bjjproblems.com — every take, since 2013
Every snarky take on real BJJ news.
Jun 17, 2026, 12:59 PM
Fake Cauliflower Ear Surgery Is Trending in Russia — Men Are Paying $80 Per Ear to Look Like Grapplers Without Touching a Mat
Cauliflower ear has a waitlist now. Clinics across the country are booking out four weeks in advance for a procedure where technicians fracture your ear cartilage on purpose.
Jun 17, 2026, 12:28 PM
Adele Fornarino Blames Australian Ego for Not Being Able to Sell Seminars in Her Own Country
Adele Fornarino is the first Australian to win at ADCC. Not just her weight division — the absolute too.
Jun 17, 2026, 11:58 AM
The Competition Scene Is Pricing Out The People Who Made It: $150 Entry Fees, Shrinking Brackets, And The Hobbyist Exodus Nobody Is Naming
Your bracket has three people. Three years ago it had eight.
Jun 17, 2026, 11:22 AM
BJJ World Champion Brenda Larissa Says It Started When She Was 12 — And Her Sister Was Next
She said he told her she would have a great future. Brenda Larissa was 12.
Jun 17, 2026, 10:13 AM
Tom DeBlass: 'You're Winning Just By Showing Up' — Message to Non-Competitive Grapplers
In a world obsessed with gold medals, championship belts, and highlight reels, it’s easy for the average grappler — you know, the one with a mortgage and a day job, NOT a sponsored acai regimen — to feel like they’re not 'doing it right.' Every day, our feeds are choked with foot
Jun 17, 2026, 09:42 AM
BJJ Apparel Brand BRAUS Asked A Critic To Sign An NDA Before Sharing Charity Receipts — Roger Gracie And Thalison Soares Are Both Sponsored
Sign this NDA, then we'll show you the receipts. That is a real sentence in a real exchange between BRAUS, the BJJ apparel brand that sponsors Roger Gracie, Thalison Soares, and the ADCC, and Benjamin Marks, the Australian critic who runs Partizan Media.
Jun 17, 2026, 09:11 AM
The Man Who Beat Carlson Gracie Is Reportedly Living On Student Donations. Robert Drysdale Wants To Know Why The Sport Doesn't Care.
Quick test for the BJJ obsessive in your gym: name the only man to ever get his hand raised against Carlson Gracie. Most black belts can't do it, which is exactly Robert Drysdale's point.
Jun 17, 2026, 08:39 AM
Matt Serra Says The First American Gracie Black Belt Was 'Disowned' In The Very Next Family Newsletter
The first American BJJ black belt didn't survive to the next newsletter. That's not a metaphor.
Jun 17, 2026, 08:08 AM
Half The Community Just Realized Their Gym Is Running The Lloyd Irvin Sales Playbook — No Pricing, No Schedule, No Way Out
You walk into the gym. The website didn't tell you the price.
Jun 17, 2026, 07:37 AM
McGregor vs Holloway Is 'All But Official' for UFC 329 — A 13-Year Rematch Where Both of Them Now Have a BJJ Black Belt
Thirteen years is a long time to wait for a rematch that nobody asked for. Then again, nobody asked for the first one to go three rounds either — and that one ended with Conor McGregor limping out of a Boston cage on a knee that popped in round two.
Jun 16, 2026, 10:54 PM
American Black Belt Flies to Tbilisi For 'Real' BJJ Training — Both Gyms He Visits Are Watching the Same Lachlan Giles Tutorial His Academy Uses
The laptop is propped against the mirror. Someone queued up a Lachlan Giles tutorial — the half guard anthology, volume four by the look of it.
Jun 16, 2026, 10:23 PM
Anthony Bourdain's Secret BJJ Account and the Man Hollywood Never Filmed
A24 is making a movie about Anthony Bourdain. The film is Tony, directed by Matt Johnson, starring Dominic Sessa as a young Bourdain in a 1976 summer in Provincetown — cooking jobs, drinking, the early outline of a man who would spend the next four decades eating his way across e
Jun 16, 2026, 09:53 PM
Black Belt Calls Gym-Branded Gi Mandates 'Outdated And Unamerican' — Names New York Academy That Forces Members To Wear Blue Gis On Saturdays And Buy Their Own Brand
Some gyms make you wear blue on Saturdays. A New York gym (the source didn't name it) enforces this, per a BJJDoc report.
Jun 16, 2026, 09:23 PM
The Lloyd Irvin Sales Blueprint Is Still Running in American BJJ Gyms — 14 Years After His Team's Sexual Assault Scandal, His Tactics Live On
Go to lloydirvin.clickfunnels.com right now. A sales program for martial arts gym owners is still active.
Jun 16, 2026, 08:52 PM
ADCC Removed Its Public Invite List After Fans Found a Fugitive, a Nazi-Salute Account, and a Post-Cardiac Competitor on the Bracket
ADCC operates on the honor system. You trust that the organization vetting the world's best submission grapplers for its marquee event has done some kind of basic due diligence before emailing out invitations.
