Christian Barry and John Danaher were both graduate students in philosophy at Columbia University, and their time there together is where the story of Danaher’s introduction to jiu-jitsu begins.
On first knowing Danaher, Christian said: “I knew that John worked part-time as a bouncer. He was a very large imposing figure, very soft-spoken, very serious, but he also would sort of quietly and politely sometimes tell me about his experiences as a bouncer, which were kind of eye-opening and sort of terrifying for me at the time.”
After a few months of training, Christian brought jiu-jitsu to Danaher directly.
“I talked to him about it a couple of times and he seemed fine but a little bit not that interested. He was a man who had found his own way of using his body effectively in figh ting and probably might have been a bit skeptical.”
The moment things changed came when Danaher challenged Christian to show him some jiu-jitsu.
“He just got me on the floor and pulled me into a headlock. I didn’t know that much jiu-jitsu. I had probably been training for about three months and probably weighed about 154 lbs (70 kilos). He weighed considerably more than that. He was a bit of a monster.”
Christian managed to escape and reach Danaher’s back.
“I think he was kind of intrigued.” The two then trained informally at the Columbia gym, taping yoga mats together with electrical tape. “It mostly consisted at first of me just trying to keep him off me.”
When Danaher eventually visited the gym, Christian recalled everyone wanting to train with him.
He said, “Everybody wanted to train with him because he was like a fascinating physical guy. He was like a serious weightlifter and he weighed a lot, quality strong guy, and it would be a good test case for anybody to show whether or not their guard actually works if you can kind of keep someone like that at bay. He became very serious and sort of obsessive in his training and thinking about it and quickly zoomed past me and many other people.”
Barry said Danaher quickly became completely immersed in the art.
On Danaher’s early approach to developing techniques, Christian said: “John did have that confidence early of just coming up with stuff and he would use it in training and it would work. I remember just being like, ‘John, are we supposed to be doing this?’ And they were like, ‘No, if it works, it works.'”
Christian connected Danaher’s teaching approach directly to their shared philosophical background.
He said, “That systematic breaking down and articulation of general principles explaining sort of more complex phenomenon is definitely a fruits of a more philosophical mindset.”
