With ADCC approaching, Jozef Chen joined host Declan Moody on The White Monster Podcast to unpack the growing list of notable absences from this year’s event…

Tying it directly to shifts in how the sport now pays its top competitors.

Chen, who competes at 194 lbs (88kg), pointed to how widespread the pattern has become:

It’s kind of weird because a lot of the really good guys are not doing it, even like just as a whole. Not even thinking about my division, but like 77..

Moody added his own examples:

No Diogo [Reis], no Giancarlo [Bodoni].

Despite the thinner field, Chen is still heading to Poland to compete, though he was candid about the financial reality of entering:

I literally paid like 200 bucks for the registration to go compete at ADCC and it’s like there’s no guaranteed pay.

The conversation kept circling back to paid superfight organizations as the driving factor.

Under ADCC’s current structure, a competitor can lose early, walk away with nothing, and receive no compensation for the trip – while the same athletes can earn guaranteed pay competing elsewhere:

A lot of these superfight events, I kind of see Jiu-Jitsu going in this direction as a whole.
I think that’s why a lot of the better guys are moving to these types of superfight organizations.

Moody framed it as a shift in how top competitors now weigh their own value, something that wasn’t really a factor before paid grappling existed as a real option:

It’s hard to get out of bed if you’re not getting paid. You need sort of a reason.
Obviously I love the sport and I want to compete, but it’s at a point now where I think competitors should recognize their worth as well.

Moody pointed to them as a sign of the sport’s overall growth:

There is money in the sport now, like huge amounts of money in terms of viewership and participation.
There’s a ton of money coming into the sport and memberships and things like this and gear.

It should scale up.

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