Craig Jones: Jiu Jitsu, $2 Million Prize, CJI, ADCC, Ukraine & Trolling

I like to match looks from time to time. Thank you.

When you brought the $1 million in cash on Rogan's podcast, did you have security with you? We had security, but only by Joe Rogan's request. He said, "You're really going to bring it? Do you have security?" I said, "No." He's like, "Don't worry about it. I'll send my security."

We're in Kazakhstan. We're doing some filming in Kazakhstan, and obviously Borats still a very traumatic memory for them, and some of my jokes felt like they don't go as well in that neck of the woods. We had some difficulty filming out there. We filmed this horse game. Have you ever heard of Kok boru? Thanks to you, yes.

I think they learned to love me and then to hate me again. It was a bit of all encompassing relationship for the Kazak people. But we basically abandoned ship. It was proven too difficult to film some things, some sensitive subjects over there. I said, "Where should we go next?" I just looked at the map and I was like, "We're near Ukraine." Ukraine was a place that I'd been offered to teach a Jujitsu seminar prior to I guess the full scale war commencing and we're looking for a bit of adventure, something interesting to film. Following the news, obviously very controversial in the news, people have very strong opinions. I was like, " Let's go over there. Let's do a charity event. Let's do something. Let's train with the people and really experience of ourselves." We set up the seminar. Turned out to be the biggest seminar for Jujitsu in Ukraine history. Which is wild considering obviously they are at war. But everyone came together to support it. One of the soldiers there, one of my friends there, good friend now, who's on the front line, he made a comment on there.

Yeah, that would've been a nice way to the top. Luckily, for me, most of the places I travel to, jiu-jitsu gives me access to so many different individuals, it's super bizarre. Oligarchs, royalty, I guess, tech wizards, it's a strange group of people, a code around the world of just I get strange access just for being good at wrestling dudes. Yeah, martial arts, there's a code and there's a respect, a mutual respect. Even if you don't know anything about the other person, if you've both have done martial arts, there's similar things with judo, with jiu-jitsu, with grappling, all of that. I don't know what that is.

Yeah. Speaking of which, let's talk about CJI. You're putting on the CJI tournament, it's in about a week, same weekend as ADCC, $3 million budget, two divisions, two super fights, winner of each division gets $1 million, everyone gets $10,000. How do you even say that? Plus one? 10,000 plus one, yeah.

But you can watch all that Friday, you could watch most of ADCC Saturday. And then Saturday night, in Las Vegas, I'll be doing what many men have done before and that is wrestling a giant woman. Can you speak to that? How are you preparing for this moment of violence on a Saturday night with Gabi Garcia?

So, we're using the angled walls inspired by karate combat. Karate combat did those angled walls. Those are awesome. You're calling it the alley. That's really, really interesting. So, it's like in a pit, I guess, and the angled walls are-

Was there ever any chance that Gordon Ryan would enter? I don't think so. I don't think so.

Can you just speak to your trolling? Is there underneath it all? Is there just a respect the human beings you go after? For sure. They have to be worthy of being attacked. You know what I mean?

What's your relationship like with Mo the organizer of ADCC? I mean, it's been a love-hate relationship. I guess that...

So, I saw B-Team videos of the CJI camp, people training super hard. So, you aside who don't seem to do things in a standard way, what does it take to sort of put yourself in a peak shape, peak performance for a huge event like the CJI or the ADCC? I mean, psychologically, it's really, really brutal. For me, anytime I'm leading up to any event of any meaningful significance, it's horrible on a psychological level because you're always thinking about, "Are you training enough? Are you doing enough?" If you feel any signs of sickness, injury, the stress levels increase, your sleep quality decreases, it's all those little subtle things that's so hard to mitigate.

Somebody on Reddit asked, "How many legs did you break in Eastern Europe?" Three or four.

So speaking of which, just for the hobbyist, for a person just starting out, what wisdom can you provide? Say, you were tasked with coaching a beginner, a hobbyist beginner. How would you help them become good in a year? What would be the training regimen? What would be their approach? Mental, physical in terms of practice in Jiu-Jitsu. I mean honestly picking safe training partners and trying to understand the positions and not just freaking out. You might escape if you freak out, but you also might be stuck in something and you injure yourself. So I think if you can... It's just about longevity. If you can find a pace to train at and a sort of intensity and the right people you could potentially train five years without injury. It's really about how you move. If you are always moving in an explosive way, eventually you're going to do that from a position in which you can't move and then something's going to tear. And you also want to be able to trust training partners to not go too crazy and inflict too much pain. You know what I mean? It's like, yeah, I think I've managed to avoid a lot of injuries. I just never roll too athletically, explosively. I think I'm probably incapable of moving at that rate of speed.

Yeah. What your relationship has been like with Volkanovski, like what have you learned about martial arts, about grappling in different domains? Just training with him. I mean for me personally, what's so interesting about Volkanovski is his, I guess where he came from. It's like you have pre-existing ideas of what a UFC champion is. Again, I would say it's similar to when I started training Jiu-Jitsu and I first traveled to America and got to train with some really famous people. You realize how relatable they are in some aspects. Volkanovski trains a freestyle and it is humble beginnings. Humble origins. It's a small gym in a small sort of beach side city. They're run on puzzle mats. You know what I mean? If you think UFC champion, you don't think puzzle mat gym, you know what I mean? He's not training at American Top Team, he's not at one of these big gyms. So to me it just shows what you're capable of through hard work and sort of self-educating in such an isolated place.

What do you think, you as the wise sage of Jiu-Jitsu, if you look 10, 20 years out, how do you think the game is going to evolve? The art of it. The art of it. I mean, I think obviously people are going to keep innovating, perfecting certain things, throwing out information, bad sort of techniques, bad sort of... But I mean it's so hard to predict. It's like that's the game of making money off the instructionals is predicting where we go next. It's so, so difficult.

So what percentage of athletes would you say are on steroids? Is it a hundred percent? Anyone that's ever beaten me, they're taking more steroids than me. I don't know. I wanted to test them, but not to do anything bad, but just in the name of science to see what people are running. It's so hard to say because you train with people and they don't even tell you what they're on. I tell the world what I'm on and they go, "Look at you, you're not taking any steroids." It's like such a secret thing. I personally think it's almost impossible to say, but occasionally you look at a guy and you're pretty certain.

Oh, good. Thank you. Thank you. Now I know. So given all the places you've gone, all the people you've seen recently, what gives you hope about this whole thing we've got going on? About humanity, about this world? We start war sometimes. We do horrible things to each other sometimes. Amidst all that. What gives you hope? That you can still make fun of anything. As long as it's funny. That's what I'm fighting for. People talk about cancel culture. I just think the joke wasn't funny enough. Had poor delivery.