Grappling with 2025

Eric gives his thoughts on all the aggressive hugsport stuff from the past year.

Another year has come, and another year is now in the books. 2025 was, for the most part, a pretty active year for me both as a writer covering jiu jitsu, and my own participation in the sport. A goal of mine this year was to cover the sport a bit more, writing more not just the educational and training aspects but also the professional side of competition at the upper echelons.

To this end, I feel like I accomplished this goal and now, as has been the tradition of my writing, it’s time to share some personal thoughts, perspectives, and lessons I’ve learned during the year regarding this stupid hobby of aggressively hugging someone on the ground I love so much.

“Professional” Jiu Jitsu Barely Exists

I’m going to quote Neal H, who I write & podcast with over at Fight Island, regarding how “professional” jiu jitsu is treated and viewed by the audience.

I think what’s going on with spectator graps is that you get places like reddit where there’s a circle jerk of people going OH MY GOD BJJ CAN BE THE BIGGEST THING IN THE WORLD and then when someone like One creates some belts and tries to market it, nobody watches except for the people from that reddit, where 95% of them pirate it.

In short, the whole idea of a professional competition scene for jiu jitsu is more or less, as Neal put it, held up by duct tape, spit, and a lot of hope. And even though people say they want it, they ultimately don’t care enough about it at the end of the day.

I don’t think any of the athletes are to blame for this, as the sport has some fantastic competitors and athletes who do their jobs very well. The real issue, as I see it, are the organizations who are meant to be putting on these events. At present we have UFC BJJ, ONE Championship, Who’s Number One, AIGA Global League, Polaris, BJJ Clubes, and probably a few more being the more notable, what I would call, Tier 1 organizations.

That’s cool, but there’s just one problem I genuinely have with this. None of them really seem to know how to make me invested in watching.

ONE has put together some cool matches, but their grappling is an after thought of the after thought that is their MMA division. Meaning, they barely care about it.

AIGA Global League is inconsistent with its information available in English but has done a decent job making their content available easily.

Polaris has done a good job at putting together decent events, but they’re typically only UK centered competitors because they can’t compete with the deep pockets of the UFC or WNO.

Speaking of WNO, they still seem to think that Gordon Ryan and his crew of tail riders are THE people the sport needs to focus on, rather than say finding a variety of stars. Also adding to it, I just hate FloSports’ trying to swindle money from people by tricking them into buying a year long subscription on FloGrappling because they hid the monthly option available on other FloSports sign up portals (FloRugby etc), despite it all being interlinked so having a FloCheerleading subscription also entitles me to FloGrappling content. So fuck them for that alone.

BJJ Clubes is neat as it’s a more dedicated team sport and also features the gi unlike the other organizations. However, it also faces the Polaris problem but focused around Brazil athletes only.

Oh and the mentioned UFC BJJ is not all that great either. Excusing the rather bland production value, and the fact its only on YouTube, it’s hard to ever know when they’re on because even the UFC barely puts much effort into marketing it, despite having the UFC to promote it through. But there’s also the fact that they allegedly stole the format from CJI, allegedly have been artificially boosting their viewer numbers to avoid how embarrassingly low their views are, and how nobody at their organization seems to know how to market anything about their athletes to get viewers invested. That last one is a UFC/TKO wide issue and not uniquely a flaw of UFC BJJ.

So, in short, none of these organizations seem to be doing the whole “running a proper professional organization” very well at all. I don’t think “professional” jiu jitsu exists given its current form. Sure there’s money floating around but the actual professionalism in terms of organization, athlete behavior (which I didn’t get into but holy shit can the ‘pro athletes’ please stop putting out insanely bigoted shit for five minutes?), and so on are sub par. Professional esports, which has its own organizational issues as a venture, is better ran and also brings in better money than professional jiu jitsu. And I’m not saying this because I recently was watching professional StarCraft on Korean TV while on vacation, but that thought did come up while doing so.

Craig Jones is Saving “Professional” Jiu Jitsu

Of all the people involved in the “pro” scene for jiu jitsu, I think it’s safe to say the only person actively organizing to make things better ran is Craig Jones.

