Craig Jones has amplified concerns about UFC BJJ 3’s suspicious viewership numbers, lending his platform to expose what he calls “statistically impossible” metrics that could be misleading sponsors and athletes alike.
In a post now going viral across r/BJJ, r/MMA and Instagram, Jones directly called out the promotion’s claim that the Mikey Musumeci vs Carrasco event accumulated 9 million YouTube views despite having only 30,000 concurrent viewers during the live broadcast.
“Statistically Impossible to Achieve”
Jones didn’t mince words in his assessment:
“Credit where credit’s due, UFC BJJ had 30,000 concurrent viewers and it’s gone up to 9 million viewers. I don’t think we realize what Steven Tecci and Claudia Gadelha are doing to the sport. That is statistically impossible to achieve those views in such a short period of time.”
The Australian BJJ figure, who founded the competing Craig Jones Invitational, highlighted the core issue that our original investigation uncovered: UFC BJJ 3 allegedly gained 7 million views in just four days while accumulating only 25 additional comments and 1,000 likes.
“I don’t think that’s ever been done in the history of sports,”
Jones said.
“And hat tip, the sport’s in safe hands.”
Jones zeroed in on perhaps the most telling metric: the 0.1% engagement rate.
“0.1% engagement. 0.1%,”
he repeated for emphasis.
To understand how unusual this figure is, our investigation found CJI 2’s Day 2 performance achieved a 2.1% engagement rate—21 times higher than UFC BJJ 3 despite having only one-seventh the views.
“Where the Money Should Be Going”
Perhaps most pointedly, Jones addressed the financial implications:
“I’m glad the money that could be going to those fighters is going to views.”
This cuts to the heart of why inflated metrics matter. UFC BJJ asks athletes to sign exclusive contracts with the promotion and its partner Hayabusa, potentially limiting their earning opportunities elsewhere. If the promotion is presenting false viewership data to justify these deals—or to attract sponsors—athletes could be making career decisions based on manufactured numbers.
Jones made the sponsor angle explicit:
“And if those numbers are being sold to sponsors, well, I don’t know what to say about that. Bad business.”
Jones‘s criticism isn’t staying contained to his own channel. In a joint post with
BJJ World, he’s sharing multiple slides featuring key findings from our investigation, giving the research massive exposure across grappling’s core communities.
The post is currently trending on both r/BJJ and r/MMA, with thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments from fans expressing disbelief at the discrepancy between claimed views and actual engagement.
As both a competitor and promoter, Craig Jones brings unique credibility to this conversation. He’s previously spoken about why accurate metrics matter for athlete negotiations:
“As an athlete myself, I’m always looking for leverage in negotiations. We want to know what our true value is. If people were to inflate views or inflate comments, then it kind of does take a bit of the power away from the athlete.”
His willingness to call out UFC BJJ’s numbers demonstrates how serious these metrics have become. When even rival promoters feel compelled to speak up, it signals a problem too obvious to ignore.
Our investigation documented the impossible timeline:
October 7, 10:25 AM: 1.9M views, 300 comments, 8.8k likes
October 11: 9M views, 325 comments, 9.8k likes
In four days, UFC BJJ 3 allegedly accumulated over 7 million views while gaining virtually no engagement. VidIQ rated the video at 0.1% engagement—a rate suggesting artificial inflation rather than genuine viewer interest.
This isn’t UFC BJJ’s first instance of suspicious numbers. Our previous investigation of UFC BJJ 1 found a lot of suspicious engagement.
When live viewership peaked at 30,000 concurrent viewers, when Reddit’s jiu-jitsu communities barely knew the event was happening, and when the engagement rate suggests a video that organically attracted closer to 400,000 views rather than 9 million—grapplers have every reason to question what they’re actually signing up for.
Jones‘s decision to publicly support this investigation suggests even competing promoters recognize the need for accountability in an industry where athletes’ livelihoods depend on accurate performance data.
Craig Jones accuses UFC of viewbotting
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