Garry Tonon Is A Free Agent — Now Form A Line, Because Whoever Signs Him Wins The Year

Garry Tonon is a free agent. Stop reading for a second and let that sit, because the implications are bigger than the press release made them sound. The most decorated American submission grappler ever to walk into an MMA cage just hit the open market, and every grappling promotion with a checkbook should be on the phone before the end of the day.

ONE Championship cut Tonon on April 24 along with Magomed Akaev, Stefan Korodi, Amber Kitchen, and Zafer Sayik. Five names off the roster, no replacement, no statement, no PR boilerplate. Just a man with a 9-2 MMA record, eight finishes in thirteen ONE fights, a heel-hook highlight reel that radicalized a generation of leglock people, and his entire prime still in front of him, suddenly available.

If you are running a grappling promotion right now and you are not on a Zoom call about this, what are you doing.

The resume, briefly, because some of you are new

Tonon is a Danaher Death Squad founding member. He was in that room with Gordon Ryan and Eddie Cummings before the modern leglock game had a vocabulary for itself. Five-time Eddie Bravo Invitational champion. ADCC bronze in 2019 at 77kg. Black belt under Tom DeBlass and Ricardo Almeida. He held a featherweight title shot in ONE in March 2022 against Thanh Le, walked into a right hand inside a minute, and that is the kind of thing that happens to fighters who push the pace. It is not a referendum on a career.

The career is what you should be looking at. Eight finishes in thirteen ONE fights. He started his MMA run 6-0 with five finishes. After the Le fight, he came back and won three straight by submission. He is 34. He owns Garry Tonon Jiu Jitsu in East Brunswick, runs his own room, and has more competitive years left than any spreadsheet at ONE seems willing to acknowledge.

His last submission grappling match was a loss to Tye Ruotolo, which is a loss roughly every active sub-grappler on Earth is going to take in the next five years and means precisely nothing about whether he can still compete with the best people in the world. He can. The Aoki heel hook at ONE 54 is still on YouTube, and so are the three subs after Le, and so is every match where he made an opponent's leg an unsolved math problem.

This is not a man on the back nine. This is a free agent.

Who should be calling

UFC BJJ. This is the obvious one and it is the one that should already be happening. Mikey Musumeci is the anchor, William Tackett is on the roster, Cole Abate just signed. The whole sub-promotion is built on the proposition that submission grappling at the highest level deserves a televised home with real money behind it. Tonon walking through the door makes the entire product more legitimate by the time the announcement hits Instagram. Pair him on a card with Tackett — two heel-hook merchants, two finishers, no points to retreat to — and you have a main event that sells itself. Tackett vs. Tonon is a tagline before it is a fight. Make it.

The UFC main roster. Dana White has been grappling-curious for two years now. Tonon at 145 with eight ONE finishes and his game in 2026 is not a project — he is a Fight Night main event waiting for a slot. Whether or not you think the UFC is the right fit for a guy whose ceiling is about how many leglocks he can land per round, the cage is the cage and Dana writes the checks.

CJI 4. The Craig Jones Invitational is the only event in grappling currently writing the kind of checks that turn a one-night tournament into a career-defining payday. Tonon vs. Mason Fowler would print money. Tonon vs. Nick Rodriguez would print more money. Tonon in the bracket with B-Team for a week of pre-event camp footage is the kind of content the entire sport has been begging for. Sign him for the bracket. Pay him to lose. Watch him not lose.

Polaris and the FloGrappling super-fight circuit. High-frequency, lower-press, real money, real cards. Tonon has the resume to anchor an event on either of them tomorrow.

PFL. They keep making noises about a grappling-curious wing. Now would be the time.

The honest answer is all of the above should be calling, and at least three of them will. The math on Tonon's last twelve months is: lost a decision to Shamil Gasanov, sat for nine months, available. The math the rest of the grappling world should be doing is: we just got handed the most decorated American sub-grappler in the sport for the price of whatever ONE was paying him, and ONE was famously not paying anyone enough.

The dream cards now on the table

• Tonon vs. William Tackett, UFC BJJ. Two finishers. Two heel-hook artists. Inevitable.
• Tonon vs. Mikey Musumeci, UFC BJJ. The kingpin against the founding member. Money fight.
• Tonon vs. Kade Ruotolo, anywhere. Settle the family score. The last sub-grappling match Tonon had was a loss to Tye. Run the rematch with the brother and watch the entire community lose its mind.
• Tonon vs. Diogo Reis, ADCC weight. The current sensation against the all-time guy.
• Tonon vs. Roberto Jimenez, any leglock ruleset. Two finishers, two heel-hook artists, zero retreat. Sells itself.

Pick any one of those and you have a card-headlining event before the press release goes out. Pick three and you have the grappling year of the decade.

The community part

For everyone in the gym this week wondering whether this is bad news for sub-grappling: it is the opposite. Bad news is when the most decorated American sub-grappler ever sits on a contract he can't compete out of. Good news is when he hits free agency at 34 with a finishing rate that looks like a typo and his entire pick of where to go next.

The Lion Killer is on the market. The phones should be ringing. We are about to watch a bidding war for the most exciting submission grappler of his generation, and whoever signs him is going to spend the next twelve months selling tickets on the strength of a heel hook he hit on Shinya Aoki nine years ago.

Get the cards out. This is the fun part.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Garry Tonon Parts Ways With ONE Championship After Nearly A Decade — BJJEE
• ONE FC Releases Garry Tonon — BJJDoc (financial context)
• ONE Championship releases five fighters — Bangkok Post
• Garry Tonon — Wikipedia