Absolute Masterclass: Tonon vs Palhares

Note: I like to draw my own diagrams for these articles, but they were coming out a little unclear for such a grappling heavy piece. To speed up the process and get more out this month I have used stills from the matches instead this time around.

The cast of Lloyd Irvin’s BJJ Kumite was a remarkable one. When it took place in 2012 the internet show was an advertisement for Irvin’s brown belt phenomenon, Keenan Cornelius and by extension Irvin himself. The format of the show was a round robin of gi and no gi matches, held in Irvin’s academy with no audience and no time limits. Up and comers like Sean Roberts, Seph Smith and AJ Agazarm all grappled in the Kumite and went on to become successful black belt competitors.

Garry Tonon—one of the smallest men to make the cut—was initially hesitant to sign up for the competition because of the many strings that Irvin had attached to it. These included having to pay your own travel and board, not being allowed to wear sponsors, and negligible prize money for such a gruelling schedule of competition. The initial plan was to reward the winner of the tournament with a match against Keenan Cornelius and this also rubbed Tonon the wrong way as he felt the competitors would be studied throughout the tournament while Cornelius would not have to show his hand. Writing in Gracie Magazine a few weeks removed from the tournament’s end, Tonon stated that one of the key reasons he still applied for and competed in the Kumite was that “I had never gotten a chance to compete in a high profile no time limit tournament and having rarely been submitted in competition I thought is was a great format for me.”

By 2016 Garry Tonon was on the crest of a wave. He was the right man, in the right place, at the right time. Metamoris had shown that there was a market for submission only grappling, and the Eddie Bravo Invitational demonstrated that fans wanted to see no-gi matches. In EBI’s tournament structure, Tonon excelled. He ran the table at EBI 1, 3, 6, 9 and 13—in three different weight classes—and his sole defeat in the EBI format came against Yuri Simoes in the absolute weight class. Tonon wasn’t just winning, he was submitting almost everyone he locked grips with. Between his back takes, his wicked guillotine choke and his ability to escape almost any bad position imaginable and immediately get on the offensive again, Tonon seemed like the total package. But what really tied it together was the leg attacks.

Tonon was part of a team of no gi athletes who trained under John Danaher at Renzo Gracie’s academy in Manhattan, New York. Between Danaher’s instruction and the specialist knowledge of Eddie Cummings, the team had become exceptional at attacking heel hooks. Where Cummings was a marvel with his leg attacks, Tonon seemed like the better rounded grappler, but both ran through the early Eddie Bravo Invitationals almost entirely with heel hooks. From 2014 onwards the great debate in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was whether the Danaher team’s leg entanglements could revolutionize the sport of no gi grappling, or if they would be stumped against truly elite top players.

This perception of being a gimmicky leg locker wasn’t helped by Tonon’s stumbles on the biggest stages. Tonon was as consistent as a metronome until ADCC rolled around. Abu Dhabi Combat Club is the most prestigious prize in no gi grappling and the tournament takes place every two years with continental qualifiers deciding half the places and invitations being given out for the others. Tonon’s stock soared in 2013 when he gave spectacular showings in losing efforts against Kron Gracie and Marcus ‘Buchecha’ Almeida—the latter of whom outweighed Tonon by the best part of a hundred pounds. In the two years between the ADCC 2013 and ADCC 2015 tournaments, Tonon took on all comers and never lost a match. Then in ADCC 2015 he went out of his division in the first round in a lopsided points loss to the great Lucas Lepri. That was it for another two years: Tonon could still claim to be the most exciting grappler in the world, but he hadn’t put it together for the one that mattered most.

With the chance to fulfill his ultimate goal lost for another two years, Garry Tonon continued picking up victories in no gi tournaments and superfights. Tonon had already competed twice for a young British grappling promotion called Polaris when he signed a match against Rousimar Palhares in 2016. It would become his masterpiece.

Torquinho

Rousimar Palhares was a terrifying presence. Not just among professional grapplers—the very best MMA fighters in the world willingly signed up to risk their brain matter without a second thought but approached a fight with Palhares as they would an appointment at the gallows. No one else in the sport of professional fist fighting had that kind of reputation. Palhares was capable of ruining your life in an instant and with his reputation for holding leg locks beyond the submission, it seemed more a case of “would” than “could”.

Palhares gave up height and reach to everyone he fought because he was so thickly muscled, and he regularly displayed his strength by throwing respected veterans through the air as if they were stuffed with sawdust. If Palhares got on a leg, very few fighters could escape before he did them permanent damage. In the course of his run in the UFC, there were multiple occasions when Palhares refused to release a hold after the referee had called the fight, and he received suspensions for doing this against Tomasz Drwal, Mike Pierce and Jake Shields through the course of his career. In fact, when Palhares did this against Mike Pierce—immediately after returning from an unrelated drug suspension—the UFC decided he was too much trouble in spite of his compelling fighting style and let him go.

While Palhares was a great submission artist in mixed martial arts, he had never achieved much at the highest levels in pure grappling before his UFC run. When he began fighting it hadn’t made much sense to try: he needed money, not medals. Yet when he received an invite to ADCC 2011, Palhares tore through the field.

Attacking Legs

The heel hook is one of the most dangerous positions in fighting because it can cause enormous damage to the knee ligaments over a relatively short range of motion. In that sense it can be a giant killing move— for instance, Marcelo Garcia defeated the enormous Ricco Rodriguez with a heel hook at ADCC 2003. The leg lock game was rather poorly explored for a long time so a few leg lock specialists popped up, but then they would lose the knee line in a key match or fight and get smashed on the bottom. For the most part the leg attack game was about entries and finishes, and as with much of Palhares’ game it was hard to decide whether Palhares’ entries were cunning or brute strength.

Garry Tonon had become famous for espousing the leg locking philosophy of John Danaher. Danaher’s system was inspired and heavily influenced by a number of leg attack specialists in MMA, including Palhares himself. The “Danaher Death Squad” came to be known primarily for the inside heel hook from the saddle position. The saddle / honey hole / inside sankaku is a position where both feet are to the inside of the opponent’s trapped leg. Another way of looking at it is like a kneebar attempt where the attacker has turned to face his opponent.

Fig. 1

Rousimar Palhares finished most of his opponents with an outside heel hook—turning the foot inwards—and often did this from a position Danaher’s team called “outside ashi.” In outside ashi, both of the attacker’s feet are on the outside of the opponent’s body. Outside ashi is seen as a somewhat limited position in the leg lock game: the outside heel hook is the only attack you can effectively initiate from there and if the opponent gets his weight onto his feet and stands up he can often attack the back or hit a leg drag to begin smashing down on the leg locker from top position. In fact this position is also sometimes called the “uneven 50/50” and was the favourite passing position of the Miyao brothers for a good length of time. But through his MMA career and ADCC run, this was where Palhares made his money. In Figure 2, Palhares attacks Lucio Linares from the outside ashi. In (a) he is digging for the heel, and once he finds it with the crook of his elbow he is able to turn back towards the ceiling to attack the heel hook (b).

Fig. 2

When Palhares’ opponents turned with the pressure of the heel hook, he would straighten his body out and hip through into a knee bar. This combination finished David Avellan, Dave Branch and Jon Fitch among others. Figure 3 shows how Palhares would often attack a basic outside heel hook by reaping the opponent’s knee inwards while hooking into the crotch with the other leg (a). Traditionally, the inside leg—in this instance Palhares’ right leg—will hook behind the opponent’s far knee to try to halt them as they turn with the heel hook. Palhares would instead allow his opponent to roll, freeing his right foot and getting both feet to the outside position as he did so (b) and then turn with the opponent and extend his hips into the kneebar (c). If he could not get pressure on the kneebar or the opponent somehow squirmed their knee to a different angle, Palhares would finish with the outside heel hook from outside ashi.

