Last week, Nick Rodriguez followed up on his $1 million tournament win at Craig Jones Invitational (CJI), scoring another impressive submission victory in UFC Fight Pass Invitational 8’s (UFC FPI 8) main event (highlights here).
Dana White was also in attendance as Rodriguez extended his record for most wins in UFC FPI history, but would he ever consider crossing over from UFC’s grappling venture to the actual mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion?
Nicky Rod’s wrestling and top pressure game does seem immediately transferrable to MMA, but unfortunately for fight fans, the Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) star and “Black Belt Slayer” claims he’s more than happy to stay in his lane.
“I’m a millionaire with no CTE — I think I’m good,” Rodriguez said during UFC FPI 8’s post-fight press conference (watch it here). “Those guys are a different breed. I understand my capabilities in jiu-jitsu and I understand what it would take to become the UFC champion. For me it would probably take five years committing to striking and then that takes away from some of the jiu-jitsu.
“I don’t know if I would love fighting, but I know I absolutely love jiu-jitsu, so that’s what I do,” Rodriguez added. “I wake up everyday with a goal in mind when it comes to training. There’s no need for me to take a different path. I’m making great money, and that money continues to multiply as I make better decisions.”
An athletic 28-year-old, with good wrestling and elite grappling could conceivably do well in MMA, especially at heavyweight. Although Nicky Rod does have a point that it doesn’t seem to be the best idea to make the switch now.
The professional grappling scene has been rapidly growing, and he’s among the few top BJJ stars — like his rival Gordon Ryan — who can make really good money not just by competing but also selling instructional videos.
It’s hard to fault anyone who could make a living without adding serious health risks, especially since many MMA champions have recently come out with stories about CTE symptoms and their desperate need for the UFC lawsuit settlement money.
Nick Rodriguez vs Gordon Ryan in MMA. Loser leaves town. Winner gets a pager.
I agree with him on a lot of this stuff.
The 5 years to work on striking that would lead to him being UFC champ is not one of them.
They’re doing $1 million BJJ tournaments now? Wow. Yeah he’d have to be pretty dumb to walk away from that.
That’s his way of saying he doesn’t like getting hit.
Fair enough.
You have to like getting hit to an extent to fight.
Only in CJI where the financial backer is shady at best. But a millions bucks is a million bucks.
But when replacing your knees, shoulders and back with robot parts thats allooooooot of money fast
^
This is the result of Rogan and every other media member exaggerating CTE.
95% of the people who are in the UFC will have zero long term life altering brain damage. Knees, hands, necks? Those are fucked. But it’s a dishonest approach to say every punch is brain damage and every fighter has CTE.
Ever since that goddamn Concussion flick with that killer Alec Baldwin and that uber faggot Will Smith.
People never shut the fuck up about it now.
They supposedly have a super-rich guy who’s fine with giving out boatloads of cash. The sport itself does not generate that much money in prize money from ticket sales and views.
But guys like Gordon Ryan, John Danaher, etc… are millionaires due to instructional video sales.
Rich Arabs
I wish some of the Jews would open their right wallets and make a bigger show. In the end they won’t, because Jews are all about making money
Stone cold Steve Austin doesn’t believe in CTE
This…
Demian Maia trained striking for over 20 years and he was never able to become a UFC champion.
For those that do not follow Boxing there was a former British super middleweight champion called Carl Froch who was known for taking a huge amount of punishment while spending a lot of time fighting with his hands down.
Thought for sure that he was going to suffer with CTE but since he retired he has been absolutely fine.
While CTE is real I do think it has been exaggerated to a certain degree IMHO.
Idunno, man. Off the top of my head:
Gary goodridge
Spencer fisher
Bj penn
Nam phan
Diego
Chuck
Bigfoot
Don frye
Stipe
Brandon schwab (only half joking, but it’s hard to tell because he’s always been retarded)
Maybe the term “cte” is controversial, but all of those guys are observably cognitively impaired. And i dont know how many there are that i just dont know about because they didnt get famous enough to be interviewed a lot and land on my radar. Is it 5%? i dont know.
Sure. There are a few other things at play here.
Those guys didn’t have 5 or 6 concussions. They had 30,50, or more. I’ve been around gyms a long time. Guys I know who ended up with CTE all had the vast majority of their concussions in training.
I’m sure there are outliers. But guys who get CTE were the guys who did stuff like get KO’d in sparring, take the rest of the round off, then get back in there and spar that session and not take any days off.
Rogan and these people are nuts with the Freddy Roach “if you get KO’d you should take a year off with no contact.” That’s not real life, and anyone who has had concussions or has been around fighters knows it.
Also I think Stipe is just retarded and several of the guys on that list also had serious substance abuse problems. Gary, Spencer, and Nam are the ones I’d say actually have brain damage. BJ is all over the place but listening to him on Rogan a few times in the last year he sounds just as lucid as he always has.
The term CTE is controversial, because it’s not even diagnosable when your alive. Very little is known about it, and people throw the term around willy nilly.
And it gets abused several ways:
- for people to act like they deserve more money for fights because “I’m out here getting brain damage every fight”
- it gives fighters an out to take days off they shouldn’t. These kids now get their bell rung in sparring, not even a concussion or knocked down, and they take 2 weeks off
It’s very dubious “science”. I knew it would be from when Rogan first had Rhonda Patrick on when she scared him to death about it and in the conversation he mentions people get choked out in BJJ and she was horrified and said every time someone passes out from hypoxia they have permanent brain damage, something everyone who’s grappled knows isn’t true. Guys like Frank Shamrock have been choked unconscious literally hundreds of times and are still lucid.
It’s real and you have to worry about it, but not every time you get punched. It’s equivalent to girls who won’t touch a weight because they think they’ll turn into Gaby Garcia if they do a curl. It’s not something that sneaks up on you, it’s something you have to really ignore and make bad decisions over and over again to get.
Nicky could have a 20 fight MMA career and have absolutely no brain damage if he doesn’t spar like a complete moron.
Note this isn’t a slight on Nicky, I’ve trained with him before and he’s a really nice guy and smarter than most people would guess. The information people are giving him is very bad though.
What about the roids?