Tony Jeffries had a long career in boxing that saw him reach the podium at the Olympics and go undefeated as a professional, but he decided to quit BJJ as a blue belt. It’s surprising to see an elite athlete bow out of the sport at the most common point, particularly because he’s had the chance to train with some of the best grapplers in the world. Although Jeffries only started BJJ at the age of 37, long after he retired from boxing, he still took the sport relatively seriously and even won a local competition as a white belt at one point.
Jeffries actually announced his decision to quit in a recent video:
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve quit Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. After years of training, and hours of studying, and working with some of the best coaches in the world, competing, even winning a gold medal, and recently being promoted to my blue belt; I’ve had to walk away.”
When explaining why he chose to quit BJJ, Tony Jeffries started out by sharing an experience that will feel familiar to everyone who’s trained the sport for a while:
“My body was sore a lot of the time. When you train Jiu-Jitsu and you’re rolling, you get in positions that you think the human body can’t get in. With my legs above my head and all that. So with that being said, my body was sore a lot of the time… Actually most of the time, and after a day or two my body would be feeling okay, I’d be training again. But there was always that odd session where my neck would get, you know, choked so hard or something would happen with my back and I would have a sore injury for like two weeks… And I would just get on with it and I thought, you know, it’s all part of it.”
Obviously minor injuries and soreness are pretty standard for any combat sport, but Jeffries revealed that one particular incident was significantly worse than that:
“In October after a session I felt something didn’t feel right on the back of my scapula and my neck. I was a little bit sore the next day, I woke up and I was in pain and I did think you know after a week this will go. But after that week it didn’t go, in fact it got worse where I was getting tingling sensations in my fingers. I was getting numbing sensations down the right side of my body and I was thinking ‘Oh, this is a little bit more serious than I originally thought.’”
Jeffries started to consult multiple different sources like physiotherapists and chiropractors, but the problem simply did not go away. It continued to get worse and after 6 weeks of this, he was able to get an MRI and found out exactly what the problem was:
”What the MRI scan showed was disc bulges at multiple levels of the cervical spine (and) nerve compression. One of the nerves was coming out of the neck and when I was turning, my spine was crushing that nerve and that was causing the tingling sensation to shoot down my arm and because of this problem, this was causing muscle weakness down this side of my body.”
Thankfully he was able to recover eventually, after getting to the root of the problem. Even though Jeffries is now healthy enough to train, the injury has brought up other concerns:
“I have done a couple of sessions since I hurt my neck with my new blue belt on and I was just so paranoid that I’ll hurt my neck… Now I’m just so afraid of something like this happening again. I’m so afraid of putting my life on hold again. I’m so afraid of not being able to play with my children again and pick them up like I couldn’t do for so long.”
Although this is what has led Tony Jeffries to quit BJJ, he was open about accepting responsibility himself and is still am advocate for the sport regardless:
“I blame one person for this injury and that one person is myself, no one else. Could I have warmed up better when I was training Jiu-Jitsu? Absolutely. Could I have went easier when I’m training? Absolutely. Could I have had less of an ego and tapped sooner when someone was choking me? Absolutely my friend. I could have done all of that, would that have prevented this injury? A very good chance that it could have. Would I recommend you do Jiu-Jitsu? 100% I would, I think it’s amazing. I love the sport, that’s why I’m absolutely devastated that I’ll not be doing it again.”
Tony Jeffries shared the reason why he quit BJJ after receiving his blue belt in a recent video uploaded to his official YouTube channel:
