When Craig Jones took to Reddit under his verified handle to announce a $10 million prize pool for CJI 2.5, the grappling community had questions. Chief among them: could this level of spending actually be sustained, or was Craig Jones Invitational about to follow Metamoris into the history books?
Jones, posting as u/johnbelushismom, didn’t offer a detailed financial roadmap in response. Instead, he addressed the concern head-on: “It’s free, I’ll do whatever the f**ck I want. Respectfully I love ya’ll.”
That reply, which earned over 1,000 upvotes on Reddit, essentially captures the philosophy behind CJI as a whole.
The concern itself carries some weight. A $10 million purse is unprecedented in competitive grappling, and some community members have pointed out that spreading that same funding across multiple years could do more lasting good for the sport than a single spectacular event.
The argument goes that five years of $2 million prize pools would create sustained pressure on organizations like the UFC to rethink their exclusive contract structures, rather than allowing those organizations to simply wait out a single blockbuster event before returning to business as usual.
Jones and the CJI camp appear unmoved by that line of thinking. When a separate commenter pushed back on the idea of adding more weight classes, suggesting it would give smaller competitors a fairer shot at the prize money, Jones responded with a single word: “No.”
For those hoping CJI would evolve into a long-term structural solution for athlete pay, it was never designed to be that.
As one commenter in the thread put it, “CJI has never claimed or expressed desire to be a continual long term project for sustaining athlete careers year after year. The point of CJI was never to create a stable infrastructure for athletes to make dependable and regular income from competing. The point of it was always to be f**kery, over the top, insane ‘break the bank’ type event. It’s an insane spectacle type show, and that’s the point.”
The community has largely arrived at the same conclusion, rallying around the idea that the event is a one-of-a-kind spectacle and should be enjoyed as exactly that.
The mystery backer behind the prize money remains officially unnamed. Speculation in the community has centered on Roger Ver, a jiu jitsu practitioner who recently settled with the Department of Justice for $50 million and has both the financial means and the sporting interest to fit the profile.
Others have noted that for a genuine billionaire, $10 million is closer in scale to a routine personal expenditure than a meaningful financial commitment.
What lends the CJI operation some structural credibility is its charitable framework. The event appears to operate under a registered nonprofit organization, which could offer meaningful tax advantages to whoever is providing the funds.
CJI 2.5 is scheduled for July 2026, will feature eight competitors across a single day, and will be broadcast for free on YouTube, continuing the accessible model that made earlier editions so widely watched.
Jones has hinted that the emphasis will be on competitors who will genuinely go for the win and who can hold their own on the microphone. He has also been clear on what drives his efforts beyond the spectacle itself, having previously weighed in on Reddit threads about athlete pay and the structural problem of underpaying competitors, comments that read differently now that a $10 million purse is officially on the table.
As of now, no competitors have been confirmed and the prize breakdown has not been detailed.
