Nicky Rod is apparently sitting out ADCC Poland, and the reason is about as bold as it gets. According to his own teammates, the $70000 maximum possible prize is not enough to get him off the couch.
The news came courtesy of the White Monster Podcast, where Nicky Ryan, Declan Moody and Austin Senos broke down the team’s ADCC plans. Senos was pretty blunt about Rod’s calculus:
“Nick Rod’s like ‘I’m not getting out of bed for $70,000.'”
To be fair to the man, the math checks out. Rod walked away from CJI 1 with $1,000,000, and his share of the team prize at CJI 2 added another $250,000 to the total. When that is your recent financial history, double gold at ADCC, winning your division and the absolute, nets you $70,000 total after ADCC increased the prize money this year to $20,000 for a division win and $50,000 for the absolute. As Declan Moody himself put it on the podcast:
“It’s a nice little payday.”
Nice, sure. Life changing? Not when you have already cleared seven figures on the mats.
Moody is the only confirmed Simple Men entry at ADCC Poland, having secured his spot through Trials. The rest of the squad’s plans are less clear. Senos and Nicky Ryan discussed the event without confirming their own participation, and the only other realistic entry point from the team appears to be Ethan Crelinsten, who may attempt to qualify through the final Trials.
Crelinsten, for his part, has had a big year of his own. After one of the more viral moments in recent grappling memory, winning the Polaris title and essentially asking UFC BJJ for a contract on the spot, he finally secured that deal. Whether he will pivot back toward ADCC qualification remains to be seen.
Part of what makes Rod‘s indifference to ADCC so easy to understand is that Craig Jones is reshaping how prize structures are viewed. With ADCC set for September, Jones has already started drawing attention by teasing CJI 2.5, reportedly presenting a $10,000,000 prize pool for an event planned sometime in July.
For athletes who have already received CJI payouts, it is difficult to ignore. Jones has proven he can get grapplers paid at a level the sport has rarely seen before, so when numbers like that are mentioned, it’s not surprising to see people hold out to get a chance for the opportunity.
Rod‘s absence from ADCC is not exactly a controversy. He most recently competed at UFC BJJ, grappling Eldar Cruz to a draw in what was a quietly surprising result given Cruz‘s relatively low profile in the sport. But ADCC still carries some prestige. The money is not the selling point it once might have been.
Whether that reflects how much CJI has changed the financial landscape of grappling, or simply a very wealthy competitor doing the math, is open to interpretation.