Fig. 3

In spite of Palhares’ preference for the outside ashi position, he still needed to get inside of the opponent’s legs to initiate. For Garry Tonon, this meant that keeping inside position with his own feet was of the utmost importance. Unless he was doing something clever, there was no sense giving Palhares the chance to shoot his legs through for an entry. Technique is the most efficient application of strength and Palhares was so strong there weren’t likely to be any second chances for Tonon if he started giving up positions of mechanical advantage to the Brazilian.

One of the reasons that the Danaher team so often sat to guard was that it was a great way to ensure inside position with both feet. The Jiu Jitsu meta game also favoured standing guard passes for speed and mobility—and entangling legs is much easier if the opponent is standing up on them. The problems the Danaher team ran into tended to be with low passing, where the top man stayed on his knees and kept his feet under his buttocks. On the same card that Tonon met Palhares, his teammate Eddie Cummings was handled by Augusto Mendes, who stayed low until Cummings was breathing heavy and then began attacking him as he slowed down.

Palhares himself was well aware of the importance of inside foot position. Rafael Lovato Jr. was perhaps the best grappler Palhares had beaten in his brief ADCC run and when Lovato had sat to play butterfly guard Palhares dropped to his knees and became completely immovable. Any time Lovato got a handle, Palhares would slap his grips off and kneel back down in front of Lovato. The moment that Palhares found himself in a knee shield half guard (a)—where one of Lovato’s feet was outside of Palhares’—he jumped into a leg reap (b) and sent Lovato turning away into the outside ashi sequence (c).

Fig. 4

Another accomplished no gi specialist, David Avellan managed to pull Palhares into his closed guard and Palhares seemed to completely disregard any threat Avellan could pose from there. Palhares stuck his hand down through Avellan’s guard and offered him the triangle choke, passing to side control when Avellan went for it. Avellan turtled and tried to come up onto a single leg takedown attempt. Palhares simply grabbed Avellan’s nearest leg, lifted him up by it, and sat into his leg reap again.

Fig. 5

Avellan rolled off the mats while being caught completely dead to rights, but insisted on fighting from a restart in the heel hook in the middle of the mat. The moment the referee said “go” Palhares torqued the heel, Avellan rolled, and Palhares drove his hips straight to invert Avellan’s knee joint and garner a bone-chilling scream.

The Fight

Getting Rousimar Palhares off his feet was always going to be a hard ask for Tonon, so guard play was going to be a must. Tonon began by pulling guard off a high crotch entry. Reaching across with his right hand to the inside of Palhares’ right knee (b), Tonon baseball slid in (c) and underneath Palhares, entering a leg entanglement at the very beginning of the match.

Fig. 6

Where other opponents had been caught by surprise, Tonon was unable to flow through his leg entanglement fast enough to finish a quick heel hook against Palhares. As Tonon consolidated his guard off the failed leg attack, the match found the shape it would take for the next fifteen minutes: Tonon playing guard and Palhares trying to work from the top. Tonon had always been a difficult man to pass guard against, and recovered guard excellently. Of particular note was Tonon’s half guard, which was a many headed snake.

Figure 7 shows the outside hook half guard that Tonon often used through his career. Most common variations of the half guard use the bottom leg to contain the opponent’s trapped leg, and the top leg to keep distance—whether that is a high knee shield, a Z guard, or a butterfly half guard. Tonon often used a half guard where he removed the top knee from its blocking role, and instead hooked his top foot over his opponent’s trapped leg from the outside (a). From here Tonon would often try to sit up into his opponent to attack octopus back takes and kimuras. In fact, Tonon swept Buchecha—the best heavyweight in the world at the time—with a surprise kimura from this form of guard. Tonon also made excellent use of Eddie Bravo’s “lockdown” style of half guard from this outside hook.

Fig. 7

Against Palhares, Tonon used this position to transition to a butterfly half guard in order to keep his feet inside of Palhares’ and avoid the disaster that befell Rafael Lovato from the knee shield half guard. From his outside hook half guard, Tonon would get two hands on the wrist of what would be Palhares’ cross-face and stiff arm it away (b). Tonon would often try to use his outside hook to pull at the calf and ankle to torque the knee out and annoy his opponent, but Palhares began stepping his trapped leg up anyway—perhaps preparing to jump into a leg reap. When Palhares did this (b) Tonon would whip his outside hook to the inside of Palhares’ thigh and create a butterfly hook (c). Early in the match Tonon was able to surprise Palhares and elevate him into a leg entanglement from this transition.

