Josh Saunders Posted Nazi Salutes. Sport Jiu-Jitsu Decided That Was a Him Problem, Not a Sport Problem.

Josh Saunders is still sponsored. His coaching business is still taking clients. His Instagram still lists him as a jiu-jitsu athlete and business owner with tens of thousands of followers. And nine months after screenshots from his Stories worked their way through every BJJ group chat on the planet, Saunders himself has said exactly nothing.

The screenshots referenced "Thuleism," a German occultist movement that helped seed the ideological soil for early Nazi Germany. They also included photos and a short video of what looked a lot like a Nazi salute. No statement has followed. No apology. No "my account was hacked." Just the regular posting schedule, the regular coaching clips, the regular sponsor tags, like the whole thing never happened.

Which, for the sport of jiu-jitsu, it pretty much didn't.

The receipts

The original discovery happened last July, when practitioners started circulating screenshots of Saunders's Instagram activity. One post referenced Thuleism directly, framed with the tagline "We are their faithful descendants." Another post, reportedly a response to someone asking him in the comments whether he was far-right, used a visual answer instead of a text one: a still photo and a short video clip of what onlookers described as a deliberate Nazi salute. The photo-and-video move was notable because Instagram's moderation tools scan text, not bodies.

BJJEE covered it first with a relatively dry headline, "Josh Saunders Sparks Controversy Over Alleged Extremist Social Media Posts," and then escalated a few days later with the less ambiguous follow-up: "Jiu-Jitsu Star Josh Saunders Under Fire for Repeatedly Performing Nazi Salutes Online." BJJ Doc reported on the Thuleism angle specifically, flagging that Saunders had told his own followers that naming his "favorite historical person" would get him banned from the platform.

Luke Thomas, the MMA journalist, weighed in with one of the most direct quotes the controversy produced: "Overt Nazism in sport jiu-jitsu is bad, but alas, quite real." Anton Tabuena, another combat sports reporter, flagged the comment sections on Saunders's own posts after the story broke. The response from the grappling community was the predictable mix of shock, anger, and "well I'm not exactly shocked, have you seen his whole vibe."

For about ten days, this was the only BJJ story anybody talked about.

The response

Saunders never issued one.

Not a statement. Not an explanation. Not even the classic non-apology where you say you're sorry people were offended without admitting what they were offended by. Just silence, and then eventually a return to business-as-usual posting.

That part isn't unusual, in fairness. Athletes without a team PR apparatus often go quiet when their name trends for the wrong reason. What is unusual is what happened on the other side of the silence, which was also nothing.

The sponsors that stayed

Saunders's public sponsor list includes Gold BJJ, the California apparel brand that still hosts his athlete page on their website. Elevétion Health, a supplement company that had previously announced him as a sponsored pro, appeared to keep the relationship intact too. His coaching business, HPU Coaching, kept operating. His Instagram kept the sponsored-athlete formatting. His FloGrappling profile never came down.

The grappling community asked the obvious question out loud: who's sponsoring this guy, and how do I avoid buying from them? That question was loud for about a week. Then the algorithm moved on. Then the next scandal happened. Then the next tournament. Then a Craig Jones video. Then something about Gordon Ryan. And then the Josh Saunders conversation stopped being a conversation.

The governance that doesn't exist

Here's the thing that's supposed to go in this paragraph: "meanwhile, sport's governing body announced they were opening an investigation." You can't write it, because sport jiu-jitsu has no governing body. ADCC is a private organization that runs a tournament. The IBJJF is a private organization that runs a different set of tournaments. UFC BJJ is a promotion inside a publicly traded company. CJI is Craig Jones's thing. None of them have a code of conduct that covers an athlete's off-mat social media. None of them have a mechanism to suspend somebody for what they post. None of them are built to.

Every other combat sport has some version of a commission. MMA has athletic commissions in most states. Boxing has a dozen overlapping ones. Even WWE, which is scripted, has a PR apparatus that drops talent over this kind of incident within 48 hours.

BJJ has nothing. Which means when something happens that would have ended a career in any other sport, the only mechanism the community has is "are the group chats still mad, and for how long." The group chats were mad for about a week. Nobody got suspended. Nobody got pulled from an event. Nobody got dropped by a sponsor. The story just ran out of calories.

The part nobody wants to say

The Saunders thing didn't reveal that there are people in BJJ with far-right sympathies. That was never news. Combat sports attract every demographic, including a few demographics that are very loud about liking historical figures they're not allowed to name on Instagram. What it revealed is that the sport has no process for distinguishing between the opinions of its athletes and the reputation of itself. There's no mechanism. There's no appetite to build one. And building one would mean somebody has to be in charge, and nobody in BJJ wants that job, because being in charge means getting yelled at by everyone.

So we're left with this: a 120-kg black belt posted screenshots referencing the ideological roots of early Nazi Germany, then responded to a direct question about his politics by posing for a salute, and nine months later he's competing, coaching, collecting sponsor checks, and making no effort to clarify any of it.

That's not a Josh Saunders problem. That's just what "accountability" looks like in a sport that has never agreed on who's allowed to issue it.

The grappling community will remember this story for approximately the length of the next ADCC qualifier.

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

Sources

• Josh Saunders Sparks Controversy Over Alleged Extremist Social Media Posts — BJJEE
• Jiu-Jitsu Star Josh Saunders Under Fire for Repeatedly Performing Nazi Salutes Online — BJJEE
• ADCC Veteran Josh Saunders Says Mentioning His Favorite 'Historical Person' Would Get Him Banned From Instagram — BJJ Doc
• Luke Thomas on the controversy — Substack
• Josh Saunders athlete profile — Gold BJJ
• Josh Saunders Advances in +99KG ADCC Bracket — FloGrappling