Derek Moneyberg just revealed that he spent around $3 million paying for the BJJ and MMA coaches who have taught him in a recent years. Paying for private classes is fairly common in the combat sports world but even the wealthiest practitioners out there would be shocked at spending the amount he has on learning from some of the best around. The eye-watering sum has brought him into contact with elite grapplers like Gordon Ryan and Mikey Musumeci over to him, along with a whole host of MMA legends like Lyoto Machida and Andrei Arlovski. It’s these regular training sessions that have resulted in Moneyberg being promoted to being promoted to BJJ black belt in just over 3 years.
Now Moneyberg has publicly revealed the full cost of his training journey for the first time:
“I spent millions of dollars… I spent about $3 million paying for coaches. I had the best damn coaching team in the world.”
Obviously his black belt promotion garnered a ton of attention when it was announced publicly, and a lot of it was negative. Moneyberg faced criticism from many members of the BJJ community all around the world, including several famous competitors. He actually spoke about some of the criticism he has received:
“Would it be easier for me to bribe 50 professional fighters, 25 or so world champions? Would it be easier for me to bribe those people to lie about me and say that I’m a black belt? Or would it be easier for me to just do training and get my black belt?”
In a final comment on it, Moneyberg echoed his first public response by stating that he isn’t putting any stock in it:
“I know what I did and my coaches know what I did. If I didn’t invite somebody over here to ask for their opinion, if I didn’t invite them to train with me, then I didn’t value their opinion too much.”
The full interview with Derek Moneyberg where he explains that he spent $3 milliom paying for coaches was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Overdogs podcast with Mike Perry:
