Jason Nolf has just announced that he will now be retiring from wrestling in order to pursue his business interests and Jiu-Jitsu competition. Nolf is a three-time NCAA champion and one of the top contenders for a spot in the Olympics, but he will now be closing the door on that goal. The news will undoubtedly come as a shock to many people, as Nolf is still in his athletic prime at the age of 28 and had the ability to potentially secure a place in the US Olympic Team at some point in the future. He’s been outspoken about having that as his goal for quite some time, but now he’ll be focusing his attention elsewhere.
He announced his decision to retire on a recent episode of the Athletes Ocean podcast:
“I am retiring for the sport of wrestling. I’ve been wrestling for 22 years now so it’s been a really big part of my life… I have some new things that I wanna tackle, I just wanna officially announce that I’m retiring. I’m done wrestling.”
Nolf spent a little time reviewing his wrestling career first, including some of his favorite matches, before eventually explaining what was next for him:
“I’m moving to Austin, Texas. We’re gonna headquarter Athletes Ocean there, which is our company obviously. That’s probably my number one reason for moving down to Austin… If Penn State wrestling team, and all of our coaches and teammates, if they were in Austin then maybe I would continue to wrestle a little bit but we want our whole team to move down there. I think if we all move down there, it’s gonna help our work become a lot more efficient and we’re gonna get a lot more done. It’s gonna be exciting.”
Although Jason Nolf is retiring from wrestling, he isn’t retiring from combat sports altogether and will still have time for a competitive Jiu-Jitsu career. He will also be focusing on passing his skills on to the next generation at the same time:
“Austin is a big Jiu-Jitsu hub, and I want to continue to compete in Jiu-Jitsu so I think that’s a good place to go. And we can grow the Jiu-Jitsu side of (Athletes) Ocean as well. And last thing is I’m gonna start a wrestling club in Round Rock (High School), which is like 20 minutes north of Austin. I think we’re gonna call it Ocean Elite.”
Nolf only made his BJJ debut earlier this year but after that initial success, he appears motivated to improve upon it. It wasn’t long before he faced a huge step up in competition against Tye Ruotolo in the under 80kg division at the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational. Although Nolf wasn’t able to win that match, he gave one of the best BJJ competitors in the world an incredibly difficult time and showed a ton of promise for the future. He already has his sights set on his next competitive outing too:
“I might do the AIGA Qualifier in Los Angeles in October. Rene (Sousa) asked me to be on the Finishers (Sub-Only) team, so I might do that. That’ll be in Khazakhstan if we qualify, and the winning team gets $600,000.”
With the AIGA US Qualifier just two months away, he will obviously be hard at work preparing for it if he accepts that invite. With so many different elite Jiu-Jitsu teams located in Austin and his wrestling background being such a beneficial element to any training session, Jason Nolf will have plenty of different options. He was pretty clear about where he sees himself going for most of his training though:
“I think a lot of my time will be spent with the Tackett brothers at Fight Factory. They’re Christian and two guys that I highly respect the way that they compete, and the way that they live their lives. So I’m gonna spend a lot of time with those but I love a lot of the B-Team (Jiu-Jitsu) guys, I love a lot of the New Wave (Jiu-Jitsu) guys…”
The full interview with Jason Nolf where he announces his decision to retire from wrestling and pursue Jiu-Jitsu competition was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Athletes Ocean:
