Craig Jones was Invited to Jump to First

Craig Jones is BJJ’s Favorite Loser

Craig Jones is your favorite grappler’s (begrudgingly) favorite grappler. Everything about this man flies in the face of Brazilian jiu-jitsu norms and he always seems to come out on top, especially when he loses.

While Jones won Purple Belt No Gi Worlds and several Polaris belts, he has built a brand off of not winning major events - namely ADCC. Today Jones is the co-owner of one of the biggest and fastest growing Brazilian jiu-jitsu brands in the world, B-Team. They have a physical gym in Austin, Texas, make some of the most ridiculous streetwear and grappling apparel imaginable, and have a thriving Youtube channel. What sets the gym, clothing, and content apart from the rest of the BJJ world is that Jones takes it upon himself to turn everything into a joke.

Nicky Rod accused of greasing? B-Team makes videos about their new product “B Cream”. Gordon Ryan having stomach issues and can’t compete? Jones takes it upon himself to make shit jokes. B-Team is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym? No - according to Craig they do “Mexican Ground Karate”. All of this has proven to be good for business and his brand.

While Jones has curated his public persona to poke fun at his losses and the sport at large, Jones has a ton of exciting wins over high quality opponents, including Leandro Lo, Vinny Magalhaes, Keenan Cornelius, Gilbert Burns, and Nicholas Meregali. Any normal competitor with those wins would use every opportunity imaginable to beat their chest. Instead Jones chooses to remind everyone how silly Brazilian jiu-jitsu is - we’re all just rolling around on the floor after all.

In the hyper machismo world of Brazilian jiu-jitsu Jones is a breath of fresh air. Because Jones has beaten so many serious competitors, he has earned the right to be listened to. Jones is now scheduled to have a match against Felipe Pena at Fight Pass Invitational 4 on Thursday. A win over Pena would be uniquely valuable for Jones and his personal brand. Today we’re looking at Jones’s career, how he carved out a unique position in the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world, and why this next match would allow him to ride off into the sunset on top in his own unique way, with or without ever taking home a major tournament win.

Down Under to the Top

Leg Locks and Submission Only Specialty

Like many of today’s top no gi stars, Craig Jones made his name through a combination of three things; leg locking, the Eddie Bravo Invitational, and the ADCC World Championships. Of his 55 wins on BJJ Heroes, 44 come from a submission, and 25 of those being a leg lock. Contrast that to the three submission losses of his 19 overall, and it’s apparent that Jones is a submission specialist who is rather hard to submit himself.

Early in his career Jones made a habit of sitting to guard, latching on to a leg, and getting a submission quickly. What’s interesting about Jones as an athlete is how he has evolved to suit the needs of his students.

While Jones is the co-owner of a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym, he is regularly asked to fly to New Zealand and Australia to coach City Kickboxing fighters. It should go without saying that sitting to your butt is not a winning strategy in MMA. Accordingly, Jones has adapted his training and coaching style to focus on top pins and tricky wrestling. That shift took Jones from a tricky submission sniper, to a dangerous anti-wrestling specialist that can choose to attack submissions, work to top game, or stay standing.

Before we look ahead at what’s next for Jones, let’s briefly touch on some of Jones’s highlights.

ADCC 2017

Craig Jones was on no ones radar at ADCC 2017, let alone the two people he submitted. At ADCC 2015 Jones went out in the first round against Romulo Barral. 2017 would place him against two other Brazilian legends on the first day but the results were wildly different.

Craig Jones vs Leandro Lo

1. Lo is trying to pass Jones’s open guard

2. Jones off balances and elevates Lo to try and lock inside sankaku for the inside heel hook

3. Lo uses his free leg to keep Jones’s legs open

4. Jones releases the leg attack to come on top and pass

5. Lo tries to stand but Jones is pressuring into him

6. Lo elevates Jones with butterfly hooks, tries to stand again, but turtles to get back to his feet

7. Jones gets on top of Lo’s turtle and ninja rolls to start the back take

8. Jones locks in the rear naked choke for the finish

Craig Jones vs Murilo Santana

1. Jones is trying to pass Santana’s open guard

2. Santana is playing shin to shin and preventing Jones from stepping around his legs

3. Santana stands to his feet as Jones over hooks Santana’s left arm

4. Jones jumps into a triangle choke

5. Jones grabs Santana’s head to control his posture and prevent him from standing

6. Jones adjusts his triangle to make it tighter

7. Jones under hooks Santana’s leg to get the angle for the finish

Ultimately Jones would lose to Keenan Cornelius and Xande Ribeiro in his division, and Gordon Ryan in the absolute division. Those losses meant Jones did not receive a medal in 2017. No medal was no problem as Jones became one of the breakout stars of ADCC 2017.

