Craig Jones: the man who broke grappling's pay scale

Quick answer: Craig Jones is an Australian black belt under Lachlan Giles, a two-time ADCC silver medalist, a multiple-time Polaris champion, and a co-founder of B-Team Jiu-Jitsu. He is better known now as a promoter: in August 2024 he ran the first Craig Jones Invitational directly opposite ADCC in Las Vegas, paid every entrant $10,001 and each divisional winner $1 million, and streamed it free. He is a genuine provocateur, and a real chunk of the sport does not like him.

One dollar. That is the whole argument, and Jones made it with one dollar.

ADCC, the sport's most prestigious event, paid its male divisional winners $10,000. So when Jones announced his own tournament in 2024, he set the show money — what every invited athlete got for walking in the door, win or lose, first round or final — at $10,001. The joke did not need explaining.

He then scheduled it in Las Vegas on 16-17 August 2024, the same weekend and the same city as ADCC, and put it on YouTube for free.

Adelaide, then Melbourne

Jones was born in Adelaide in 1991 and started training in 2006 at his cousin's academy. After earning his purple belt he moved to Melbourne to train under Lachlan Giles at Absolute MMA, and stayed until Giles promoted him to black belt in 2016.

The Melbourne detail matters more than it looks. Giles' room was one of the few places outside the United States doing serious modern leg lock work, and Jones came up inside it rather than importing it later. At purple belt in 2015 he won the IBJJF No-Gi Worlds, which made him the first Australian man to win an IBJJF world title. He also somehow finished a bachelor's degree in behavioural science along the way.

The 2017 that changed his life

ADCC 2017 is the event people still bring up.

Jones went in unknown outside Australia and submitted Leandro Lo, a five-time IBJJF world champion, then Murilo Santana, then Chael Sonnen with a heel hook in under two minutes. He lost the semi-final to Keenan Cornelius and then the bronze match to Alexandre Ribeiro, so he finished the weekend with nothing on paper and a reputation that has never gone away.

Two years later at ADCC 2019 he took silver at -88kg, losing the final to Matheus Diniz. In 2022 he moved up to -99kg, beat Nicholas Meregali in the semi-final, and lost the final to Kaynan Duarte 4-0. Two silvers, no gold. If you want the context for why those medals carry the weight they do, ADCC explained covers the ruleset and the stakes.

The style is triangles and legs, built from a top-heavy entanglement game rather than the inside-heel-hook obsession that dominated the same era. Beginners who want the safe end of that world should start with the leg locks guide rather than the highlight reel.

New York, Puerto Rico, and the split

Jones moved to New York to train under John Danaher alongside Gordon Ryan, and relocated with that group to Puerto Rico in 2020 during the pandemic.

On 26 July 2021, Danaher announced on Instagram that the team was finished. Jones announced the same day that he would keep training with Nicky Ryan, Nick Rodriguez and Ethan Crelinsten. That group moved to Austin and became B-Team Jiu-Jitsu.

What caused it depends on who you ask, and no one involved has given a full account the others agree with. FloGrappling's reporting at the time pointed to disagreements about where a permanent school would be located, personality conflicts, differences in values, and the friction between a shared team brand and the individual brands its members were building. That last one is probably closest to it. The group contained several people who were becoming businesses.

Ten years earlier this would have been a footnote. In 2021 it split the sport's most-watched training room into two teams that then spent five years selling matches against each other.

The comedian and the coach

Jones' public persona is a bit. He brought a million dollars in cash onto Joe Rogan's podcast to promote CJI. He opened an OnlyFans. He built an audience on travel vlogs and self-deprecation and a willingness to say the thing everyone else is too contract-bound to say.

The jiu-jitsu underneath it is not a bit. He was the grappling coach for Alexander Volkanovski and Jack Della Maddalena in UFC title fights. He has won Polaris titles at middleweight and light heavyweight, though sources differ on whether the total is three or four. He submitted Rafael Lovato Jr., Gerald Meerschaert and Philip Rowe in main events across 2023 and 2024, and beat Felipe Pena in overtime. People who treat him as a content creator who grapples have the order backwards.

CJI 2024: three million dollars and two million-dollar brackets

Jones announced in 2024 that he had secured $3 million in funding. The format was two 16-man brackets, under and over 80kg, with $1 million to each winner, $10,001 to every competitor, and a $50,000 best submission bonus.

Kade Ruotolo won the -80kg bracket. Nick Rodriguez won +80kg. Jones beat Gabi Garcia by rear naked choke in an intergender superfight, and Ffion Davies faced Mackenzie Dern on the same card. The free YouTube stream reportedly passed 100,000 concurrent viewers on both days, and the event raised over $500,000 for Tap Cancer Out. Jits Magazine gave it Promotion of the Year and Fight Card of the Year.

Whatever you think of the man, that weekend permanently changed what grapplers believe they are worth. You cannot un-ring a bell that loud.

CJI 2, and the wheels wobbling

The second edition ran 30-31 August 2025, back at the Thomas & Mack Center, with a Quintet-style eight-team format and a $1 million team prize. B-Team won it. The final against Team New Wave ended in a draw and B-Team were awarded the win by decision, which went down about as well as you would expect. Both teams were briefly set to receive $1 million; FloGrappling reported that the donor behind the second million rescinded the offer and New Wave were not paid.

Helena Crevar won the $100,000 women's openweight bracket. Jones was supposed to face Olympic champion Gable Steveson and instead faced Chael Sonnen, submitting him with a buggy choke in thirty seconds and then again in a rematch minutes later.

The criticism was loud and not entirely unfair. Mikey Musumeci called the team format boring. Gordon Ryan called the whole thing a failed, biased event. And a team final settled by decision, with one side's promised million never arriving, is hard to defend no matter who is doing the defending.

Where CJI 3 stands as of July 2026

Here is the status as of late July 2026, because a lot of people are still repeating a version that is a year out of date.

In July 2025, ahead of CJI 2, Jones announced his retirement from competition and the end of B-Team. In May 2026, asked about the third event, he said it was, in his words, "cancelled. Decided to keep the money," and told interviewers CJI 2 had broken even rather than lost money. He also used the same conversation to attack UFC BJJ's move toward open amateur tournaments.

Then in July 2026 he softened it again. On a B-Team Q&A he said CJI is coming back in 2027, that he is now based in Mexico and will be "operating in pesos," and floated a $60,000 prize pool instead of a million. He confirmed the Fair Five Foundation's ongoing partnership with Guardian, which is building schools for jiu-jitsu teachers in impoverished areas including three in Africa.

Meanwhile B-Team came back too. On 1 July 2026 Jones announced the team's new home is Zamaya, a fitness resort under construction in the jungle outside Tulum, with the academy scheduled to open in September.

So: no CJI in 2026, a much smaller CJI promised for 2027, and a training resort instead of a gym. Read that however you like.

"CJI divided the sport": the charge, and the answer to it

Meregali said in February 2026 that he believed CJI had entered grappling to divide the industry in a negative way rather than grow it. Gordon Ryan has been saying versions of the same thing for two years. Athletes who chose CJI over ADCC in 2024 gave up a shot at the sport's oldest title for a payday, and some of them will feel that later.

There is also a fair charge that Jones treats the sport as material. The bits, the callouts, the OnlyFans, the deliberate scheduling conflict — a lot of people came to jiu-jitsu specifically to get away from that, and they are allowed to be annoyed.

The counter is simple. Before CJI, winning the most prestigious tournament in submission grappling paid $10,000. That was the scandal. Jones did not invent the resentment. He priced it.

The takeaway

Craig Jones never won ADCC. He has two silver medals and a highlight reel of finishes over people who did win it, and if he had retired in 2023 he would be remembered as a very good grappler with a good sense of humour.

Instead he spent $3 million to prove that athletes in this sport had been underpaid for thirty years, and then spent the next two years discovering how hard it is to keep doing that. The million-dollar prize is gone. The event is on ice until at least 2027. Everything he broke stayed broken, though, and the next promoter who tries to pay a world champion $10,000 is going to have a conversation about it.

Find something to enter yourself

The prize money is smaller and the venue is a high school gym, but the nerves are identical. Browse upcoming tournaments on Let's Roll and pick one far enough out that you can prepare properly.

FAQ

Has Craig Jones ever won ADCC? No. He has two ADCC silver medals, at -88kg in 2019 and -99kg in 2022, plus a fourth-place finish in 2017 after submitting Leandro Lo, Murilo Santana and Chael Sonnen on the way to the semi-finals.

Why did Craig Jones leave the Danaher Death Squad? The team was announced as finished by John Danaher on 26 July 2021, and Jones formed B-Team with Nicky Ryan, Nick Rodriguez and Ethan Crelinsten. Reporting at the time cited disagreements over where a permanent school would be, personality clashes, and tension between the team brand and members' individual brands. No participant has given a full public account.

How much did the Craig Jones Invitational pay? At CJI 2024, every invited athlete received $10,001 for competing, each of the two divisional winners received $1 million, and there was a $50,000 best submission bonus. The show money was set one dollar above ADCC's $10,000 winner's purse on purpose.

Is there going to be a CJI 3? Not in 2026. Jones said in May 2026 that the event was cancelled, then said in July 2026 that CJI would return in 2027 with a far smaller prize pool, in the region of $60,000 rather than a million. Treat any date you see as provisional until he confirms it.