Garry Tonon Fired From Rutgers BJJ Club

November 12, 2019

Well, this is just a full-on bummer.

Five time EBI Champion and all around cool dude Garry “The Lion Killer” Tonon was recently let go from his position as coach of the Rutgers University BJJ Club. Announced in an Instagram post earlier this evening, Tonon said the firing came as a result of his earlier post criticizing the abrupt cancelation of club activities.

View this post on Instagram

I regret to inform all members of @rutgersbjj that I have been officially fired from coaching the Rutgers University Brazilian Jiu Jitsu club which I have been head coach of for about 6 years now. No contact has been made from the person doing the firing, Stephan Pappas, I had to the receive the information from the club officers themselves. I will be attempting to reach out to him myself over the next few days as I hope that in some way this issue can be resolved. However in the meantime if you could email him and share with him stories about my quality and character to help me change his mind it would be greatly appreciated. stephan.pappas@rutgers.edu. Evidently the reason for the firing was my prior Instagram post about the questionable cancellation of club practices which I thought did a good job stating my grievances about the situation without in anyway being disrespectful to Rutgers or its staff. I will likely be deleting this post as well as the previous post soon in hopes that it will help smooth the situation, but in the meantime I've left it up as a frame of reference for why I'm being fired (swipe ⏪) I really feel I did nothing but show that I care for my students and their ability to come to practices. I fight, I compete in bjj, I own a school, I travel and teach seminars, I own an apparel company. I don't need to teach at Rutgers. I do it because I want to. As an Alumni of both the university and the club it feels great to give back. I would be very sad to have that opportunity taken away. PRACTICES WILL BE ONCE AGAIN CANCELLED UNTIL THEY FIND A NEW HEAD COACH, UNTIL THEN ALL MEMBERS CAN TRAIN AT MY SCHOOL @brunswickbjj FREE OF CHARGE.

A post shared by Garry Lee Tonon (@garrytonon) on Nov 12, 2019 at 3:18pm PST

Notable is the fact that Stephan Pappas, Rutgers Director of sport and the man who fired Tonon, did not directly inform Tonon himself. Tonon was alerted to his release by club officers after his initial Instagram post. Tonon has called on the BJJ community to advocate for his reinstatement through respectful emails containing examples of his character to Pappas at stephan.pappas@rutgers.edu .

More information to follow.