When it comes to submission grappling, there are few competitors with the popularity of Garry Tonon. Over the last 2 years, Tonon has ascended from relative anonymity to being one of the biggest stars in the sport and a winner of the illustrious Eddie Bravo Invitational. Last night, Tonon took to his official Facebook page to make two big announcements. Firstly, Tonon has decided to make the cut to featherweight for this years no-gi Worlds and the second, that he plans to take an MMA fight within the next year.

It's official, I will be attempting to make feather weight for nogi worlds this year. I plan to have an MMA fight... Posted by Garry "The Lion Killer" Tonon on Saturday, 26 September 2015

Prior to Tonon's announcement, his coach, Tom DeBlass spoke about his star pupil's plans to crossover into an MMA career:

"Let's see how athletic he is in his standup. Let's see how coordinated he is with his boxing. Let's see how his wrestling translates from, you know, Jiu-Jitsu to MMA. Nowadays you have to be an athlete in MMA. The days of Jeremy Horn being successful in MMA are no longer. You have to be an athlete, OK? Garry is an athlete but, coordination, all these things make a huge, huge difference. The thing is, in MMA, I don't know what the hell it is, but you'll get some guys that aren't good at Jiu-Jitsu at all - they just find a way to slip out of submissions, and it just gets tough. So, my advice to Garry is get your standup world-class, you know? Get your standup very, very good. Or, be like Demian Maia, know what I mean? Like, flashy stuff in MMA becomes dangerous at a high level, you know? Garry, I think is going maul to through a lot of people at a local level. When you get to a higher level, and you have a style that leaves yourself open, it could be dangerous, you know what I mean? And the thing is, what are we gonna do if you take someone down, you take their back, you almost choke them, and they turn into you, end up in your guard, they hammerfist you five times and they stand up and you gotta stand up all over again and do it all over again? Then, where's your mind at? You know what I mean? So my advice to them is, Garry, Gordon, these guys is, this is not Jiu-Jitsu. There's nothing similar about MMA and Jiu-Jitsu whatsoever. It's a different animal, it's a different beast, you know?" (Transcription via Victor Rodriguez)

Check out Tom DeBlass' full thoughts about Tonon's MMA debut on the Just Roll Podcast. As of right now, Garry Tonon has no opponent set, but when the leg lock specialist does decide to step into the cage he is bound to generate a lot of fan interest.