Craig Jones

Craig Benjamin Jones was born in Adelaide, Australia, on July 17, 1991, and started Jiu-Jitsu in 2006 at the academy of his cousin, Matt Jones. As a purple belt he moved to Melbourne to train with Lachlan Giles, who gave him his black belt in 2016, a year after he won the IBJJF No-Gi Worlds at purple belt.

A leg lock specialist, he trained with John Danaher in New York and, in 2021, after Danaher’s team split up, founded B-Team in Austin, Texas, alongside Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rodriguez and Ethan Crelinsten. At ADCC, the most prestigious no-gi grappling tournament, he was runner-up twice: under 88 kg (194 lb) in 2019 and under 99 kg (218 lb) in 2022, when he lost the final to Kaynan Duarte. He also won Polaris belts in two weight classes.

In 2024, unhappy with what ADCC paid its athletes, he created the Craig Jones Invitational and scheduled it for the same weekend as the ADCC World Championship, in Las Vegas. Each of the two champions received US$1 million, and every athlete in the brackets went home with US$10,001. In that night’s superfight, Jones submitted Gabi Garcia with a rear-naked choke. At the second edition, in August 2025, held as a team tournament, B-Team took the title and he submitted Chael Sonnen.

In February 2026, when ADCC doubled the prize money for the men’s divisions and kept the women’s the same, he announced in a video that he would cover the US$48,000 difference through the Fair Fight Foundation so that women and men would be paid the same. In late March he withdrew the offer, in protest against ADCC keeping on its competitor list an athlete with an open arrest warrant in the United States.