Philip Rowe: 'There's No One Elite' in UFC BJJ — The Competition Is Not At World Level

Philip Rowe, the UFC welterweight who actually knows what a leg lock is supposed to look like, went on The Casuals MMA and said something that made everyone uncomfortable because it was completely accurate: "There's no one elite in UFC BJJ. There's no one elite around."

The statement was worth considering before reacting. Rowe wasn't talking about the Tacketts. He called Andrew and William Tackett "studs" — and they were. But he was pointing at something the sport had collectively agreed not to say out loud: the structural death grip that exclusive contracts had on competitive depth.

The breakdown was straightforward, if not pleasant.

The Talent Lockdown

The Ruotolo twins — Kade and Tye — were in ONE Championship. Not because ONE had deeper wallets (it didn't). Not because ONE's grappling format was superior (it wasn't). They were there because their contract said "no UFC BJJ unless we say so." Same reason nobody was seeing Mica Galvao in octagon-adjacent grappling. FloGrappling had locked her down. The ecosystem had created an artificial scarcity of elite grapplers, and UFC BJJ was operating on whatever was left over.

When Rowe said "there's no one elite," he wasn't saying the Tacketts couldn't grapple. He was saying the people who'd spent the last four years proving they were the best grapplers in the world literally could not show up to prove it under the UFC BJJ banner. So yes, the competitive field looked thin. It was thin. By design.

This was the problem nobody in the sport wanted to own. The promotion couldn't pay guaranteed elite exclusivity contracts like ONE could. So it cobbled together the best available athletes, marketed the hell out of the format ("UFC BJJ! It's a real sport now!"), and then watched helplessly as people with actual grappling lineage went to compete somewhere else, in formats that sometimes made more sense.

The Precedent That Explained Everything

This wasn't new. The promotion had been trying to own a grappling lane since 2023, and every time it got close to legitimacy, the structural flaw appeared. You could have the Tacketts. You could have some no-gi wrestlers from the MMA roster. You could have prospects. But you couldn't have the grapplers who'd already won the Mundials, the ADCC, the big stages. Those people had already cashed in. They were locked into contracts worth defending.

Meanwhile, the general MMA audience didn't know the difference. UFC said "we have BJJ now," and casuals thought the Ruolotos were fighting somewhere. They weren't. They were in Tokyo, under a different banner, with different rules, and frankly, sometimes more interesting matchups.

Rowe's critique was the thing that happened when someone inside the MMA ecosystem actually understood grappling deeply enough to see the gap. Most of the sport's media coverage treated UFC BJJ like it was something that happened, not something that failed to happen.

What Rowe Was Actually Saying

He wasn't mad at the Tacketts. He wasn't saying they weren't good. What he was saying — and this was the part that stung because it was true — was that the promotional structure had created a competitive format that proved nothing about who the best grapplers were. Because the best grapplers weren't allowed to show up.

Implicit in Rowe's statement: "I'm a UFC fighter. I understand the ruleset. And I can tell you with certainty that the person everyone says is elite right now — the person who won three straight ADCC submissions, the person who's been dominating the best grapplers in the world — cannot legally compete in the format that's supposed to be UFC's answer to 'are we serious about grappling?'"

That wasn't a hot take. That was an inventory report.

The Tackett Brothers Were Still Good

Let's be clear: this didn't diminish Andrew and William. They were legitimately talented. But there was a difference between "best available" and "best." The Tacketts were the former. The Ruolotos were the latter, and they weren't available.

So when Rowe said elite grapplers don't exist in UFC BJJ, he wasn't being unfair. He was being literal. UFC BJJ, as currently structured, was 90% grappling roster construction and 10% actual grappling competence. The roster was determined by exclusivity contracts, not by whether the best person in the world wanted to show up.

It was like if the UFC's heavyweight division only had access to guys under six-foot-four because the actual heavyweights were locked into a different promotion. Everyone would have noticed. Everyone would have said it. But in grappling, the audience didn't know who the real contenders were, so they just accepted that UFC BJJ was "a real format now" while the actual elite were somewhere else.

Why This Mattered Beyond the Format

Rowe's complaint was about structural legitimacy. If you're going to launch a grappling format, you either needed: 1. Exclusive contracts with the best grapplers (monetarily impossible for UFC BJJ's current budget) 2. Open access and the willingness to lose people to competitors (the reality) 3. Honesty about what you're actually offering (the thing nobody did)

UFC chose invisibility instead. It marketed Andrew Tackett like he was the standard for elite. He wasn't. He was the best guy who could be there that weekend, which was different. It was the "deep" part of a shallow pool.

Rowe saw it because he was a UFC fighter who also understood grappling deeply. He knew what elite actually looked like. He knew where those people were. And he was saying, on record, "The format they built can't access the people who make the format matter."

That wasn't trash talk. That was diagnosis.

The Real Problem

The Ruolotos would probably end up in the UFC eventually. Mica Galvao might. Someone would break those exclusive contracts, or someone would run their time down, and then we'd see what legitimate UFC BJJ competition actually looked like. But right now, in June 2026, Rowe's statement was airtight: there was no elite in UFC BJJ. There was talent. There was potential. There was the best available. But the actual elite — the grapplers who'd proven it at ADCC, who'd beaten everybody — were tied up elsewhere.

It wasn't the Tacketts' fault. It wasn't even the promotion's fault, exactly. It was the fault of trying to launch a credible grappling format without the budget or contractual leverage to make it credible. You couldn't build a drinking game around "every time UFC BJJ markets someone who's actually elite" because you'd never drink.

Rowe knew this. That's why he said it. And that's why he was right, and everyone pretending otherwise was just afraid to admit what the format actually was: the best grappling the UFC could afford to show you, not the best grappling that exists.

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

Sources

• The Casuals MMA — Philip Rowe appearance (July 7, 2025)
• Ruotolo twins in ONE Championship
• Mica Galvao FloGrappling roster
• UFC BJJ format overview