COLUMBUS, OH—According to teammates at Apex Jiu-Jitsu Academy, 300-pound white belt Garrett Dunn is “a great training partner” and “honestly, one of the nicest guys at the gym,” a statement made exclusively by members of the academy who have not yet been assigned to drill with him, sources confirmed Thursday.
Dunn, 28, who weighs approximately 302 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame and started training six months ago, has been described as “super nice,” “always smiling,” and “bringing great energy to the mat” by roughly 40% of the gym’s roster — specifically, the 40% who have successfully avoided being paired with him during guard passing drills.
“Garrett is just the best,” said purple belt Trevor Mackin, 31, who has never rolled with Dunn and intends to keep it that way. “Every time he walks in, you can tell he loves jiu-jitsu. Super humble. Super respectful. You can feel the passion.”
Mackin then quietly excused himself to sanitize the ankle brace he now wears preemptively to every class.
Per an injury log maintained by a visibly concerned assistant coach on a clipboard behind the front desk, Dunn has caused three tweaked ribs, one separated shoulder, two instances of “I think my knee popped but maybe it was just gas,” and one disputed concussion since February. The concussion is classified as “disputed” because Dunn’s drilling partner, blue belt Mason Orville, insists he “just went to sleep for a second” and “came back super refreshed.”
Notably, every single one of these injuries occurred during technique drilling, not live sparring.
“Yeah, we don’t really roll with him yet,” said head instructor Daniel Figueroa-Klein, 44, a third-degree brown belt who has twice asked Dunn if he has “considered judo, or perhaps gardening.” “During rolling he’s cautious. He’s aware. He’s studying. But the second you tell him to ‘just practice the technique slowly,’ he goes full Kool-Aid Man. Drilling is where people get hurt. He’s found the one loophole.”
Figueroa-Klein’s full assessment of the situation is that Dunn “just doesn’t know his own strength.” Dunn, when asked separately for his own self-assessment, provided the identical quote, unprompted, as though he had been rehearsing it in the car.
Team doctor Priya Venkatesh, MD, who now makes a courtesy visit to Apex every Thursday instead of every other Thursday, strongly disagrees.
“Garrett knows exactly how much he weighs,” said Venkatesh, a former orthopedic surgeon who once worked the sideline for a Division I football program and says Apex is “somehow more dangerous.” “He has a scale at home. He weighed in at 302.4 on Monday. I saw the screenshot. He texted it to the group chat with a flex emoji. He’s not unaware. He’s just physically incapable of slowing down.”
Venkatesh added: “Also, every single one of his drilling partners has the same look in their eyes. It’s the same look deer have.”
Sources confirm that Dunn has been asked to “go light” a total of 47 times in the past month, a number tracked informally by a front-desk tally labeled ONLY MARK WHEN SOMEONE SAYS IT SADLY. His definition of “going light,” according to multiple partners, is “not using his arms” — a compromise his partners have repeatedly tried to explain does not offset the other 300 pounds of him.
“He’ll say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m going light today, I’m not even gonna use my arms,’ and then he passes your guard by laying his chest on your face like a continental mattress,” said blue belt Camila Ortiz-Reyes, 26, currently in week three of a four-week rib recovery. “Last Tuesday he was showing me a knee cut and he just — he deployed. Like a Costco airbag. He was really sweet about it after. He brought me a Jamba Juice the next day. I still can’t sneeze without crying.”
Particularly notable is Dunn’s performance during Apex’s warm-up routine, which includes partner-carry sprints across the mat. Dunn has opted out of being carried, citing concern for his training partners’ spines — a concern his training partners have described as “the most thoughtful thing he has ever done.” When it is his turn to carry, he moves “surprisingly quickly” while his partner “generally tries to go limp and accept their fate.”
Dunn’s guard passing has drawn particular attention from academy leadership, who have noticed that Dunn’s partners frequently do not attempt to escape.
“A lot of guys, when they get stuck under side control, they’ll shrimp, they’ll frame, they’ll bridge,” said Figueroa-Klein. “When Garrett gets side control, his partner usually just — closes their eyes. It’s actually a tell. If I see someone go quiet under Garrett, I know he’s got them. We’ve started calling it the ‘brief nap.’”
When asked, Dunn’s partner for the evening’s technique drill — white belt Omar Sosa, 34, who began training eight weeks ago “for anxiety” — described his time with Dunn as “an honor.”
“I’m learning so much,” said Sosa, whose left eye was slightly unfocused. “He’s really helping me develop my escapes. For example, I’m learning that sometimes the escape is choosing to stay. That’s actually a very advanced concept. I read about it. On a wall.”
Apex’s front desk has reportedly begun discreetly pairing Dunn with the largest available training partner, a practice that has led to an informal gym ranking known as the “Garrett Insurance Pool” — a rotating list of three heavyweights over 230 pounds who absorb the impact so the rest of the gym can keep training. Coaches insist this system is not official, though pool members have matching T-shirts that read SURVIVED DRILLING in fading Sharpie.
For his part, Dunn appears to be loving every minute of it.
“Honestly, I feel like I’m really starting to get it,” said Dunn, still in his gi in the parking lot two hours after class, sweating through the steering wheel of a 2019 Honda Pilot with a Gracie Barra sticker on the bumper. “The other day, Coach said I moved my hips before my hands. And I felt that. Like I was a real jiu-jitsu player. I love these guys. Everyone here has been so welcoming. I’ve never been part of something like this.”
He then added, smiling: “I’m planning to drill twice as hard tomorrow.”
At press time, the entire Tuesday 6:30 PM class had called in sick.