Renzo Gracie recently gave his insight on one of the biggest changes that has happened in the BJJ world in recent years; that the majority of competitors no longer make the transition to MMA. It’s been an incredibly slow change but the outcome is undeniable, as it used to be something that every elite BJJ competitor at least tried at some point in their career. Today that isn’t the case though, and world champions making the switch to MMA is actually the exception now rather than the rule. It’s a topic that Renzo has personal experience with too, as he is a two-time ADCC world champion who also holds a 14-7-1 (1) professional MMA record.
The first point that Renzo made is simply that the amount of money available in Jiu-Jitsu back when he was coming up in the sport was only enough for a fairly modest life:
“What made Jiu-Jitsu popular when I was growing up, I couldn’t make money with Jiu-Jitsu… I could teach, make my monthly living, no problem, but I couldn’t build wealth.”
Back then, it was fairly easy to get into the UFC or other major promotions based on just your grappling pedigree alone and the money available there was greater than the majority of BJJ events. Now it takes at least a few fights on the regional MMA circuit before you get called up to a major promotion and each one of those will be less pay than what an elite competitor could command from events like UFC BJJ or Polaris. As Renzo explains, that proposition doesn’t look as appealing any more:
“Today a Jiu-Jitsu champion doesn’t need to [do MMA]. You get the champion and you say let’s go to MMA, he goes: ‘How much I’m going to make? Oh, this is a joke. I’m going to have to pay coach, trainers, managers, and I make more money by doing Jiu-Jitsu.’”
It isn’t just the money available in competition though. As many elite competitors will agree, most of the money in BJJ comes from teaching the sport to other practitioners. Any time spent training in the other disciplines that are involved in MMA is time taken away from teaching Jiu-Jitsu, and that adds an extra reason not to make the transition:
“Anybody who has a school in America today makes $20,000 a month. So you’re talking about $240,000. It’s the salary of a doctor… Why am I going to go to MMA, have to stop everything, live for training, you know?”
The full interview with Renzo Gracie where he explains why BJJ competitors don’t do MMA as often any more was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Jibber with Jabber:
