Jacob Rodriguez was on top of the Jiu-Jitsu world around a year ago but has fallen quite hard since then, and is apparently no longer training at all. He reached the highest point of his career when he won a silver medal at ADCC 2024, and continued competing in superfights over the months that followed. Then suddenly in May this year, misconduct allegations emerged and B-Team Jiu-Jitsu acted fairly quickly to ban him from the team. Naturally the Jiu-Jitsu world was shocked and rumours about the exact nature of his misconduct started to swirl, prompting him to release a statement denying certain rumours and clarifying his actions.
Rodriguez’s ex-partner also publicly shared her side of the story, including further allegations of ‘physical and emotional abuse’. Rodriguez has now made a podcast appearance for the first time since his ban from B-Team Jiu-Jitsu, explaining first how he was notified of it:
“Nick (Rodriguez) told me to call Craig (Jones) and I was like okay… told me I was banned and then it’s one AM I’m half asleep so I was like okay.”
Almost any team in the world would have banned Rodriguez in the same situation and according to him, the upcoming second Craig Jones Invitational also played a role:
“They have a lot of stuff going on with CJI and whatnot… imagine if CJI were to lose some like sponsors from CJI, it’s a lot of money to lose.”
Rodriguez seemed understanding of the decision from their perspective, but he has since found that other teams have taken a similar stance:
“I can’t train in Austin specifically… anywhere worth going to. I think like I’ve reached out to there’s really like a handful of gyms that I would train at… but they’re just kind of like timid or whatever which I understand… from like a business perspective.”
That’s when he revealed that his lack of a high-level training environment has actually meant that he’s no longer training at all right now:
“I don’t train at all… for like the past… for like maybe two or three months I think… so yeah no training at all that was really difficult.”
The full interview with Jacob Rodriguez where he shares an update after his ban from B-Team was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Jits and Giggles podcast.
