Craig Jones recently sat down for an interview with Jocko Willink and he dropped the bombshell allegation that ADCC are paying six-figure show money to certain competitors. The concept of show money at any amount is new to ADCC, as they haven’t ever paid people just to turn up before. The alleged six-figure amount is far more than anyone would have imagined, although the public already knew that show money was being paid to ADCC 2024 competitors. Jones was actually the one to leak that news to the public in the first place as well, as he shared audio of ADCC organizer Mo Jassim informing them they would be receiving a minimum of $2,500 each.
Now Jones made new public accusations, this time alleging that the promotion is paying certain competitors more than others:
“The first thing they did was they raised the women’s pay to being equal of men’s, and he did it easily after saying that he couldn’t do it. Then they started paying secret, different amounts of show money. So the prize money is $10,000, then show money started going out which is something they’ve never done before and that’s completely, I guess, the promoter Mo’s (Jassim)… it’s within his realm of responsibility to do that. But then the problem with that is, if you start giving different people different amounts of show money, someone like me is gonna hear about that and tell all the other competitors to now ask for more money.”
Craig Jones also put a number on the show money that he believes some competitors are receiving from ADCC, and it’s ten times as much as what the gold medalists in each division will win:
“As far as I know, allegedly some of those guys are getting six-figures show money, which is so crazy because the prize money is $10,000. So you get maybe $100,000 to show and $10,000 to win.”
Jones stopped short of naming any of the competitors in question, but if the allegations are true then it could only apply to the biggest names in the sport. From there, it’s pretty easy to pick out the handful of names in the ADCC 2024 competitor list who might be able to command such high amounts.
The full interview with Craig Jones where he discusses ADCC paying show money to athletes was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Jocko podcast: