Garry Tonon Takes Pride In His "Cauliflower Ears"
Garry “The Lion Killer” Tonon is proud of his war wounds.
The ONE Championship lightweight’s ears have been deformed by years of wear and tear on the mats, but those injuries were all part of coming one of the best grapplers in the world.
On an episode of ONE On ONE With “The Voice,” the Evolve representative told Michael Schiavello how his ears came to look the way they do today.
“I was trying to take care of it at first – I was wearing headgear over it once it got injured – but I had a competition coming up, and I wanted to train in the same way I was going to compete,” he says.
“I wore nothing and it kept getting beat up, and it blew up to a huge bubble.”
Many wrestlers and Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners see this type of injury as a badge of honor and Tonon is no different – with a small caveat.
“To a certain degree, I’m proud of it, but I’m not particularly trying to tell everybody to get cauliflower ear. If I could do things differently, I would have taken better care of it,” he adds.
Check out the full video to find out more about the 26-year-old, including details of his favorite match, the techniques he wants to bring to the ONE cage, and his unique facial hair at ONE: REIGN OF KINGS.
