Gordon Ryan is the greatest grappler alive. He is also at the moment a man with a grudge and when those two things combine on Instagram you get a slideshow full of numbers that are technically accurate and strategically misleading in equal measure.
A little while ago Gordon Ryan posted a multi image breakdown arguing that ADCC has historically paid women a higher percentage relative to men than the Craig Jones Invitational. The posts had comments disabled on Instagram. On Facebook he was not afforded the same control.
The argument spread anyway as Ryan’s posts always do carried by his enormous following into every corner of BJJ’s online ecosystem.
The math checks out on the surface. What it obscures is more important than what it reveals.
“ADCC pays 3-4x as much to women as the crooked creg invitational, % wise.”
Gordon Ryan has used his platform consistently to chip away at Craig Jones‘ credibility. The ADCC women’s pay post is the latest iteration of that campaign.
Stripped to its core is this, ADCC has historically paid women roughly 12% of what it pays men. CJI 2 paid women approximately 3.3% of the men’s total. Therefore ADCC has been a better deal for women.
The problem with using percentage of men’s earnings as your metric is that it only works if both sides of the comparison are structurally equivalent. They are not and never have been.
For the better part of three decades ADCC gave women two divisions. Men had five weight classes plus an open weight plus a superfigh meaning women competed in roughly 16 matches per event while men had close to 96.
ADCC also featured no female divisions or matches until 2005, almost a decade in it’s existence.
When you restrict a division’s size exposure and match volume for fifteen years you artificially suppress the revenue it generates. You cannot then point to lower revenue as proof that the division deserves less investment. That is not economics. That is design.
Gordon Ryan measures what women were paid relative to men. He does not measure what women were given the opportunity to compete for how many matches they had or how many divisions existed.
Before Gordon Ryan’s time ADCC also faced a very different and revealing type of criticism.
Hannette Staack pulled out of an event saying the organizers did not treat women with respect in 2013.
 “I talked to the promoter of the event, saying that people, especially women, deserve more respect. The lack of respect occurs more for females, because they do not care much for us. It is the culture of Arabs, not to highly value women. “
That is a different category of grievance entirely one about prioritization dignity and structural inclusion.
Gordon Ryan‘s entire multi image post sidesteps it completely because once you bring it in the conversation is no longer about who paid a higher percentage.
Craig Jones has been vocal about women’s pay from the very beginning of the CJI’s existence before he had an event to promote and before it was strategically useful. When Ffion Davies went viral for publicly disclosing what winning ADCC gold actually pays Jones amplified the story and used his platform to make the disparity undeniable.
“The women’s prize money is 5K… I can make that doing a seminar”
CJI 2 did something that no major grappling event had done before, it made its viewership data public. The peaks and valleys of the livestream were visible in real time and what they showed was significant. The Mackenzie Dern vs Ffion Davies match and the Sarah Galvao vs Helena Crevar contest both tracked alongside the event’s male finales in terms of viewership. Women’s grappling given proper promotion and a main stage slot drew as well as the men.
That transparency is a bargaining chip, tangible evidence that athletes can take into contract negotiations. Previously BJJ’s economics happened entirely behind paywalls with no open data no public accountability and no external pressure. Craig Jones changed that structural condition which matters more for women’s long term position in the sport than any single pay percentage.
After promoter Mo Jassim personally donated funds to close the gender pay gap at ADCC 2024 meaning the organization itself did not do it ADCC 2026 doubled men’s prize money with no equivalent increase for women. Craig Jones stepped in and pledged $48,000 to make up the difference.
Then ADCC refused to rescind the invitation of Izaak Michell who is the subject of two separate SA allegations and has an active arrest warrant in Texas. At that point Craig Jones withdrew his donation pledge stating he would redirect the funds toward supporting women’s grappling in a different format.
Gordon Ryan has said nothing publicly about Michell’s continued inclusion in ADCC. This is notable for a specific reason, Michell trained at Ryan’s gym and at least one of his accusers is also a member of Ryan’s gym. Instead of addressing that situation Gordon Ryan directed his platform toward attacking Craig Jones.
Gordon Ryan is asking who has paid women a higher percentage relative to men. A reasonable question with a defensible answer given his math. The more relevant question is who has treated women’s participation as a genuine structural priority rather than an afterthought. That question has a different answer.
Gordon Ryan‘s post claims CJI did not include a women’s division in its first event. That is true. It also had no established infrastructure no broadcast deal and operated as an experiment testing whether a grappling event could be built around submission bonuses and open data.
CJI 2 added a 4 women tournament and paid those athletes and then published the viewership data that proved the commercial case for women’s BJJ on a major platform.
You can’t limit a division for 15 years, underexpose it, and then say it doesn’t generate revenue. That’s not economics, that’s design.
Gordon Ryan‘s percentage argument is real. If you accept its premises that the size of men’s and women’s divisions was equivalent that the structural opportunities were equal and that the pay gap reflects market forces rather than deliberate choices then the math supports his conclusion.
None of those premises are true.
ADCC paid women a higher percentage because it restricted women to fewer divisions and fewer matches creating a denominator small enough to make 12% look reasonable. CJI 2 paid women a lower percentage because it also paid men an unprecedented sum on a scale the sport had never seen.
More importantly Craig Jones created public viewership data that conclusively proves women’s grappling draws audiences. He amplified Ffion Davies when she publicly called out ADCC’s pay structure. He pledged nearly $50,000 to close a gap that the organization responsible for closing it had refused to close. He withdrew that pledge when the organization refused to remove an athlete facing serious allegations from their event.
This exact structure allowed for Ffion Davies, Adele Fornarino and Helena Crevar to ink lucrative contracts.
Gordon Ryan called that withdrawal proof that Craig Jones does not care about women. He did so on a platform he controls tightly enough to disable comments. He did so while remaining publicly silent on why a man with an active arrest warrant in Texas is still competing at the invite only event, a man that attacked Gordon Ryan’s student and his friend’s sister.
Gordon Ryan’s full comments:
