Over the last few days, the discussion whether ADCC or IBJJF is more important for the global growth of BJJ has been a hot topic between Mo Jassim and Robert Drysdale.
Craig Jones now decided to jump in the discussion as well.
He claims that, even though ADCC and IBJJF are both important for Jiu-Jitsu, the growth of BJJ can be attributed to one person more than any other.
To Joe Rogan:
For me, growth of the sport is how many people sign up for Jiu-Jitsu classes and go to Jiu-Jitsu gyms and try to learn.
I can’t say many people would watch an ADCC or an IBJJF and decide to start doing Jiu-Jitsu.
If anything, they watched a Joe Rogan podcast clip on YouTube and he spoke of the virtues of Jiu-Jitsu.And they thought: “Yeah, I’ll give that shot”, you know?
Jones says that both Joe Rogan and Eddie Bravo helped rebrand BJJ into something that a “regular person” does:
Joe Rogan helped rebrand who you think does Jiu-Jitsu, because he gave exposure to people like Eddie Bravo.
Jiu-Jitsu is a martial art, often times you meet a Karate or a Tae Kwon Do guy back in the day and you were like: “This guy’s a f*cking weirdo and he’s probably doing this to hang out with kids.”
Or you imagined an MMA fighter and you were, like: “That ain’t me.”They exposed people to the idea that a different type of person participates in this sport and that type of person is a regular Joe.
You can be a regular person.
