William Tackett is one of the most decorated grapplers in the ADCC Trials system, having won the event twice. Yet as ADCC World Championships approaches, his name is conspicuously absent from the bracket.
Speaking on the FloGrappling Show, Tackett laid out exactly why, and the reasoning is straightforward: the money just does not add up in ADCC’s favor.
“Right now I’m making more money than I would make competing for ADCC and I’m getting like the right type of match per year that I want,” Tackett said. “Right now I would like this to kind of be sustainable for me for now. If I went to ADCC, it would be more like, okay, I either took like a big pay cut or like I’m not doing too well.”
The UFC BJJ opportunity was the entire reason Tackett relocated from Austin to Las Vegas, uprooting his family and leaving behind Fig ht Factory, where he had spent years coaching. He described the move as a chance to finally treat competing as a full-time job rather than something squeezed around coaching responsibilities.
“I’ve been a coach for so long, basically making competing like a part-time job,” he said. “This gave me the opportunity to really make competing a full-time job and put all of my effort into it.”
Part of that strategy has involved carefully controlling where and how often he competes. Tackett explained that competing for free, or for lower purses, undercuts his market value when negotiating with promoters paying real money.
“If I’m competing for free this weekend, then now I’m not really worth this much,” he said. “So if I exclusively limit myself to what I’m making where I’m making money competing, then now I can kind of drive my value up a little bit.”
That does not mean the ADCC itch has gone away. Tackett won Trials in 2019 and again when he and his brother Andrew famously took their respective divisions. He competed at ADCC 2022, where a first-round loss to Mateusz Szczecinski ended what should have been a full run at the bracket. That result still sits with him.
“I didn’t really get to scratch that itch, those two minutes I was on the mat with Szczecinski,” he admitted. “I would love to get back out there and really have like a proper ADCC experience.”
His preferred scenario for returning would be after he has stepped back from competing for pay, at which point ADCC becomes purely about legacy rather than livelihood. Until then, he says the math is clear: UFC BJJ pays better, provides the right number of matches per year, and allows him to build toward something sustainable.
