Decision, Diligence and Destiny: David Garmo’s Pursuit of Excellence

David Garmo pulls off a heel hook submission in his World Championship quarter finals match against Francisco Lo.

By Cal Abbo

When David Garmo makes a decision, he doesn’t look back. This resolute attitude led him to the pinnacle of athletics in the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, where he represents Chaldeans as one of the toughest fighters in the world. It also brought him to the 2023 world finals match against repeated world champion Ronaldo Junior.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) is a self-defense martial art focused on taking your opponent to the ground and establishing a joint lock or chokehold to force a submission or win points. Its strategy centers on the idea that a smaller and less-powerful fighter can establish a leverage advantage and a superior position through technique rather than strength. Garmo participates in a version of BJJ called No-Gi, where participants wear skin-tight wrestling suits instead of a traditional robe (called a Gi) that your opponent is allowed to grab.

In tournaments, a classic BJJ match has a 10-minute timer. Just under half of BJJ matches end early in a submission while the rest are decided by a point system, and, in the case of a tie, a referee’s decision.

The Decision

At the ripe age of 18, Garmo made the most important decision of his life. Even today, this pivotal moment ripples across time, affecting thousands of martial artists that he competes against and teaches. At the time, Garmo was a normal teenager, getting into trouble and “doing dumb stuff” with his friends, as he said. While he had a few years of martial arts training from his childhood, he hadn’t participated in anything serious since early middle school, choosing to focus on football while he was in high school.

After graduating, Garmo signed up for a free trial at a BJJ gym out of general interest and a longing to return to his childhood sport. He received a phone call that confirmed his spot in the course and left for the gym to attend his first class a few hours later.

“At the time, I was a smoker. After the class finished, I got in my car to leave. I had 11 cigarettes left in this pack,” he said, reminiscing about the day that changed his life forever. “I remember it very specifically. I took the cigarettes, crushed them in my hand, and threw them out … I never stopped BJJ since.”

Garmo prides himself on his remarkable ability to make spontaneous and tough decisions. In fact, throughout his entire life, he’s never regretted any decision he’s ever made. “Once you do it, regret doesn’t help you at all,” he said. “I learn a lot from my decisions, but I don’t regret things. I think that allows me to continue being decisive … I can name quite a few times I made big decisions in only a few moments that served me extremely well.”

Pursuit of Excellence

From that moment on, Garmo removed himself from his friends and all other distractions. Like something out of a Rocky film, for five years, his schedule consisted of training, eating, sleeping, and competing. “I needed to be away from my old life and focus on my journey as a martial artist,” he said.

After this extended period of isolation, Garmo eased back into a normal life, but he would never be the same. He had cultivated and incorporated into his identity a distinguished and elusive motivation that would carry him through both challenging trials and tough setbacks: a relentless and uncompromising focus on the pursuit of excellence.

Garmo first heard this phrase, the pursuit of excellence, when he attended Brother Rice High School. “It was something we heard all the time, in both school and sports, and it really stuck with me,” he said. “I decided that this pursuit has to be something that I enjoy, something I couldn’t be without. BJJ became that thing for me.”

When Garmo graduated from high school, he attended Oakland Community College for only one semester. His parents, he said, were always supportive of his career and his choices, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell his mother that he had dropped out. He kept up the lie for two years and spent all his time training; he wasn’t enrolled in college at all.

From where he stood, Garmo could see his path from the outset like a divine plan revealed only to him. It’s difficult, however, to explain the vision to others who aren’t living it. A few years later, only after the plan could be demonstrated and his loved ones persuaded of its validity, did he admit his dropout status to his parents. Finally, Garmo saw himself as a success even in the eyes of his most important loved ones.

“We have to pursue something to a degree that we would sacrifice our whole lives for it,” Garmo said. “It could be anything for anybody. But for me, BJJ was that thing. So, I decided to pursue this one thing with every fiber of my being.”

Now, 16 years later, neither his love for the sport nor the intensity with which he pursues it has waned. If anything, it’s become even stronger. “Obviously, I’ve gotten so much better at it in the last 16 years, and I believe I can still do this deep into my 60s, and even as a professional competitor deep into my 40s,” Garmo said, remembering that he turns 34 this year. “If you can do anything for that long, you’ll become pretty good at it.”

In some sports, there are basic physical requirements that act as limitations. Had he dedicated himself to basketball, for example, Garmo, who stands at 5’7”, would fare poorly against the immense wingspan and towering stature of 6’9” Lebron James. In a grappling match, however, the BJJ master would surely dominate the NBA superstar, even though he’s 70 pounds lighter.

Despite common perception, outright strength rarely decides the winner in combat sports. Weight classes ensure that fighters of relatively equal size face one another, and even then, the rules and style of BJJ in particular will always favor mastery of technique over raw power.

“I believe it’s all about your work ethic and technical prowess,” Garmo said. “You don’t have to be the fastest or strongest. You have to be the smartest in your training, and you have to be driven. Absolutely driven.”

Just as important as an athlete’s physical ability is their mindset and outlook. Garmo has mastered his mind in a way that few people in the world can attest. He took a lot of his initial inspiration from martial arts movies that he enjoyed in his childhood and Japanese samurai culture that he experienced while living periodically in Japan.

“You might think that martial artists are these big, brawny people who are aggressive toward others,” Garmo said. “It’s really quite the opposite. People who do martial arts were likely the ones targeted by that kind of abuse. They go into a school and transform themselves into what you eventually see as an in-shape, confident, capable person.”

Just because these people are strong, according to Garmo, doesn’t mean that they’ll use their newfound power against you. “If anything, they’re less likely to do so compared to someone who is untrained, undisciplined, and not confident in themselves,” he said. “They’re getting their energy out every day in the gym and have no interest in using it out in the streets.”

Over those fateful five years, Garmo brought his full energy to training every single day and built up his capacity for willpower and grit. These aspects also need to be learned, trained, and maintained. In his own words, he developed a sense of self-respect, a shield that protected him from the unwanted influence of others, even if they are friends, and even if their intentions are good. “I had this overwhelming need to be the best at what I did. All those other things wouldn’t serve me, so I only did that which brought me closer to the goal.”

The Best in the World

In a competitive one-on-one combat sport like BJJ, fighters come up against one another directly. There’s little room for debate on who is considered the world’s best competitor at any given moment. It’s all resolved on the mat, witnessed by thousands of people, and recorded in the annals of history and video archives. It begs the question: How, then, could Garmo consider himself the best in the world before he became a world champion?

“I had convinced myself very early on,” he said, “that I was one of the best in the world. I kept telling myself, hook, line, and sinker, that I was one of the best. I will continue to believe it and work toward it until it’s true.”

Because of its extreme technicality, BJJ has several different competitive belt levels that allow martial artists of the same skill and experience to compete against one another. Walking into a gym will earn you a white belt. From there, it takes many years to advance through blue, purple, and brown. Finally, once a fighter has achieved true mastery, they are rewarded with the exalted and revered status of black belt. These competitors are the fiercest and most powerful in the world. There’s no measure of further advancement besides earning your place in direct competition. Garmo earned his black belt in late 2017, nine long years after he began his quest for world domination.

In 2010, Garmo went to his first World Championship as a blue belt. He won his first match and lost his second, falling many rounds short of a medal, let alone championship status. Even then, “It didn’t deter me at all,” he said. “I continued to train and compete. I told myself again that I’m the best, but I just didn’t have a good day.”

Not even the confidence of a top-flight fighter is impenetrable. Garmo is human and experiences his fair share of doubt. Some days, he feels the impostor syndrome creeping in. Knowing his confidence, it may seem counterintuitive, but Garmo’s reasoning is sharp. “In a sense, it feels like what I’m doing is not really that impressive,” he said, attributing his success to hard work rather than natural talent. “Which is obviously not the case.”

David Garmo grapples with decorated Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighter Rafael Paganini in the 2023 World Championship semi-finals.

It’s a strange feeling you can have as a top athlete, especially in a sport as divergent and technically oriented as fighting. On the one hand, Garmo has spent half his life preparing his mind and body for an extremely specific purpose, at which he has seen virtually unbounded success, which is obvious given his match history. On the other, and only because of that experience and his own belated beginnings, Garmo is convinced that talent does not come close to settling the issue. “If I could do it,” he said, “then anyone can.” And he truly believes it.

In other fighting competitions, like boxing or UFC, top contenders often go undefeated for a long stretch at the beginning of their career, and once they experience a few important losses, they lose their spot forever. Muhammad Ali, for example, acquired only 5 losses in his professional career, and did not lose a single fight until 1971 against Joe Frazier, seven years after he first won the world title. Rocky Marciano and Floyd Mayweather Jr. remained undefeated for their entire career. This is nearly impossible in BJJ.