But that was the sticking point of the match up: Tonon could keep inside position religiously, but for the most part Palhares was rooted to the ground and Tonon wasn’t going to be able to lift his butt off his heels to enter on the legs. Palhares had spent several minutes on top of Lovato’s butterfly guard without ever being moved against his will. Tonon had to do something clever to be able to reliably attack Palhares’ legs, and so he began using the technical stand up.

The technical stand up is such a fundamental technique in jiu jitsu that you are likely to learn it at the very beginning of your first class. One hand goes to the floor, you sit to that same hip, the opposite foot bases on the floor, and you swing yourself up to standing.

Fig. 8

Its roots are in self defence—standing up from the floor when you have been knocked off your feet. The way that members of the Danaher Death Squad used the technical stand up was to encourage engagement on the bottom. It is difficult to sweep or submit someone who sits back on their knees in front of your guard. By threatening to stand up, a guard player encourages his opponent to push him back down to the ground. A great case study is Gordon Ryan, who regularly performs a technical stand up to his knee. The opponent will do one of three things: stay still, push in, or stand up with Ryan. If they stay still, he snaps their head down into a guillotine or front headlock and can begin attacking. If they push in (the most common reaction), he can fall back and use their momentum to butterfly sweep them. If they stand up, he will slide back into the opponent on his buttocks and entangle their legs in the pursuit of heel hooks.

The way that Tonon used his technical stand up was a little different to Ryan. Gripping a collar tie or a cross grip on Palhares’ wrist, Tonon would plant his butterfly hooking foot on the mat squarely in front of Palhares’ crotch—his knee serving as a barrier against Palhares’ chest and preventing a leg entanglement. From there Tonon would plant his other hand to the floor and stand up to his knee, basing wide, before rising all the way to his feet. The point of this was to draw Palhares onto a leg and to attack him from there.

Fig. 9

Back to the Butterfly

Garry Tonon’s ambitions of attacking Palhares as he tried to wrestle the fight back to the mat were stifled momentarily, as the first time Tonon stood up, Palhares grabbed a hold of Tonon’s leg and head and quite literally flipped him through the air. However, Tonon stuck to it and each time Palhares sat on his own heels in front of Tonon, Tonon would begin the stand up and force Palhares to work. On subsequent attempts, Tonon was cautious to keep Palhares’ arm off the back of his head so that he couldn’t be cartwheeled over. One interesting counter from Tonon was to attempt to underhook Palhares’ far arm and then sit (or be bundled) back down to the butterfly guard. This would mean he had taken a dominant grip for operating from the butterfly guard that Palhares would have seen coming ahead of time on the mat.

From the head and arm grip in butterfly guard, Tonon was able to threaten a simple kick-through triangle. The same kind that Nicky Ryan and Gordon Ryan have had enormous success with. This is a case of placing the underhook side foot on the opponent’s hip to create space, putting the other foot into their free biceps, and then shooting the feet through to threaten the triangle. Unfortunately finishing the lock behind the knee for the choke on a man built like a tree stump proved impossible, but there was a flash of concern in Palhares. More effective for Tonon was using the head and arm control to flank Palhares, sneaking out to his side and finally taking Palhares’ back. And the more Tonon played with the fight vertically—standing up and sitting down in front of Palhares—the more mistakes Palhares made on the mat, allowed Tonon to get dominant grips even while sitting on his butt.

By punching his underhook in while he was standing up as in Figure 10, Tonon could use Palhares’ momentum if he drove Tonon back down. In one instance Tonon took the underhook, Palhares steamed in to return him to the mat (b), and Tonon rocked back to a butterfly guard, elevating Palhares overhead (d) and inverting into a belly down footlock attack (f). This is the point of the technical stand up for both Tonon and Ryan—rather than straining to lift a stubborn opponent with a butterfly sweep from your rump, you are instead falling back into a low amplitude sacrifice throw with their weight moving onto you.

