BJJ icon Craig Jones announced earlier this year that he would personally contribute $48,000 to close the prize money gap between men and women at ADCC 2026, and it was widely received as a meaningful gesture from one of the sport’s most prominent figures.
But that pledge is now off the table. In a video statement addressed directly to female competitors, Jones confirmed he is withdrawing his commitment.
The reason, he says, centers on Izaak Michell, a former member of the Kingsway gym and a well-known name in submission grappling circles, who remains on ADCC’s active competitor list despite facing serious legal exposure in the United States.
“One of the competitors has an active open arrest warrant in Hayes County for SA,” Jones said. “February 26, he received a second arrest warrant against a second individual.”
According to Jones, the organization has been made aware of the situation and has not acted. “ADCC are aware of this,” he said. “I’ve been asking them to no response.”
Michell, who currently resides in Queensland, Australia, has not been taken into custody. Jones has noted that extradition is not expected, given the budgetary constraints facing the relevant Texas law enforcement agencies. Through posts on his confirmed Reddit account, Jones has previously stated that more than twenty women have come forward with allegations against Michell.
Jones was pointed in his reasoning for pulling the pledge. “I do not want to prop up an organization that doesn’t value women,” he said. “This isn’t virtue signaling like the majority of my audience. This is a safety issue.”
He was equally candid about his frustration with the sport’s lack of institutional accountability. “I really cannot understand how we’ve ended up here in this sport,” he said. “I cannot for the life of me understand why he sits on the ADCC active competitors list. Somebody explain it.”
Jones has assured the grappling community that the funds will not simply vanish. “I promise to you that that $48,000, we will find a way to give back to the women of the sport,” he said.
Now Gordon Ryan has posted on his social media and offered a pointed counter-narrative to Jones’ positioning as a defender of women in grappling.
Ryan contends that Jones’ first event did not feature a women’s division at all, despite having no financial justification for the omission. At his second event, Ryan claims, female athletes were not compensated at the same rate as their male counterparts.
Ryan further alleges that Kingsway athletes were denied a rightful victory and a substantial financial prize as a result of Jones’ decisions.
For months, according to Ryan, Jones had been publicly and privately insisting that Kingsway made a grave error by removing Michell from the gym, arguing that the decision had cost the community its clearest opportunity to locate him. The thrust of Jones’ position, as Ryan characterizes it, was that Michell had effectively disappeared as a consequence of that removal.
According to Ryan, if Jones is now publicly asserting that Michell is registered to compete at ADCC, then Michell’s whereabouts and schedule would be known well in advance, to the day and location.
Ryan challenges Jones on this directly: if Jones had genuinely spent months insisting that tracking Michell down was the priority, a confirmed appearance on an international competition roster would represent precisely the window of opportunity Jones claimed had been closed.
Calling for Michell’s removal from ADCC’s competitor list, Ryan argues, would eliminate the only confirmed, public record of where Michell is expected to be and when.
The position Ryan outlines is that Jones cannot coherently claim Michell’s location is unknown while simultaneously citing his confirmed ADCC registration, nor can he advocate for a ban that would take Michell off the public roster while using that same registration as the stated reason to withhold funds from the women he claims to be protecting.
As of publication, ADCC has not released any statement regarding Michell’s status on its competitor list.
