A Brazilian jiu-jitsu historian and ADCC veteran is sounding the alarm on what he sees as a fundamental shift in how success is measured within the grappling community, arguing that internet popularity has become a substitute for genuine merit.
Speaking on the Pura Connection podcast, the veteran competitor drew a sharp line between two versions of success that he believes are pulling the sport in opposite directions.
“If internet popularity were and is a barometer for success, Dillon Danis is the greatest grappler of all time with the most followers,”
he said, using the name as a direct challenge to his students.
“Do you want to be Roger Gracie or Dillon Danis? Who do you want to be? I only know how to teach you to be one because I know this path.”
The ADCC veteran, who described spending the last 30 years of his life fully committed to martial arts as both a competitor and teacher, said the shift toward commerce and online relevance has quietly corrupted the values that made jiu-jitsu worth practicing in the first place.
“I’m a martial artist who has to run a business to live,”
he said.
“I’m not a businessman who likes martial arts.”
He described a specific conversation with a talented student who had aspirations of becoming a world champion, but whose definition of success had already been shaped by follower counts and financial gain. When asked whether he would prefer to be a world champion living in poverty and anonymity or a billionaire who never earned anything on the mat, the student answered before the question was even finished.
“I hadn’t even finished asking the question and he had already answered,”
the veteran recalled.
“I told him, ‘You’ll never be a champion if you don’t change your mindset.'”
For the veteran, the problem is not popularity itself but what happens when popularity becomes the purpose rather than a byproduct. He argued that promoters and internet influencers who arrived in jiu-jitsu recently are now shaping its culture and future, despite having no competitive history or real understanding of what the art demands.
“Those guys who arrived yesterday shouldn’t even have a say in the future of the sport,”
he said.
“I think that the person in charge has to have lived through what we’ve lived through.”
He connected the current moment to a broader pattern in martial arts history, pointing to the grappling circuits of the 1930s in the United States, where arenas drew over 10000 spectators before promoters gradually prioritized entertainment over competition. He warned that jiu-jitsu is on the same path, with sensationalism replacing skill.
“Entertainment is a threat to the integrity of the art,”
he said.
“The purpose of jiu-jitsu has to be educational, and we, the jiu-jitsu leadership, have to keep emphasizing this point all the time.”