Fig. 10

Attacking the Kneeling Opponent

Assuming his foe didn’t wildly bull rush him back to the mat, Garry Tonon had a number of interesting attacks or counter attacks based around his technical stand up position. There exist over a dozen ways to enter on a leg entanglement and Tonon used every one, but if he had a tokui-waza it was the Viktor Roll. A classic sambo technique, you will most commonly see this used as a last ditch effort to roll through on a knee bar when the opponent has a back body lock. Pancrase was full of such attempts, and the great Volk Han showed many interesting variations through pro wrestling and early MMA matches in RINGS.

Tonon adored this technique so much that he would often invite an underhook on the feet in order to take his overhook and turn away from the opponent into the roll. In fact in 2018, after transitioning to mixed martial arts competition, Tonon used the Viktor Roll to enter the saddle against Rahul Raju, when Raju had an underhook and was wall walking up the fence.

Figure 11 shows this Viktor Roll. Tonon’s opponent has an underhook and is building up along the fence. Tonon switches his overhook to the back of Raju’s head and reaches between his own legs and behind Raju’s left leg (b). Tonon looks into his opponent and rolls over his shoulders, coming up on a kneebar position (f). From here Tonon would turn his upper body and hip towards the opponent to attack the inside heel hook from the saddle.

Fig. 11

Many of the crafty grapplers Tonon faced eschewed tackling him back to the mat and began to reach around him with a tight waist: looking to move around to his back. Figure 12 shows Tonon performing a technical stand up in front of Gilbert Burns. When Burns reaches around Tonon’s back (b), Tonon throws his overhook in with his right hand (c), forestalling the back take. As Burns begins coming up to his feet, his left leg is perfectly placed between Tonon’s for the Viktor roll (d).

Fig. 12

Tonon was also very solid with uchi-mata and harai-goshi throws off the overhook. When Burns took too long getting off his knees, Tonon would use his whizzer to jump into a hanging triangle choke. Notice in Figure 13 that Tonon comes off his knees before Burns (b) and throws his right leg high across Burns’ back (c), allowing Tonon to swing on him as he bases on his left hand and turns his hips up to attack a triangle (d).

Fig. 13

Palhares, however, was a ball and chain. He held Tonon but was reluctant to reach or to get to his feet. When Palhares grabbed around Tonon’s near leg, Tonon was able to reach over Palhares’ head and begin looking for the kimura grip on the far side—hoping to set up kimura trap sequences. Where Tonon had the most success, however, was by standing all the way up—getting his chest higher than Palhares’ head. From there Tonon would turn his near knee away from Palhares, whip it out of Palhares’ control (c) and square up to snap Palhares down into a front headlock (d).

Fig. 14

Where Tonon loved to play off the overhook in the standing position because it put him in position to attack the near leg with Viktor rolls he liked to snap opponents down into a front headlock with the shallow underhook underneath his opponent’s armpit (d).

In wrestling it is illegal to encircle the head with locked hands without the opponent’s arm being inside of the encirclement—a rule likely intended to prevent sneaky choking from the position and to protect the necks of young athletes. While Tonon’s form of front headlock with the underhook and a chin strap grip isn’t an encirclement, most front headlocks in wrestling are intended to facilitate a go-behind. So in wrestling the tendency is to include the arm and try to draw the elbow forward to a position where it is ineffective at preventing the front headlocker from running around the side.

With the underhook front headlock, Tonon could wiggle his chin strap grip to get his wrist under the opponent’s chin, inching his choking hand towards the underhooking hand. Were he in a front headlock around the opponent’s arm, Tonon would have to attack an arm in guillotine or cover a good amount of distance to try and get his assisting hand inside of his chest and linked with his choking hand. From the underhook front headlock, Tonon’s underhooking hand had less than six inches to travel from under the opponent’s armpit to link with Tonon’s choking hand between his chest and his opponent’s.