EBI 14

EBI 14 was an open weight submission only event where Jones’s reputation as a second place finisher started to take off. Jones would lose to Gordon Ryan in overtime of the final match of the tournament, but he won the hearts of the no gi community by nearly breaking Ryan’s arm. Before his match with Ryan, Jones showed three of the slickest heel hooks you’ll ever see in less than a few minutes of total mat time.

Craig Jones vs Andy Burke

1. Jones sits to open guard

2. Burke steps in to test the waters while Jones uses shin to shin to keep connected to Burke

3. Burke drops his level to start to pass

4. Jones elevates with his right leg while back rolling, pulls his shin to shin leg out, and locks an inside sankaku on Burke

5. They land with Jones on his elbow and hips facing down into Burke’s knee, arguably the strongest position to be in to finish an inside heel hook

Craig Jones vs Marcel Goncalves

1. Jones is holding onto Goncalves’s leg while inverting

2. Goncalves pulls away to avoid a leg entanglement

3. Jones throws his his leg over Goncalves’s while gripping the knee so he can get close to Goncalves’s hips and secure the knee line

4. Goncalves puts his other leg in to defend

5. Jones grabs Goncalves’s defensive leg to pull the toes into his arm pit and attack the heel hook

6. Jones attacks the knee before locking the position with so much force Goncalves taps before the inside sankaku is fully set

Craig Jones vs Tex Johnson

1. Jonson is attacking an Estima lock on Jones

2. Johnson lets go as Craig tries to insert his legs and they separate

3. Craig sits up to one knee up and one knee down so he can move closer

4. Craig puts his hand on Johnson’s shoulder as his other hand grabs Johnson’s leg

5. Jones makes a grip before hopping his hips into position to secure the knee line

6. Johnson taps as Jones brings Johnson’s heel up towards the ceiling

Too Short Two Times at ADCC

At both ADCC 2019 and ADCC 2022 Craig Jones lost in the finals. In 2019 Jones lost to Matheus Diniz at 88KG, and in 2022 he lost to Kaynan Duarte at 99KG. Across Jones’s other six matches, five of them ended in submission, cementing Jones’s position as a fan favorite. Over the years Jones advanced his game from a leg locker that sits to guard to attack, to a competitor that can wrestle, pass, and put pressure on the bigger men.

Craig Jones vs Kyle Boehm

1. Jones stands to start passing from distance

2. Jones is checking Boehm’s legs with his hands to prevent Boehm from creating a guard

3. Jones circles around Boehm

4. Boehm tries to follow Jones, but Jones throws Boehm’s legs aside

5. Boehm brings his legs back into play to try and make a guard

6. Jones drops into a knee slice but keeps his knee in place to pin Boehm’s bottom leg until he can secure control of Boehm’s neck and prevent him from scrambling away

Along with showing a new focus on passing and top pressure, Jones used ADCC 2022 to demonstrate a new enthusiasm for standing and wrestling.

Craig Jones vs Nicholas Meregali

1. Jones and Meregali are circling on the feet

2. Meregali is initiating collar ties on Jones to control the action

3. As Meregali reaches for a fourth collar tie Jones times a double leg underneath it

4. Jones holds Meregali’s legs off of the ground to prevent him from playing guard or standing so Meregali turns to turtle

5. Jones follows and Meregali front rolls

6. The two disconnect so they both stand up to wrestle again

Due to ADCC’s rules this wouldn’t score points, but it was enough to get Jones a victory from the judges.

Coach, Marketer, and Ready to Retire?

Recently Jones has been working with Israel Adesanya to help him improve his grappling. For the past few years, Jones trained Adesanya’s teammate, the featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski. Jones was credited with helping Volkanovski take Islam Makhachev to the 25 minute mark of their fight. Many thought Volkanovski won, and some even left considering Volk the best MMA fighter on the planet regardless of the loss.

A year and a half before Volkanovski fought Makhachev he took on the submission specialist Brian Ortega. That fight became Jones’s introduction to the wider MMA world as Volkanovski credited Jones with helping him defend and escape two deep submissions attempts from Ortega, including a mounted guillotine. Never one to miss a moment to monetize, Jones released an instructional detailing how to escape front head locks shortly after the fight. Jones’s ability to monetize every aspect of his professional existence puts him in a rare position in combat sports.

Jiu-jitsu Ruins Lives

In the lead up to Gervonta Davis’s fight with Ryan Garcia the two got into an argument at one of their press conferences. Davis was showing off money and Garcia responded with, “That ain't what it's really about brother. You going to find out the hard way."

Gervonta snapped back, “It’s called Prizefighting, stupid”.

Whether professional or hobbyist, participants of any sport get hooked on the activity because they enjoy the sport itself. They don’t get into it for the money, but collecting money from the sport is what really separates professionals from hobbyists. Pretending anything else will only hurt the athletes trying to make it.

