He Made the Judo Harder and the Paperwork Disappear
Starring
About the Gym
ITC New York, the International Training Center, is a single-location MMA gym in Astoria, Queens, a block from Astoria Park. Sensei Greg Gutman opened it in a Long Island City basement in 2006 and moved twice under pressure from developers before landing in the current space, the first one ITC has ever had with windows.
The gym runs Muay Thai seven days a week, judo on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Sanda on Sundays, with no kids program and no BJJ. Greg’s two sons carry the two halves: Mark runs Muay Thai in the evenings around a law practice, and Danny runs judo around an engineering job. Greg, in his sixties, still teaches Muay Thai Strength & Conditioning twice a week.
📍 Address: 23-81 21st Street, Astoria, NY (one block from Astoria Park)
🌐 Website: astoriamuaythaijudo.com
📸 Instagram: @itcnewyork
Summary
Episode 1 was Mark Gutman and the Muay Thai side. This one is Danny, the older brother, who runs ITC's judo program around a full-time job managing an engineering team at a Fortune 500 company.
Judo is the hardest discipline in the building to keep full, and Danny says so on camera: the retention rate is low because the art is brutal, and there are fewer than ten real judo schools in New York City against roughly a hundred BJJ gyms. His response to all of that is to raise the bar rather than lower it. Half-hour warm-ups built to exhaust you on purpose, no separate tournament prep, and no promotion past green belt without competing.
Then he goes home and does the admin after his son falls asleep.
