Popular UFC veteran Philip Rowe recently shared his thoughts on the launch of UFC BJJ and despite the fact that it’s run by the people who pay his wages, he was less than complimentary about the level of talent that they attracted. Rowe has generally been known more for his striking than his grappling during his UFC career but he has several submission wins on his record and he’s actually got firsthand experience of elite grappling. Rowe famously shared the mats with Gordon Ryan in an exhibition match back in 2021 and that isn’t even the only run-in with grappling royalty he’s had, as he also came up against Craig Jones at PitSubmission Series 2 when.
Rowe is actually one of the few professional MMA fighters who is a fan of Jiu-Jitsu as a spectator and when he was asked about the UFC BJJ debut show, the first thing he did was point our a problem with the promotion:
”Shout out to William Tackett and Andrew (Tackett). Those are my friends and they’re f***ing studs, and I’m happy for them. They’re going to keep smoking guys, you have no idea. There’s no high-level grapplers in there.”
Rowe later clarified exactly what he meant, picking out a few specific competitors he thinks would be tough matchups for Tackett:
”There’s the guy that won. Andy’s a good grappler too. But I love Andy (Varela), but Andrew Tackett bro? Like he’s… Mica (Galvao) is with Flo and the Ruotolos are in ONE (Championship). You need a f***ing Mewtwo to beat him. You need an elite guy to beat him. And there’s no one elite around so he’s going to be running through these guys easy and just running up the cheques.”
What Rowe highlighted here is actually one of the key problems with exclusive contracts, that the best in the world often end up in different promotions and cannot compete against one another. As the promotion’s welterweight world champion, Andrew Tackett is now going to be an important figure for UFC BJJ right now and it’s in their interest to find him the best matches possible. At present, his first title-defense has been booked against Renato Canuto and the pair will face off in the main event of UFC BJJ 2 in just a few weeks’ time.
The full interview with Philip Rowe where he talks about the launch of UFC BJJ was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of The Casuals MMA:
