Renzo Gracie had an interesting take on modern bjj during his appearance on “Jibber with Jabber“. According to Gracie, the answer comes down to simple economics: champions can make more money teaching than competing in MMA.
“What made jiu-jitsu popular when I was growing up, I couldn’t make money with jiu-jitsu,” Gracie explained. “I could teach, make my monthly living, no problem, but I couldn’t build wealth.”
The landscape has changed dramatically since then. As the Gracie family traveled the world teaching their art in America, Japan, and Europe, jiu-jitsu flourished into what it is today.
The financial reality for modern champions is stark.
“Today a jiu-jitsu champion doesn’t need to ” Gracie said. “You get the champion and you say let’s go to MMA, he goes how much I’m going to make? Oh this is a joke. I’m going to have to pay coach, trainers, managers and I make more money by doing jiu-jitsu.”
The numbers tell the story. A champion can do a live tour in Europe and walk away with 60,000 to 80,000 Euros, money they wouldn’t make until they had 20 to 25 MMA bouts.
“Anybody who has a school in America today makes $20,000 a month,” Gracie noted. “So you’re talking about $240,000. It’s the salary of a doctor.”
When asked why some find modern jiu-jitsu competitions less engaging, Gracie pointed to the competitive landscape.
“They the organizations grew, they have the competition,” he said. “I go to the competitions and I don’t see crowd to watch because they didn’t build something commercial.”
Gracie explained that organizations promoting no-gi grappling have invested heavily in promotion, creating the perception that it’s more exciting than traditional gi competition. Meanwhile, the gi competitions haven’t built the same commercial appeal.
The contrast with his generation couldn’t be starker. For Gracie, competing in MMA was always the goal.
When he was competing, there was no comfortable teaching alternative. MMA stars had to prove themselves in the ring because there simply wasn’t another path to financial success.
The modern jiu-jitsu practitioner faces a different calculation.
“Why am I going to go to MMA, have to stop everything, live for training, you know, be selfish?” Gracie asked.
“Compare that to running a successful jiu-jitsu academy. Many doctors make half of what a successful school owner earns, and the school owner doesn’t have to take punches or risk injuries in the cage. The financial incentive to transition to MMA simply isn’t there anymore.”
Gracie built his own academy into a powerhouse using lessons learned from unlikely sources. He studied Starbucks to understand customer service and personalization.
“They know the name of everyone, they tell them the name, you feel like they know you. The first thing they do, they put your name on the cup,” he observed. His solution? “Name on everybody’s gear. So every instructor had to call everyone at least three times by the name.”
He also learned that it takes an average of 32 days for someone to create a habit, so he expanded his beginner program to 90 days.
“For those three months I wouldn’t let him train a full training session, only specific positions and learning from every position and he never was uncomfortable,” Gracie explained.
The results spoke for themselves: his academy grew from 150 students to 450 in four months, then to 800, eventually reaching 1,500 students.
The financial success created a new paradigm. Gracie’s school became the top revenue generator in America, three times ahead of the second place school. This success story has been replicated across the jiu-jitsu world, creating an alternative career path that simply didn’t exist when Gracie was coming up.
The irony isn’t lost on Gracie. Champions no longer need to test themselves in MMA to make a living. They can build successful careers, support families, and achieve financial security without ever stepping into a cage.
“Very rarely you see very high quality jiu-jitsu in there,” Gracie said of modern MMA, “because they are not, if they reach that level like they going to do something else. They say well I’m going to go through this, I have to be five, six years giving my life to this to make the money that I can make every month.”
