonon celebrates pro-debut win with 'The People's Elbow'". 25 March 2018.
• Sherdog.com. "Garry". Sherdog.
• "Garry Tonon Stuns The World With TKO Win - ONE Championship". ONE Championship.
• "ADCC NEWS". ADCC NEWS.