Ethan Crelinsten had just tapped out his opponent in the first round of the Polaris 36 headliner in Croydon, England, when he decided the moment called for something beyond a standard victory speech.
Mic in hand on a FloGrappling broadcast, the Canadian submission specialist made his ambitions impossible to ignore.
“I had this belt for a while, and UFC BJJ, I want that f**king belt! I want that Octobowl, I want to be in there,” Crelinsten declared to the crowd. “UFC BJJ hit me up, I’m coming for that belt!”
FloGrappling had just carried his performance to grappling fans across the world, and Crelinsten was using that very platform as a megaphone to recruit himself to their most formidable competitor.
The irony was not lost on anyone paying attention.
What Crelinsten did not know in that moment was just how quickly his gamble would pay off.
“I knew I was going to do some version of that before the match,” he revealed in a later interview. “I got my sub and they were like interviewing me and I grabbed the mic because I was worried they might take it away. I said what I said and I thought like this will help get the ball rolling for a UFC match, but I didn’t expect it to work.”
Work it did. Within hours of the broadcast ending, Crelinsten’s phone was already ringing.
“The next day I got called for a match. So I’m like, oh wow, this is fantastic,” he said. “I had a missed call the next morning. So yeah, it was even before.”
A callout made on a Saturday night in England turned into a legitimate booking conversation by Sunday morning.
The backdrop to all of this carries weight when you consider how UFC leadership has viewed FloGrappling internally. Former UFC media relations head Ant Evans, who spent over a decade running that department before later working on their subscription platform, spoke openly on a podcast about the organization’s intentions.
“Me and Stephen Tecci wanted to go after FloGrappling in the worst way. We wanted just to smash them and we needed to get the crown jewel,” Evans recounted.
For those curious about what that future might look like financially, Claudia Gadelha recently offered one of the clearest public explanations of UFC BJJ’s compensation structure. Exclusive athletes competing four times per year can earn between roughly $97,000 and $155,000 USD.
However, the structure separates show money from submission money, meaning athletes who fail to finish their opponents leave a meaningful portion of their potential earnings uncollected.
On exclusivity, Gadelha was direct: “Our exclusivity contract is not to control the athlete, because we invest in the athlete.”