Fighters at the highest level of BJJ experience extreme variance because of fighting style and the sheer number of matches they have. The top grapplers will lose an important match, learn from their mistakes, and come back to win many in a row. “You always go up in weight and experience, and you take tough matches on purpose,” Garmo said, “because it’s good for your progression and for the sport. I’ve lost plenty, but I’ve got a lot more impressive wins than heartbreaking losses.”

One of those losses in particular changed the trajectory of Garmo’s career. “I had a match where I replaced one of my teammates,” he said. “I had to compete up a weight class, against an up-and-comer who was very good. I wasn’t very confident going into the match because of the weight difference, and he’s bigger, very skilled, and very strong.”

Garmo and his opponent had an extremely tough fight. He lost in a quick and unsatisfying way when the two competitors were transitioning between positions. “It was so disappointing,” he said, “because I felt like I was doing well enough to where I could have won that match if I had more confidence before it started.”

After the contest, Garmo took the result to the drawing board and learned from his mistake. Most of the time, he said, losses propel him to do better in the future. He began to take his training much more seriously. He found a high-level trainer and started working out with weights four days a week, something he’d never done before. In addition, he focused on prehabilitation, which Garmo described as a form of training that emphasizes injury prevention and recovery.

“I can stay in the gym longer, and I’m not getting injured as often,” he said. “I’m much stronger and I can grab and squeeze my opponents until they become fearful. That has taken my BJJ to the best it’s ever been in my 15 years of training, and it manifested in my performance at the 2023 World Championship.”

The Chaldean Influence

In his early days, Garmo was an aggressive child. Fittingly, he would always try to fight or wrestle with cousins, friends, or anyone who would take him on. One of his uncles introduced him to martial arts movies, and they would go together to see stars like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and Jet Li.

When he was only 5 years old, Garmo’s parents tried to start him in swimming classes. He quickly realized that he hated it, so they moved him to a martial arts studio. There, he learned American Karate and some rudimentary BJJ. All of this immersed him in martial arts culture, and he eventually fell in love with it.

Garmo grew up in West Bloomfield, specifically a neighborhood called Timbers Edge. Plenty of Chaldean kids right around his age grew up in the same place. A lot of the community from his area, Garmo said, wanted to be the tough guy and be able to take a fight if they needed to. This foundation helped him understand from the outset that fighting as a sport was a worthy and interesting pursuit, separate from fighting to hurt or bully someone. “It was about honor and separating yourself from someone,” he said.

Garmo identified a specific trait Chaldeans possess that he thinks affords them success in virtually any aspect. In his mind, Chaldeans have an extreme focus on being the best at whatever they do, whether it’s business, school, family life, or athletics. This attitude only needed to awaken in Garmo after he finished high school.

Garmo’s immediate family holds a special place for him. He’s the oldest of three siblings, about two and four years apart from his brother and sister, respectively. His brother Devone felt the brunt of Garmo’s wrath when they were kids. “I was absolutely a bully and not in a fun way for him,” he said, remembering all the times he beat up on Devone. “I had too much energy that I wasn’t getting out in martial arts.”

Devone also took an abnormal path, entering the Marines and spending time overseas in places like Afghanistan. Eventually, he returned home and has a great relationship with his brother David. As one might expect, Devone has his own BJJ career as a blue belt, training at David’s gym.

His little sister, David Garmo said, was a bit too young for them to influence one another as kids, but they’re very close now. She’s successful and married and has a beautiful son. “Each of them has their own things they are very good at, and I have tried to emulate those aspects in my own pursuits and business.”

Perhaps the biggest Chaldean influence that Garmo applied was the entrepreneurial journey of starting his own gym. The idea came while he was living part-time in Japan around 2017. He would live and train there, come home and work to earn some money, and go back to Japan to continue his training. He realized that he always wanted to live there permanently, but it was too difficult as a foreigner to start his own gym and earn a reasonable income.

The realization and subsequent decision came all at once. He was popular in his hometown, and that’s where his success was most known and widespread. Why not start a gym there? At the time, metro Detroit was far from a hub for BJJ or martial arts in general, but that was no matter for Garmo. He would make it so.

“In April 2018, I started writing a business plan,” he said. “I used a friend to bounce ideas off of, and he gave suggestions to help me. Eventually, when it came to a head, he decided to invest, and we started working on it together.”

