That right there is my Jiu Jitsu instructor. I've trained under that man for over 9 years and love it. He has gotten me now to my brown belt (4 stripes) and I can honestly say out of all the instructors at Renzo's academy, he is the absolute best. A very honorable and humble guy with a world of knowledge to provide to his students.
Danaher is special in that he is phenomenal at no-gi Jiu Jitsu and trains with a strong emphasis that lends itself on applying Jiu Jitsu to both MMA and even street fights. He uses a wide variety of closed guards that are beautiful at defending attacks off your back. Not to mention, that he incorporates both striking offense and defense from the guard, as well as the mount.
Regarding Ray Longo.
Serra was the first to use him from our academy, although Serra knew Longo from way back when he was in High School. Ray already had a small gym out in Long Island that concentrated on boxing & kickboxing back in mid 90's. When I met Serra, it was back in 2003-2004 when I first started to go to Renzo's academy (back when it was above a methadone clinic, prior to the new location that is practically the size of a sports club). Back around 2003-2004, Serra was already a black belt in BJJ for as few years, had a school of his own out in Long Island with his brother Nick since 2001 and was teaching classes for Renzo once a week for beginners/adv. beginners (white & blues). Anyhow, during his fight camp for the first GSP fight, Serra split his time between Renzo's and would also go out to work with Longo for his striking.
Since the time Serra used Longo as his striking coach, Longo has steadily become more and more popular and at some point they even created their own fight team (Serra + Longo). They really didn't put out much talent from there. Then, Weidman showed up, joined Serra's academy out in Long Island and Serra realized he had a kid with talent on his hands. When Serra first brought Weidman to Renzo's academy a few years back, we all thought he was a super talented wrestler, but never did we know he would venture into the realm of MMA.
Now, with Weidman's new found success story, Longo got smart and partnered up with Chris in having their own academy (what happened was that they became business partners and Ray's academy got renamed to Power MMA and is co-owned now by Chris and Ray). Ray knows that having Weidman as a partner will bring in a lot of fanfare and new members, so he tagged up. I think it was a very smart move financially speaking.
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