Hywel Teague has recently been making noise about UFC BJJ‘s media practices, alleging that the promotion is paying Brazilian social media accounts for coverage.
“Something curious that I’ve learned over the last couple of years is that some of these independent agencies, media outlets, guys like BJJ Cria or Vitor Freitas Comunica, these guys will actually charge the events. Basically they will provide a service. It’s like, well, I will cover your event but you have to pay me to go.”
Teague went on to question whether this arrangement constitutes real journalism at all.
“Are you really media? No. You’re a sort of content creation agency, like a spokesperson. So there is no truly independent media, because those guys can’t afford to be critical of the event in any way, because that’s their client.”
This eventually led Teague to the following observation about his former employer on his podcast.
“FloGrappling is a media partner of ADCC. They can’t be critical.”
It’s a fair point, it’s also a hilarious one coming from him specifically.
During his time as General Manager, Flo became notorious for some of the most aggressively anti-community media practices the sport has ever seen. Athletes were restricted from posting their own highlight clips. Competitors were prevented from filming their own matches at events FloGrappling had rights to. The company struck footage they didn’t even record themselves. They auto-charged lapsed subscribers without clear consent.
For years, Teague was a central figure in the apparatus that enforced all of this, striking even seconds of independently captured footage and systematically curtailing the kind of organic grassroots coverage that had helped build grappling’s audience in the first place.
The crowning moment of the Teague era at Flo came in the aftermath of the passing of Leandro Lo. FloGrappling pressed Lo’s best friend to compete the very next day in a no-time-limit match. The backlash was severe and lasting, and widely seen as emblematic of how the company had lost the plot entirely when it came to its relationship with the community it depended on.
Teague eventually departed FloGrappling as the company’s financial position deteriorated, a decline many within the sport attribute directly to the alienating practices Flo pursued throughout his tenure. A decade of being the unchallenged provider of grappling content and they managed to squander nearly all of the goodwill that came with it.
There is also a separate deeply uncomfortable chapter that has nothing to do with FloGrappling. Years ago, Teague crowdfunded a documentary about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu’s red belt journey, raising over $17,000 from the community. The documentary that was never made. After years of silence and mounting pressure, Teague posted a trailer and promised to release whatever footage he had. Nothing ever materialized. Not a single frame has since been publicly released. The community that funded it has never seen a return on that investment. Or even a good will effort.
Now Teague is attempting to relaunch himself as an “independent” media voice through a podcast that averages around 100 views per episode. His co-host is the operator of the Polaris tournament and owner of the Scramble brand, a promotion that, it bears noting, is part of the FloGrappling network.
So to recap, the man questioning whether Brazilian social media accounts are truly independent because they work for the events they cover is a freelancer for FloGrappling, an employee of other promotions, and co-hosts his podcast with someone whose tournament runs on the FloGrappling platform.
The underlying issue Teague is gesturing at is real. UFC BJJ’s rapid ascent has rattled the established order and questions about how they cultivate media coverage are legitimate. Especially given their infamous episode where UFC BJJ most of the community hadn’t even watched had 9 million views on youtube.
The promotion’s athlete compensation remains a genuine concern and the sport deserves scrutiny of how UFC BJJ is being covered and by whom. But that scrutiny would land considerably harder coming from someone who hadn’t spent years building and defending a system that actively suppressed independent coverage, took $17,000 from the community for a documentary that never existed, and is now running an independent podcast while remaining commercially entangled with the very ecosystem he’s critiquing.
FloGrappling had an uncontested decade to build something lasting in this sport. They had no meaningful competition and a passionate growing audience. Instead, they spent that time trying to submit the community, locking down footage and burning through goodwill. Now UFC BJJ, a promotion with its own serious problems, is providing real competition and Flo is feeling it.