Garmo returned from Japan later that year, began looking for a space for his gym, and prepared to open. In March 2019, he opened Assembly Jiu Jitsu in Bloomfield Hills and started teaching his first class.

“The first year was really tough,” Garmo said. “It went really slow, and it wasn’t as successful as I envisioned it to be. But we kept grinding and doing the thing and never took our foot off the gas.”

David met his wife, Lana Antwan (now Garmo), in 2021, and they married the following year. She is an architect, designer, and artist, and her entry into and influence on his life changed his perspective and focus dramatically. As a result of these changes and the gift of perseverance, Garmo found a way to succeed in his business venture.

Now, Assembly has over 300 members, and is the most competitive team in the Midwest, according to Garmo. “We crush it wherever we go. Financially, it’s been successful,” he said, “and we’re looking to expand on that. But we focus on putting the best Jiu Jitsu product out there. We teach our students with the utmost care. We make them the best they can possibly be, and the rest works itself out.”

Garmo is proud of his accomplishments with Assembly over the last five years. Many gyms have been around for much longer and have seen only a fraction of Assembly’s success. This fact is a testament to his extraordinary Chaldean focus and a tribute to his cultural upbringing.

Over the last few years, Garmo has started to get some Chaldean students at his gym, but he’d like even more. “We have so many different ethnicities and backgrounds that makes for a really nice melting pot. I always love to add more of the people I grew up with into the mix because, in my opinion, the Chaldean community has that single-minded focus like nobody else … If I can harness that in this sport, Chaldeans can be some of the most successful fighters ever.”

The 2023 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championship

Outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, it was a cool December day. The temperature hovered around a mostly sunny 60 degrees, a mild-mannered forecast compared to the deluge of aggression about to take place indoors.

Inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, the atmosphere was electric, the crowds buzzing with excitement and anticipation. In just two days’ time, only one fighter from each weight class will remain undefeated and be crowned champion of the world.

Hundreds of competitors also mulled around the competition area. Their aura gave off a somewhat different vibration as they prepared their minds and bodies for all-out, one-on-one, single elimination combat. This event comes around once a year and serves as the ultimate showdown, an opportunity for world champions to once again prove their dominance and for rising stars to unseat their foes.

At any other tournament, Garmo’s razor-sharp focus, zealous training, and unwavering commitment to winning would carry him through. But this time was different. Garmo was set to confront the most dangerous people in the world, most of whom were as determined as he was.

His first competition was a division called the open class, which has no weight limit. In this, Garmo expected to do well, but he could be competing against people much larger and stronger than him.

He won his first open class fight, but lost his second, and was eliminated from that portion of the tournament. While he would like to win every fight, he had yet to start the competition that consumed his attention: The medium heavyweight division.

“I had to compete again in three hours for my weight class,” Garmo commented about his mental state after the loss. “I had my teammates and students with me, so we went to lunch to get my spirits back up.”

When Garmo and his team returned to the convention center, he weighed more than a pound over the limit for his division. This meant that over the next hour, he would need to lose almost two pounds. “I didn’t want to cut weight and then compete,” he said. “I would be tired for the match.”

Garmo’s wrestling coach Kyle Horr and his trainer Ty Jensen helped him get moving. They started jogging and sweating, which is exactly the protocol if you’re overweight before a fight. At the same time, Jensen worked Garmo’s calf, which had taken damage during an earlier match.

“I was not in the headspace to continue on that day,” he said. “Thank God they were there. Basically, they babied me for 40 minutes.”

Garmo stepped on the scale and his weight reflected what he needed to compete, which maxes out at 188 pounds in his class. Garmo’s first opponent was injured, so he won that round automatically and moved on. His next fight was against a “tough Israeli competitor” whom Garmo had seen fight but had yet to grapple with before.

“I go into it feeling a looseness in my body,” he said, “and end up winning the match on points. But I dominated the entire time and it felt great. I wasn’t tired at all,” despite the morning loss and afternoon of cutting.

In Garmo’s next fight, he was pitted against the current Pan-American champion Francisco Lo, a tough and dangerous fighter who’s full of power and destructive capability when it comes to submissions. “This is my biggest test,” Garmo remembered thinking.

