The king has a castle now. After years of dominating the no-gi scene and steadily building his empire, Gordon Ryan has officially opened the doors to Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu, his first professional academy — and it’s already turning heads.
The new facility, co-founded with legendary coach John Danaher, is the latest evolution in a journey that began with the dissolution of the Danaher Death Squad in 2021. Ryan and Danaher kept their tight circle intact, relocating to Austin and building the formidable New Wave Jiu-Jitsu team. But until now, they were operating out of the Roka facility without a headquarters of their own.
That all changed in 2025. Ryan announced the opening of Kingsway earlier this year, and after months of preparation and construction, the mats are finally in place. The very first professional class was led by Ryan himself, with elite grapplers like Luke Griffith, Helena Crevar, and Oliver Taza among the first to train in the pristine new space.
But this milestone also signals a major shift: John Danaher is stepping back from his primary teaching role.
Longtime Danaher black belt Brian Glick confirmed the transition and said Danaher has been preparing for this moment for decades. “He’s set up this kind of succession for the last two decades,” Glick explained. “He’s really been prepping and preparing for his students to be able to share not only his methodology and his philosophy and his approach, but to be able to, if needed, step in to serve as a proxy.”
Glick emphasized that teaching — not just technical mastery or athletic success — has always been essential to Danaher’s top students. “It’s not enough to simply be high caliber performers… Teaching has always been a critical component for him among his top tier guys.”
And at the center of that next generation is Gordon Ryan. “Gordon would be the first person to say that there is no replacing Danaher,” Glick said. “But no one is better suited than Gordon to take over that position.”
What separates Ryan, according to Glick, is his ability to break down and articulate Danaher’s systematic approach to jiu-jitsu: “The systematic nature of how Danaher approaches jiu-jitsu… makes it so that not only is it broadly applicable, but you end up with a system not only of practice, but a system of teaching that’s also possible to pass down.”
This contrasts with “personality-based instruction,” which Glick says makes it harder to pass down teaching. Ryan, on the other hand, can “narrate, able to articulate the system very, very well.”
Despite Danaher stepping out of the spotlight, he won’t be disappearing. “I think he’s going to still be a very active participant,” Glick noted. “Even if he’s not… directly coaching or playing the same level of detail with the athletes day to day… he’s going to be operating somewhere in the background.”
The future of Kingsway Jiu-Jitsu won’t rest solely on Ryan’s shoulders, either. Glick praised a stacked team of instructors ready to carry the torch: “Between Nicholas and Giancarlo and Gordon, I mean, there isn’t a better group of people I could think of… Gary Tonon has been there forever and is as excellent a teacher as they come. Giancarlo Bodoni… has really taken off.”
Danaher has spent decades refining its system, but this is the third brand change since the death squad disbanded. Meanwhile, the “B-Team” just keeps on trucking and having fun.
