Daniel Cormier just provided the roadmap for understanding why UFC BJJ has been so hostile to other promotions. The former two-division champion’s recent comments about college wrestling salaries don’t just explain the disappearance of American wrestlers from MMA’s elite ranks—they expose the exact vulnerability that Craig Jones and his grappling revolution are exploiting.
Cormier’s revelation is stark: collegiate wrestlers who once earned $750 to $1,000 per month—essentially competing for “food and housing”—now command $100,000 to $400,000 annually. Elite high school prospects are pulling six figures before even stepping on a college mat.
“I used to think it was impossible that there would be no American MMA stars in the UFC pound-for-pound top 10. But now there really isn’t a single one,”
Cormier explained during the UFC 322 weigh-in show, half-jokingly blaming Jon Jones for leaving the rankings.
“What’s kil ling us is that colleges started paying wrestlers. In the last 5 years they’ve started paying really well.”
In the past five years, only Bo Nickal and Gable Steveson made the transition from elite wrestling to MMA—and Steveson explored every other option first. Steveson has been unable to get the WWE fans behind him due to a legal loophole which allowed him to avoid criminal charges in 2019.
Meanwhile, the historical foundation of American UFC dominance reads like a wrestling roster: Jones, Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, Chris Weidman, Henry Cejudo, and Cormier himself.
“All the American top MMA stars who were in the P4P rankings were wrestlers,”
Cormier noted.
“And now there’s no reason for them to go.”
The financial calculus that changed everything for wrestlers is now playing out in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Consider the math facing a UFC newcomer: $12,000 to show, $12,000 to win. Even for established contenders like Arman Tsarukyan, who disclosed he earns approximately $300,000 per victory, the reality is harsh. After 30% in taxes, 5% to his gym, 5% to trainers, and 15% to management, he’s left with roughly 45% of his purse—and that’s before covering two to three months of training camp expenses.
“If you lost, you earned something like 100 [thousand],”
Tsarukyan explained.
“Well, 30 is not bad. Then the trainer ends up cutting off almost 50%. Five for the gym, five for the trainers, 15 managers, 2-3 months of preparation and you break even.”
This is the economic model the UFC has defended fiercely. When Khabib Nurmagomedov retired, Dana White essentially blamed the MMA star’s financial success for his departure.
“We got a Muslim world champion, but the problem was that he went on a Muslim countries tour. He hit Saudi, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and they rained [money] on him,”
White said.
“He made so much money that he didn’t have to compete anymore.”
This is where Jones’s Craig Jones Invitational becomes more than just a grappling tournament—it becomes an existential threat to the UFC’s feeder system.
CJI’s 2024 inaugural event awarded $1 million to each of two division winners from a 16-person bracket. The 2025 team event offered $1 million to the winning team, with every single competitor receiving $10,000 just to show up. That show money alone nearly matches what a UFC newcomer makes for an actual bout—and the grapplers don’t have to absorb head trauma or risk an 0-1 record to collect it.
The parallel to Cormier’s wrestling economics is unmistakable. Just as collegiate wrestling programs discovered that paying athletes could retain talent that might otherwise pursue MMA, Jones is demonstrating that elite grapplers no longer need to transition to the UFC to make life-changing money.
Cormier identified the precise type of athlete MMA needs to survive:
“To succeed in MMA, you need a special type of wrestler—someone who still wants to prove something.”
In other words, someone hungry enough to endure the UFC’s economic model despite having elite grappling credentials.
The UFC has historically depended on a steady stream of financially desperate, world-class grapplers willing to add striking and compete in a more dangerous sport for a chance at financial security. Wrestling provided this pipeline for decades. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and other grappling arts were expected to do the same.
Jones is systematically dismantling that assumption. By offering immediate, guaranteed money that rivals or exceeds what mid-tier UFC stars earn—without the health risks, without the managerial cuts, without the years of climbing through the ranks—he’s providing exactly what college wrestling programs now offer: a viable alternative to the traditional path.
