At UFC 317, the most recent cage fighting lollapalooza, the viral clips and headlines were reserved for the concussive (literally) and convulsive (literally) knockouts. Not least, Ilia Topuria’s vicious pummeling of Charles Oliveira in the headlining lightweight championship fight.
But note, just as many fights on the card ended with submissions as they did KOs. Yes, they might not draw blood or oohs and ahhs, but the subs—the angles and the subtlety and the joint manipulations—can be just as effective as the blasting.
And, Dana White hopes, just as entertaining,
The UFC impresario—having recently announced a foray into boxing—is now trumpeting another new combat sports venture. TKO, the UFC’s parent company, is now unveiling a Brazilian jiu-jitsu league. Effectively, it’s UFC for BJJ, a league featuring a series of fighters in different weight classes, competing worldwide, albeit on the ground.
If BJJ disciple Mark Zuckerberg—whose Meta counts White as a board member—wants to test his mettle, he’s welcome. More realistically, this is for the black belts who want elite competition but don’t want to be punched and kicked.
An eight-episode series called UFC BJJ: Road to the Title launched on YouTube and the first official event was held in conjunction with UFC’s International Fight Week in Las Vegas. Joined by former UFC fighters and current senior director of jiu-jitsu strategy & business development, Claudia Gadelha, White spoke to Sports Illustrated about this new venture.
Some outtakes, edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
Sports Illustrated: I know jiu-jitsu figures prominently in the UFC origin story …
Dana White: Me and the Fertittas [brothers Frank and Lorenzo] bought the UFC because we became addicted to jiu-jitsu. We started to meet some of the fighters. I started to realize these guys weren’t what they were advertising. You know, these guys were smart. Most of them went to college. They were good people. They had families. And Lorenzo and I started to go, Wow, this, this could be big if this was done the right way. But that all started from jiu-jitsu.
SI: You took classes, too—
DW: From the first time we ever took a jiu-jitsu class, we fell in love with it. And when you think about the sport, when you and I grew up, your parents will put you in karate or taekwondo, right? And now Brazilian jiu-jitsu is the martial art that men, women and children are taking all over the world. It’s very fragmented. There’s big tournaments out there where these kids can actually make some real money. There’s a limited amount of sponsorships out there for them. What we’re going to do is we’re going to come in and add some structure to it, right? So, if you are the best in the world, you can come to the UFC and compete here and win a world title, and you realize when you end up with a UFC belt, it’s the key that unlocks a lot of doors and can create a lot of opportunity for people. The other thing that we look to do is make the sport even more mainstream.
SI: It was actually thought John Lewis was a critical figure in this whole story.
DW: Oh, 100% definitely. He’s the one that not only trained us in jiu-jitsu, but we started to meet a lot of the fighters through him.
SI: Right.
DW: Chuck [Liddell] and Tito [Ortiz] were two of them, and then Chuck and Tito asked me to manage them, and through that, I got into a huge contract battle with the old owner of the UFC, over Tito, and he flipped out and said, “You know what? There is no more money. I don’t even know if I could put on the next event.” I hung up the phone, and I go, “Holy s---, Lorenzo. I think the UFC is in trouble. I think they’re going out of business, and I think we should buy it.”
SI: So you always said, There’s basketball in one corner, football in the other, hockey and two dudes fighting. What are you going to watch? I get that. How are you going to sell two fighters rolling around with these nuances and manipulations and the sort of subtleties? It’s not two guys blasting each other in the face. This is much more subtle. How are you going to sell that to a mainstream audience?
DW: Think about it this way, right? These are the same questions I was asked when we started the UFC, and where you’re dead on is me, you and a lot of other people that are older [remember] the old John Wayne movies. John Wayne would hit a guy right? He didn’t jump on top of him and start pounding him in the face.
No, but John Wayne would do it, knock somebody down and go over it, stand them up, and he’d hit him again, right? So our big thing was: How do you explain jiu-jitsu? And I said, “This is gonna take f------ 100 years for people to understand this, right?” But I was wrong. And, you know, obviously, I ended up finding the perfect guy to commentate: Joe Rogan. He was educating people before the maneuver would happen. Joe Rogan was already walking you through it. And jiu-jitsu took off like wildfire when the UFC started to grow.