As the match began, the two fighters circled one another. For the first few minutes, the bout was relatively slow and uneventful. Garmo went for a move that Lo countered easily. In his counter, however, Garmo noticed the fighter left one leg open. “I captured his leg,” he said, “and rotated his heel 240 degrees. He’s very tough and he thought he could get out, but instead, I tore every ligament in his knee.” It was an explosive victory that put Garmo through to the medal rounds that would be held the next day.

For the first time in his career, Garmo could become a black belt world medalist. He had been here before as a purple belt, which meant almost nothing compared to where he was now.

In the semi-finals, Garmo was matched against a man named Rafael Paganini. The Brazilian grappler has many awards to his name, including three world championship medals before he earned his black belt and a first-place finish as a black belt in the 2019 South American Championship.

“I felt the same way I did prior to the match against Lo,” Garmo said. “It was almost an elation, a tingling across the body. It puts me in this thing we call a flow state, and it gives me the absolute best performance I could possibly produce, and I believe my best performance can beat anyone in the world. When I have this feeling, I always win. It’s preordained, in a way.”

As the fight commenced, Garmo vs. Paganini seemed a fair match. Before one minute elapsed, Paganini scored two points on Garmo, but he would not be deterred. After another minute, Garmo tied the score. The intense wrestling match ensued; each competitor eager to advance to their first world finals as a black belt.

As the clock ticked downward, Garmo added two more points to his score, which put him up 4-2. The points, however, were not necessary. Just as they crossed the halfway point, Garmo captured Paganini’s leg, and much in the same fashion as his previous contest, rotated his heel until he forced a submission from the fearsome Brazilian, bringing the match to a dramatic end.

David Garmo on top of Ronaldo Junior in the 2023 World Finals Championship match.

“I finally believed that I belonged in that moment, in the finals of the world championship,” Garmo said about how he felt following the victory. “It wasn’t a close match. I dominated this guy and the guy before. I had this string of incredible wins leading up to this moment, and I knew this is where I was supposed to be.”

Garmo’s next opponent, with whom it seemed he was destined to meet in the finals, was the famed Ronaldo Junior. At just 28 years old, Ronaldo had racked up extraordinary accomplishments in his BJJ career and is known for participating in both Gi and No-Gi BJJ. Notably, he has 13 first-place tournament finishes as a purple or brown belt, including three World Championships and three Pan-American Championships.

Most impressively, he was promoted to a black belt in 2019 and had accumulated six first-place finishes since then, including two Pan-American Championships, a tournament widely regarded as the second most important after Worlds. At the Gi Pan-American Championship, Ronaldo had won a top-3 finish in every black belt competition he’s participated in. Coming into this tournament, both Ronaldo and Garmo had never won a World Championship as a black belt.

According to Garmo, Ronaldo is an athletic fighter who likes to jump around and move fast. That style, when compared to his, gives Garmo a slight advantage. As the match drew closer, Garmo felt the same tingling sensation throughout his body; that which has, up until this moment, signaled a pre-destined victory.

For six minutes, Garmo and Ronaldo had an extremely uneventful match, with neither fighter willing to budge an inch, and neither fighter forcing the other to ground. With three minutes remaining, Ronaldo voluntarily went to the ground in a defensive position called guard. After some brief grappling and not much progress, the finalists stood back up and resumed their begrudging match from earlier.

With two minutes remaining, the commentators seemed to acknowledge the inevitable. The scoreless contest looked like it would need a referee’s decision. Until now, it was hard to decide a winner, according to the commentators, with Garmo possibly carrying a slight advantage because of his aggressiveness.

With 11 seconds remaining, Ronaldo pushed Garmo out of bounds and into a scorekeeper’s table, breaking a TV screen in the process. Uninjured, Garmo stared down Ronaldo as they walked back to the center of the arena and finished off the last few remaining seconds of their impassioned duel.

“Per the decision, I lost,” Garmo recalled harshly, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “It was as razor thin as it could be. You could’ve flipped a coin to decide the winner. I was heartbroken, and at the same time, extremely happy with what I had accomplished. I felt everything in the span of a few minutes.”

Just a few months later, Garmo is not reliving the past. Same as ever, he will take what he can from his mistakes and improve. In the final match, however, those lessons are extremely hard to find. Garmo is confident that he will soon overcome all obstacles and achieve his goal of becoming the world champion. Until then, he will follow the same advice he offers to others.

“The only time you’ll fail is if you stop,” he said. “You can fail every day for years and years and years. But if you don’t stop, you haven’t failed yet.”