How Garry Tonon Counters A Back Escape

By Corey Kuropas, January 25, 2017

Garry Tonon is a straight up no gi star. Tonon, who is competing this Sunday at the third edition of Submission Underground has proven time and time again that the Danaher Death Squad’s methods are painfully effective. Tonon has won EBI titles at lightweight, welterweight and even light heavyweight. Known for his varied leg attacks and unstoppable back attack game, Garry has quite the unique style of Jiu Jitsu. One of Garry’s awesome techniques to stop a back escape is pretty interesting. To stop a successful escape, he will hit a beautiful guillotine choke. Let’s see how Garry uses the guillotine to prevent an escape…

When you are on your opponent’s back, you start your offense by attacking with a rear naked choke. But the guy you are facing is not a chump, so as you go for the choke, he controls your wrist and rotates his head under and out. This way he has now escaped the choke completely and now can start to work on escaping the back position. Once your arm is rotated around, you’ll need to make a connection with that hand to your same side knee. Post your free hand and slide your hips back so can get that hand to the back of your knee.

With your free leg, do a technical lift to get your leg out and behind your opponent. Now is here is where the set up really shines. Your opponent cannot physically turn away from you. Because of your connections and posts, he will have to turn into you. As he does that, lock up a head and arm guillotine choke. Fall to your side, using your bottom leg to secure a half guard hook and your top leg will go over your opponent’s back. Crunch your elbow to hip and squeeze to finish. It is an unexpected choke that he will never see coming.

Garry Tonon has always been a master of chokes. While he is majorly known for his leg attacks, he has always been an expert at rear naked chokes and guillotine chokes. A choke is the ultimate fight ender and tough guy ego killer. With chokes, it is not about dealing with the pain, but physical biology. If you don’t tap to a choke, you will go unconscious. Don’t ever neglect choking techniques. Tonon’s training partner, Judo Olympian Travis Stevens knows the power of chokes and has made a great DVD about them. So don’t forget to check out…

Chokes DVD by Travis Stevens. Click here.