And with this, there’s already millions of people who compete all over the world, and our goal is to get millions more involved in it. And it’s just, listen, I don’t think I’m going to go out and, you know, this thing’s going to be a wildfire. This is going to be a build over the next five, 10, 15 years. That’s what I do. I get in there and grind. Listen, if I can get people interested in watching slapping, I promise you, I will get people interested in watching jiu-jitsu.
SI: Have you talked about where you’re putting the cameras?
DW: Yeah. So that’s all the work in progress now. So we created this thing—and I credit Claudia Gadelha—called “the bowl.” So the problem with jiu-jitsu, that makes jiu-jitsu boring is they have these flat mats, and when guys get to the edge of the mat, they have to drag them back in.
Also, a change in the rule set: Three five-minute rounds, 10-point scoring system. And if the fight doesn’t end in submission, the judges will pick a winner. You have rankings. You got world champions. You got guys who fight and work their way up.
SI: And you think you can make it so people are going to get it visually, even though they’re not standing up again?
DW: Again, if you look at Power Slap, what we did, we have more cameras at Power Slap than the Super Bowl does. We have slo-mo. We have every angle and we will get jiu-jitsu dialed in. It’s gonna be a work in progress in the beginning, but I promise you this: We will have this thing looking beautiful on TV within our first five or six events.
DW: Here’s what I love. This is Claudia Gadelha. She helped us build this thing and get it ready to launch. And you know, she’s one of the pioneers. Tell him your story and where you come from and listen to the story.
Claudia Gadelha: Yeah, so I was born and raised in a small town by the Amazon, and I watched my mom raising five kids and struggling to raise five kids. I grew up in poverty. Then I was introduced to jiu-jitsu very early on, and I saw jiu-jitsu as a tool to change my life, I decided to use jiu-jitsu as a tool to change my life, and I saw other fighters doing the same thing. So then I went to the best gym, four hours away in my area where I grew up.
DW: She was 15, she went to the freeway and hitchhiked, and a truck driver picked her up and took her four hours away to this jiu-jitsu …
CG: It’s called Natal by the Amazon. I lived in this gym for three years. And then I was selling sandwiches at the beach to make sure I could pay for food and to pay for my competition in jiu-jitsu, and when I turned 18 years old, I bought a flight. Flew all the way to Rio de Janeiro, because that’s where the best fighters from Brazil were. And when I got there, started training jiu-jitsu and MMA, I saw that jiu-jitsu wasn’t the sport that would change my life, because there was no opportunities back then, and then I started training MMA, made it all the way to the UFC, fought for the title, coached the Ultimate Fighter, and retired from MMA, and now I’m here in the UFC, helping them to build this jiu-jitsu strategy.
DW: Started in the small town, no money, hitchhiked her way over to this Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym, lived in the gym for three years, sold sandwiches on the beach, realizes all the best fighters in the world are down in Brazil, moves out to Rio, connects with [Carlos André Pederneiras de Castro] and José Aldo, and that whole team gets here, and now she’s an executive in the UFC. This is the kind of s--- that I love with where you know some young person who has the guts to try to make it and bust out of poverty, you know? And now think about, with jiu-jitsu, this will be an opportunity for many kids, many young people, too.
SI: Are you able to say what kind of money we’re talking about here?
DW: As far as what?
SI: What the winners are getting.
DW: So, so right now …
CG: We have the guys that are signing with us exclusively [and] they are signing a six-figure contract with us. And we have competitors in there making six figures already.
DW: You come in at a base, and you work your way up and you know, and as you start to build guys into stars, and as this thing starts to form, we end up with a … with a television deal, this could end up on TV too. So, you know, right?
SI: Why hasn’t this been done before?
DW: It’s been done before, just like UFC, you know, MMA has been done before. There’s lots of people that have done it, invested a lot of money in it, and that’s why it’s still alive. You know, one of the things people have to understand is all these other organizations that exist. It’s good for everything. And then what happens is, when we get involved, the tide rises for everybody.
SI: What’s the media play and where does this fit into the sort of the media rights deal that we’re all eagerly anticipating getting announced? Where does this kind of fit into the bigger picture?
DW: I think that this could fit in with one of the partners. However this thing plays out, and it’s going to play out either tomorrow or by September. I mean, you know how this stuff goes. Yeah, this could absolutely, positively be a part of it.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dana White’s Next Project Is Bringing Jiu-Jitsu to the Masses.