Jun 16, 2026, 08:22 PM
When ADCC Invited Josh Saunders Despite CJI's Public Exclusion on Character Grounds
When ADCC released its invite list for the year's championship event, Josh Saunders landed in the +99 kg bracket at what remains the most prestigious submission grappling competition on earth. It should have been a straightforward achievement story: a former professional rugby le
Jun 16, 2026, 06:06 PM
Jay Rodriguez Is Showing Up At Open Mats Again — Community Photographers Have Started Identifying Him On Sight
The defense was always architectural. He's not there during public hours.
Jun 16, 2026, 05:36 PM
Felipe Costa Boils 'How To Get Good At BJJ' Down To One Rule: First In — Roll Until The Lights Go Off
That's the whole formula. Felipe Costa, the guy who won an IBJJF World Championship at black belt without ever winning gold at any lower belt, was asked how to get good at BJJ.
Jun 16, 2026, 05:05 PM
ADCC Invited Josh Saunders to Worlds — The Same Man Who Performs Nazi Salutes on Video
It landed like a grenade that nobody wanted to pick up. Back on May 3rd, BJJDoc announced that ADCC had extended invitations to several competitors for the 2026 World Championship, and tucked into that list was Josh Saunders, slotted into the Men's +99kg division.
Jun 16, 2026, 04:05 PM
Tom DeBlass Said 'Don't Be That Guy' About Messaging Women — His Actual Argument Was About Consistency, Not Silence
Tom DeBlass posted an Instagram Reel about messaging women after class, and it did what these videos always do: split the room. Half the BJJ community nodded along, half felt defensive, and almost everyone missed what he was actually arguing.
Jun 16, 2026, 03:35 PM
Brazilian BJJ Coach Arrested After Surveillance Footage Showed Him Choking His Wife — Out On R$1,621 Bail Same Day
Something happened in the suburbs around Curitiba that should have shocked the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world but instead felt, to anyone paying attention, almost routine. That's roughly $300 American—somewhere between a Shoyoroll preorder and a one-day seminar fee.
Jun 16, 2026, 02:23 PM
Gianni Grippo Is Back in ADCC — First Invite in 11 Years, Won Trials at 34 With Zero Conceded Points
Nobody scored on Gianni Grippo at ADCC West Coast Trials. Seven matches, five submissions, zero points conceded across the entire -66kg bracket.
Jun 16, 2026, 01:53 PM
Adele Fornarino Is ADCC Absolute Champion. She Can't Sell a Seminar in Australia.
Adele Fornarino walked out of the 2024 ADCC World Championships with two titles: the -55kg championship and the absolute. She was the first Australian to win anything at ADCC, ever.
Jun 16, 2026, 01:23 PM
Carlos Gracie Jr. Got The Red Belt This Week — Whom IBJJF Once Demoted
On Saturday, April 25, IBJJF founder Carlos Gracie Jr. received his ninth-degree red belt at the Gracie Barra 40th anniversary summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Jun 16, 2026, 12:22 PM
BJJ Coach André Seabra Publicly Demoted A Brown Belt Back To Blue On Camera For 'Disobeying His Mother' — Community Splits On Whether Belts Reflect Skill Or Behavior
André Seabra hit the record button before he hit the belt. The Brazilian coach who runs Instituto Fazendo a Diferença no Jiu-Jitsu posted a video on April 14 in which he removed the brown belt from his student Igor, who he called his 'champion' on camera, and replaced it with a b
Jun 16, 2026, 11:52 AM
A Jury Just Ruled Ticketmaster An Illegal Monopoly — Meanwhile Grappling Fans Need Five Separate Paywalls To Watch Their Sport
A federal jury in Manhattan handed down a verdict on April 17th that should have felt like a watershed moment for any fan tired of paying gatekeepers. After a five-week trial, they ruled that Live Nation and Ticketmaster had operated an illegal monopoly, stifled competition, and
Jun 16, 2026, 10:30 AM
Strickland Says He Stood Up to His Abusive Father at 13 — That's the Fight He's Been Having Ever Since
Khamzat Chimaev posted a photo of Sean Strickland alongside his father and wrote: "You can cry that's okay… your father make you a girl." This is the same button Dricus du Plessis pressed at their presser — which is how du Plessis ended up getting rushed. Chimaev either didn't re
Jun 16, 2026, 10:00 AM
BJJ Apparel Brand's Charity Filed $0 In Goods-And-Services Revenue Three Years Running; Founder Demanded The Investigator Sign An NDA Before He'd Even Answer The Question
Three years of charity filings. Zero revenue from goods and services.
Jun 16, 2026, 09:30 AM
Active Police Investigator Melqui Galvao Allegedly Used His Badge To Block Misconduct Complaints For Years. A 13-Minute Voice Memo Did Not Care.
Melqui Galvao wasn't coaching as a private citizen. He was an active civil police investigator in the state of Amazonas.
Jun 16, 2026, 08:53 AM
Two UFC Champions Publish 'How To Spot A Good BJJ Gym' Checklists On The Same Day — The Floor Is Apparently So Low, This Passes For Insight In 2026
On April 17, 2026, Matt Serra — UFC 69 veteran, Renzo Gracie black belt, and owner of Serra BJJ in Huntington, New York — posted a checklist to Instagram titled "How To Spot A Good BJJ Gym." Does the head coach actually roll with students? How are newer students treated when they