Two years ago he bucked the misconception that a more streamlined, well paid, and athlete (rather than organizer) focused event was not possible. Doing so right at the same time as the ADCC World Championships, often assumed to be the height of those very things, for good measure as well.

This year CJI 2 did well in continuing that, though it did stumble at times during the production but in general it was still a better product overall and more professionally ran. While the ending match did lead to some “controversy” that was mostly fueled by a terminally online dude who also has had issues with Craig Jones and the B-Team guys ever since the Danaher Death Squad broke up. So that’s a big block of salt you have to account for.

When I said Craig is saving “professional” jiu jitsu, it’s mostly because he’s calling out the shoddy and unprofessional antics of the people involved. He was instrumental in boosting the awareness of the dodgy UFC BJJ viewership numbers, he had a debate with Mikey Musumeci covering professionalism as well as re-investment back into the jiu jitsu community (which the UFC seems to not bother with), and has actively pushed for better pay for the athletes since they are ultimately what is making people want to tune in. Not a bald wife beater who is chumming it up with a tech guy whose company, at best, accidentally allowed for a genocide to be orchestrated on their platform that also suppresses information regarding another genocide occurring. I’ll take the dude who makes jokes about doing cocaine over that personally.

Craig is, self-admittedly, rough around the edges as a personality. However its hard to deny he isn’t actively trying to push athletes and organizations towards a more professional structure as a whole. With a promise of CJI 3 occurring in 2026, it’s at least good to know there is one person who understands the value that professional athletes should be held to, and actively is pushing for the industry as a whole to move there.

This is all not including the fact he has been active in calling out horrendous behavior by athletes directly and taking aim at those who are active in sweeping that stuff under the carpet.

So yes, Craig is probably the lone guy trying to fix the professional aspect of this sport. A task that I would best describe as a sisyphean.

My Interest in the Pro Scene However..

This is all a round about way of talking about how my interest in the professional scene has waned over the past twelve months.

I spoke a lot about how I generally prefer team oriented competitions like CJI 2, Quintet, Polaris Squads, and BJJ Clubes. There’s something more holistic in the story telling of the competition that they provide that individual competitions don’t necessarily hit for me.

Throughout this year I put a lot of effort towards highlighting those events and only focusing on them. And for the most part they were quite entertaining. However, going back to that quote by Neal, that’s all it really amounted to from my end as a writer. A lot of hype, good matches, but then no follow through. In baseball or football, we get the next match the next week. In jiu jitsu the next match may take three to four months depending on the organizer’s schedule not matching with the athlete’s. Which is a bit…disheartening? Irritating?

I think the athletes generally due deserve their due to make money doing the sport, but as mentioned the professional organizations are sporadically active which makes it frustrating. Followed by the fact the stakes for each competition are not always clear or apparently other than “wants to win this one” which, again, sort of is on the organizer to do a better job at selling.

Which is a long round about way of saying that for 2026 my coverage of the “professional” scene will be zero. I’m simply not enjoying doing the write ups and coverage of the upcoming events compared to simply training and thinking about the meta stuff related to the hobby of grappling. I won’t shy away from talking about competition related topics, and do plan to put some pieces out covering my perspective on that subject, but I don’t think the stuff you see in my write up for Quintet will returning any time soon.

Global Grappling Day 2025

Finally in 2025 my long overdue participation in the Tap Cancer Out Global Grappling Day occurred. If you weren’t privy to some of the posts I made about it, it is in short a marathon style event where you are meant to raise money for Tap Cancer Out, a 501(c) charity in the USA, who help fund raise and provide funding support for a slew of cancer charities and support organizations.

This year I was able to raise $505 USD with the goal being a modest $400 USD. To save a long winded write up, I just want to say this whole event made me feel…fulfilled as a person. I really am happy that we were able to raise the funds we did, and also the support I received from training partners, friends, and family really helped me feel less cynical about things.

As promised there will be an episode of the Punchsport Pagoda podcast soon with a few of the other members to talk about this event as well as the need for more community oriented social causes and similar activities within jiu jitsu itself. It may take a bit due to the holidays but we will be getting that out as soon as we can.

Final Thoughts

This year was, in general, a fantastic year for me personally, professionally, and in terms of writing here and I am very much appreciative of everyone who has been involved with all of it. It just ruled.

Here’s to the new year.