Nicky Rodriguez has never been shy about saying what others are thinking. On a recent episode of the Simple Man Podcast, sitting alongside physical therapist Dr. Danny Spalding and teammate Ethan Crelinsten, Nicky Rod made an observation that cuts to the heart of something the grappling community rarely addresses head-on: jiu-jitsu, for all its technical brilliance, is not a sport overflowing with elite athletes.
“There’s not a lot of superior athletes in the sport,”
he said flatly.
Crelinsten agreed, going even further by noting that jiu-jitsu features “some of the least athletic athletes” in competitive sports. It sounds like a jab, but it’s closer to a structural reality, and the sport’s own economics help explain why.
Dr. Danny Spalding offered the clearest framework for understanding why this is the case:
“It’s such a skill dominance. It’s all about brain and you can overcome your lack of athleticism.”
That’s the double-edged nature of jiu-jitsu. On one hand, it’s a profound testament to technical mastery, a sport where a smaller, older, or physically limited practitioner can genuinely neutralize someone far more gifted physically. On the other hand, that same quality means elite athletic specimens simply aren’t required to succeed, and so they often don’t show up.
Nicky Rod also pointed to match duration as a key variable.
“In a six-minute match the athletic guy is going to do better as opposed to a 15 or a 30-minute match.”
This matters enormously when you consider that ADCC regularly sees its finals pushed deep into overtime, stretching matches well beyond what any team sport would ask of its athletes. The longer the match runs, the more technique and conditioning specific to grappling take over, and the less raw athleticism matters.
The deeper reason for jiu-jitsu’s athletic talent gap isn’t philosophical, it’s financial. Former UFC heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier recently shed light on how dramatically the economics of wrestling have shifted. Collegiate wrestlers who once competed essentially for room and board, earning $750 to $1,000 a month, can now command $100,000 to $400,000 annually at the top level. The sport’s earning potential has transformed, and with it, the calculus for elite wrestlers weighing their options.
When the best wrestlers can stay in wrestling and earn real money, they’re no longer as eager to jump to MMA or jiu-jitsu as they once were. The top-level guys are staying put. Meanwhile, on the totem pole of combat sports earnings, wrestling now outranks both MMA and jiu-jitsu.
Jiu-jitsu did briefly eclipse MMA in pay, largely thanks to the spectacle of Craig Jones Invitational 1 and to a lesser extent CJI 2, but that moment proved to be an exception rather than a trend. The longer-term picture is far less flattering, grapplers are currently lining up for the chance to get signed by UFC BJJ for roughly $12,000 to show and $12,000 to win.
Those numbers make the career math simple for a true physical specimen. If you’re built like an elite athlete and have options, jiu-jitsu is probably not where you end up. The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, even MMA, all offer more compelling financial upside. The athletes who might otherwise become the sport’s athletic speicmen are being filtered out before they ever hit the mats competitively.
The sport is extraordinary. The athletes are skilled. But if you’re looking for the most physically gifted competitors in combat sports, you’re probably going to have to look somewhere else, and the sport’s pay scale tells you exactly why.
