Ben Kovacs on Craig Jones and the Grappling Pay Ratchet

Ben Kovacs sits at the intersection of two things most people in grappling try not to think about simultaneously: money and honesty. As the general manager of FloGrappling and founder of the Guardian Jiu-Jitsu Foundation, he's the guy who has to explain why elite athletes are getting paid what they're getting paid, and simultaneously why that number is never quite enough. On a recent Jits and Giggles podcast appearance, Kovacs did something unusual for someone in his position: he told the truth.

The truth, in this case, is that Craig Jones broke something fundamental about the grappling economy in 2024, and nobody — not FloGrappling, not ADCC, not the athletes themselves — knows how to fix it.

Here's the setup: Craig Jones Invitational 1 (CJI) was supposed to be a tournament. It was that. But it was also a price-discovery moment, and like all price-discovery moments in capitalism, it hurt. Jones, a world-class no-gi competitor who'd already proven he could run a tournament profitably, decided to do something new. He paid his athletes at UFC-level rates. Not grappling rates. Not even high grappling rates. UFC rates. The kind of money where a competitor doesn't have to work a second job, doesn't have to do seminars at small gyms for $500, doesn't have to stream Discord calls to make rent.

FloGrappling and ADCC had been operating under an implicit agreement: elite grapplers were compensated in prestige and exposure, with the understanding that actual money was limited. You fought at ADCC because you were the best. You streamed on FloGrappling because millions of people watched. The pay was a bonus.

Jones came in and destroyed that assumption with cold cash.

Kovacs called it a "hugely painful time" for both FloGrappling and ADCC. That's corporate-speak for "we got undersold and everyone found out." Athletes who'd accepted FloGrappling contracts or ADCC invitationals suddenly realized what they were actually worth. They had a number now. They had proof. And that number didn't move backward.

This is the "ratchet effect" Kovacs described on the podcast. In mechanics, a ratchet prevents backward motion. It locks in gains. In economics, the ratchet effect describes what happens when prices rise but don't fall again when conditions change. Employees who get a raise don't accept a cut when the company's profits dip. Countries that subsidize basic goods find it politically impossible to remove those subsidies later. And professional athletes who've been paid market rate refuse to accept below-market compensation for the exact same work.

What makes CJI's ratchet effect so devastating is the scale of the price jump. We're not talking about a 10% bump from one competitor's improved offer. We're talking about athletes being paid three, four, sometimes five times what they'd been earning to do the same thing. At the same level. Against the same competitors. And then being told, after tasting that money, that they need to accept the old rates again because CJI was "special" or "unsustainable" or "one-time."

The athletes' response was entirely rational and completely ungracious. Kovacs noted that despite the financial windfall, athlete gratitude hasn't matched the payment increase. Competitors pocketed the money and immediately started demanding similar rates elsewhere. They didn't thank Craig Jones and say, "Well, that was nice, back to the basement rates." They treated the CJI money as a baseline and started shopping themselves against it.

From a business perspective, they were right to do so. If you can make $50K at one tournament, why would you negotiate back down to $10K at the next one? The work is identical. Your skill didn't get worse. The only thing that changed is the buyer's market position. In traditional sports, this is how salary escalation works. One breakout contract sets the new floor for everyone else. Baseball saw it happen in the 1970s when free agency hit. Basketball saw it in the 1980s when the Bird Rights rule created guaranteed money. Every sport with working labor markets goes through this moment.

Grappling just had it happen in a single tournament, compressed and catastrophic.

Here's where it gets interesting: FloGrappling and ADCC actually can't fix this. They could theoretically ignore the CJI baseline and go back to lower pay, but they'd lose every elite competitor who had other options. ADCC would get second-tier athletes. FloGrappling would lose main-card talent. So instead, they're stuck in a squeeze: the cost of elite-level content has permanently risen. They either absorb that cost or they admit the sport's infrastructure can't sustain it.

Kovacs's honesty about the "hugely painful time" was almost a plea. It's a way of saying: look, we know what happened, we know why it happened, and we're all going to pay for it now. The athletes aren't going to accept less. Jones proved less was a choice, not a necessity. And once that choice is visible, the old rates look criminal in retrospect.

The irony is that ADCC and FloGrappling could have done this themselves at any point. They could have unilaterally raised athlete compensation years ago. They could have recognized that elite grappling talent was undervalued relative to the content they created, the sponsorships they drove, and the infrastructure they supported. Instead, they waited for someone else to break the pricing convention, and now they're haggling with athletes about baseline rates that were objectively inadequate all along.

What Kovacs didn't say outright is the structural question: does FloGrappling's model actually support fair athlete compensation? Subscription revenue is finite. Sponsorships follow eyeballs. If FloGrappling is paying the new baseline and it's unsustainable, then either their business model is broken or the market is telling them something about their product. (Spoiler: it's probably both.)

For practitioners watching this unfold, the real lesson isn't about CJI or ratchet economics. It's that one competitor's success can reset expectations for everyone. Craig Jones didn't just win a tournament. He proved that the sport could pay differently. That's the kind of proof that doesn't go away. Athletes will carry that knowledge into every negotiation for years. Sponsors will point to CJI numbers as evidence that the market supports higher payouts. Fans will wonder why their favorite athlete isn't getting CJI money if the precedent exists.

The money stayed in play. Kovacs and everyone else at FloGrappling just have to live with that now.

So here's the thing: when an athlete refuses to negotiate down from the CJI baseline, they're not being ungrateful. They're being rational. Kovacs spent his answer explaining why FloGrappling suffers from the ratchet effect. What he didn't address is why the athletes should feel grateful for a rate that was objectively below market the entire time. Gratitude is backward-looking. Compensation is forward-looking. Jones showed the market. Now everyone's pricing accordingly.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Jits and Giggles Podcast — Ben Kovacs on CJI and the Ratchet Effect
• Craig Jones Invitational Official Website