There is a finite amount of money floating around in combat sports, particularly grappling, and the winners take home the lion’s share of it. Generally a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu athlete’s path to profit looks like:

1. Win a big event; World’s, Pan’s, etc..

2. Go on a seminar tour teaching other gyms how you won

3. Release an instructional video on those techniques

4. Repeat ☝️ until you can afford to open your own gym

Inherent in this process is your window for step one, and subsequently steps two through four, is small. You need to be diligent to cash in on whatever success you have, or you risk not being able collect anything. To Jones’s credit, he has opened up alternative realities and redefined beating the game in combat sports.

Jones is a good competitor, but he has never won a major tournament at the black belt level. What he has done is built an interesting brand based around his personality. People like consuming his content, and he’s good enough to be taken seriously. Now, instead of just selling his grappling, he’s selling himself through t-shirts, attracting sponsors to his podcast, and working as the premier grappling coach for MMA fighters in Oceania; all because he’s a smart grappler and people genuinely like being around him.

At ADCC 2022 Jones lost to Kaynan Duarte. In addition to beating Jones for ADCC gold, Duarte won ADCC in 2019 and has won gold at IBJJF World’s, Pan’s, Euro’s, and basically everything else worth winning. No sane person would consider Jones a better competitor than Duarte.

At the time of writing this article, if you search Duarte’s name on the instructional website BJJ Fanatics you will see he is selling three instructionals. On those instructionals he has amassed 17 total reviews. If you contrast Duarte’s total sales performance on the site with Jones’s Power Ride instructional you’ll see one of Jones’s instructionals is selling for literally double what Duarte’s most expensive video is selling for, and has generated more than seven times the reviews. It’s no question that Jones’s marketing strategy is paying off.

Jones has set himself up to continue to make money without competing while showing athletes there are additional paths to take to profit, and it’s important to explore them so you can generate a living wage when you are past a competing age.

One Final Trump Card for a Troll

Say what you will about Jones’s competition record, but the man is a legendary internet troll. After splitting off from his former team, the Danaher Death Squad, to form the B-Team, Jones released Creonte Top Team shirts. Creonte is a Brazilian Portuguese slang term for traitor that is commonly used to insult people that switch teams. Jones calling himself a creonte is definitely making jokes for the back of the room, but it endears him to customers and the community at large.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu culture embraces unhealthy, blind loyalty. That might have worked okay when Brazilian jiu-jitsu was an ultra niche fighting style decorating strip malls in the 90’s, but as dojos become gyms and the sport works to become more accessible, those attitudes are getting pushed aside.

Gyms are service businesses. Calling a customer a traitor for shopping a competitor is ludicrous. If your neighborhood bar called you a traitor for drinking somewhere else you’d leave immediately and never come back. Jones calling himself creonte to disparage himself is not only funny, but it calls out some of the more stupid and silly attitudes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu culture. Recently Jones has directed the majority of his online trolling against his former teammate Gordon Ryan.

No one in their right mind would say that Jones is a better competitor than Ryan. Instead, Jones elects to make fun of Ryan’s stomach issues, social media presence, and whatever else he feels like using as fodder that day. I don’t really care to rehash their drama but it is important to contextualize Jones’s next match.

Jones is about to compete at the Fight Pass Invitational against one of the best all around Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors of all time, Felipe Pena. One of Pena’s claims to fame is beating Ryan twice. A win over Pena would only give Jones more opportunities to monetize the mocking of his cross town rival, Ryan.

Jones has eluded to wanting to retire soon in several recent interviews. If he can take a clean victory over his rival’s rival I have to imagine he’d be that much closer to leaving the sport with a giant trump card in his back pocket. The match-up itself is hard to evaluate though.

Fight Pass Invitational generally uses EBI rules. That means there are no points and if there is no winner in regulation the two competitors will face off in a submission shoot out where whoever gets the fastest submission or total escape time will win. More than half of Pena’s wins come from variations of chokes from the back. Considering EBI’s ruleset, that should mean that Pena has an awesome opportunity to finish Craig in overtime if it makes that far.

Pena has also proven to be extremely difficult to submit, let alone pass his guard. In Pena’s last match he got a decision win over Nicky Rodriguez in an event that could have gone either way. That match showed Pena playing guard and trying to counter Rodriguez’s submission attempts to sweep him, or take his back. In Pena’s two wins over Gordon Ryan he showed a special ability to turn leg lock attempts into back takes. This could pose a unique challenge to Jones and his preferred submission.

While a win for Jones could yield funny jokes, it shouldn’t really matter for most fans to see who wins between him and Pena. What’s important is seeing a professional grappler find unique ways to build a brand, earn a living wage, and begin accumulating wealth that isn’t dependent on their winning matches.

In the combat sports world of so little upside and few lasting champions, Jones has managed to carve out a unique niche that puts him in a no lose situation. How can anyone root against that?