John Danaher is pretty much a household name among BJJ practitioners nowadays. While he’s been active in the community since the early 90s, he wasn’t infamous until he managed to market a leglock system and build upon it.
Danaher wasn’t alone in systematizing leglocks, he was doing it in a collaborative effort with former student Eddie Cummings. Cummings has bowed out of the BJJ community and has a regular job nowadays.
But apparently things were incredibly contentious behind the scenes.
A since deleted clip from B Team’s Simple man podcast featured some interesting claims. In it, Robert Degle discusses the team split with Ethan Crelinsten, Nick Rodriguez and more.
Degle went on to detail Cummings received the worst treatment he’s ever seen from Danaher:
“So I remember one day where I was sitting in the front row watching John and he was abusing Eddie as the uke”
Crelinsten confirmed that that type of behavior was standard from Danaher.
Degle doubled down detailing: “…at the time the worst I’d ever seen him treat somebody. Like pulling his hair and smacking him in the face.”
Cummings ultimately switched to Unity, and travelled for a while but he failed to market his own instructionals in the shadow of the monster systematization Danaher created. The two are believed to be in some sort of a truce, where neither fraction of the team will put the other on blast and all things considered perhaps Cummings was smart getting out of the community.
DDS would proceed to split sometime in 2020, due to ‘toxic’ atmosphere and many interesting claims would float around the interweb.
It’s interesting to note how carefully Danaher’s crafted his own image, and the team’s ability to market themselves. While Craig Jones certainly has flaws he has shined a spotlight on several peculiar aspects from now “new wave” including the tendency to demote students to the status of junior if they lose so that the loss doesn’t adversely affect the DVD sales.