In the course of the match, Tonon was able to turn Palhares over with guillotine attempts out of this snap down off the technical stand up. Even when Tonon took top position he was conscious of the danger Palhares posed. While attacking with a head and arm grip from the top, Tonon needed to get across to Palhares’ other side. While usually accomplished by mounting and dismounting, Tonon mounted to something of a “butterfly mount” with his feet firmly in inside position on Palhares. The Danaher Death Squad had caught numerous heel hooks by kipping their knees to inside position from the underside of mount, and they rarely had the kind of strength advantage that Palhares had over Tonon.

Fig. 15

Tonon attacked Palhares for fifteen minutes and managed to achieve that trickiest of feets in grappling: he pushed a pace from the bottom. Rafael Lovato hadn’t been able to make Palhares commit himself from the top and was repeatedly stifled at step one as he tried to get a grip or apply an arm drag. Tonon, by getting his feet to the inside and standing up in front of Palhares, forced Palhares to act and react for the full match. The final exchange of the match saw Tonon take top position in Palhares’ knee shield half guard, and this time it was Tonon who hopped up and attacked the knee shield with Palhares’ favourite heel hook. Palhares fought off the submission attempt and the bout was ruled a draw, but there was seldom a moment where Palhares could have been considered on the attack or getting the better of the smaller man.

Vindication

The Palhares match helped Garry Tonon’s popularity enormously. Palhares was well known in the MMA world as both a mad man and one of the sport’s most dangerous grapplers. The idea of him fighting a much smaller man promised the possibility of a car crash. MMA fans who would normally pay no gi grappling no mind tuned in to watch Tonon not only give a masterclass, but an aggressive, exciting one. After the bout, Tonon continued as the most reliable attraction in no gi grappling, and at the next Polaris event he took a match against the UFC’s Gilbert ‘Durinho’ Burns. Burns was a multiple time no gi world champion, a world champion in the gi, and had got the bronze at ADCC in 2015. He also had some weight on Tonon and fought at welterweight in the UFC where Tonon would go on to fight at featherweight in his MMA career.

Burns also tried to pass low, going to his knees in Tonon’s guard. Figure 16 shows Burns blocking Tonon’s Viktor roll with his right arm behind Tonon’s right knee. Tonon, showing even more creativity, released his overhook and put his hand to the mat (b), before turning into Burns and catching the high crotch grip on the inside of Burns’ far leg (c). From here Tonon baseball slides into the leg entanglement just as he did at the very beginning of the Palhares match.

Fig. 16

Burns was a far more competent guard passer than Palhares and consequently was able to get to dominant positions on Tonon. Each time Durinho got to side control, Tonon would turn away and come up into his overhook stand up again. It was off one such escape that Tonon rolled through and sent Burns onto his hands as he locked up the saddle and finished the inside heel hook.

When ADCC 2017 rolled around, Tonon was thought to be coming into his own. While Tonon’s teammate and protege, Gordon Ryan excelled and medalled in two weight classes, Tonon hit a wall against the eventual winner of his weightclass, JT Torres. In the bronze medal match Tonon lost to Vagner Rocha. After that Tonon signed a deal with ONE Championship and began pursuing an MMA career: leaving the sub-sport he had helped to build behind him.

A strange twist of fate saw Tonon enter ADCC 2019 at the last minute after ONE Championship was unable to offer him a fight. Having been offered an invite to ADCC in Anaheim a few months earlier, Tonon asked if he could still take part and was given the green light. In the course of that tournament Tonon put on barnburner against Rafael Canuto—chasing down sweep singles off his high crotch entry and attacking Canuto for fifteen minutes solid. Tonon fought his way to the semi-final and this time secured a bronze medal—finally an ADCC medal after being the face of no gi grappling for so long. The next day Tonon entered the absolute class, where his last minute match with Buchecha had made him famous. On the biggest stage in the sport, Tonon confirmed once again that he was the most exciting and creative man in grappling by hitting a kani-basami takedown into heel hook to finish Edwin Najmi, seconds into their bout.

Garry Tonon’s future is uncertain, but in his bout with Rousimar Palhares he was able to take the guard and make it fit for purpose once more.