The Best Grappler in the Room Was Losing Every Month

Craig Jones doesn't lose often. One of the most technically complete grapplers in the world, ADCC medalist, B-Team co-founder — the man has submitted people at every level of the sport. But for an entire year while training at the Renzo Gracie Academy in New York, he was losing a different fight every single month.

On JRE MMA Episode 110 alongside Joe Rogan and Alexander Volkanovski, Jones recounted the story almost casually — the way fighters talk about things that should horrify everyone in the room but have somehow become normalised. He took a course of antibiotics once a month, every month, for a year straight. Twelve infections. Twelve rounds of antibiotics. One of the best grapplers on the planet, brought low not by a heel hook or a rear naked choke but by bacteria living on the mat he trained on every day.

What's most revealing about Jones's account isn't the number — it's the tone. He spoke about it as if it were a normal part of training. As if catching a bacterial infection once a month and chemically nuking your gut biome with antibiotics to recover was just the cost of doing business in elite BJJ. And in a lot of gyms, it is. That's the problem.

Antibiotics don't just kill the bacteria making you sick. They kill everything. Your gut microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria your immune system depends on — takes weeks to recover from a single course. Twelve courses in twelve months means Jones's immune system was compromised for the majority of that year. Compromised immune systems are less effective at fighting the next infection. Which arrived the next month. The cycle is self-reinforcing, and it's exactly how antibiotic-resistant strains develop in the people taking the most antibiotics.

UFC Featherweight Champion. Permanent Surgical Scar.

Alexander Volkanovski is one of the most decorated fighters in UFC history. Three-time featherweight champion. A wrestling and grappling base that made him virtually impossible to finish. A man whose body is his livelihood, maintained with elite-level coaching, nutrition, and medical support.

He has a permanent hole in his hand.

Not from a fight. Not from training. From MRSA — the antibiotic-resistant strain of staph that found its way into his skin during training, progressed unchecked, and formed an abscess that had to be surgically drained before it reached his bone. On the same JRE episode, Volkanovski described how the infection could have caused osteomyelitis — bacterial infection of the bone itself — a condition that can require amputation in severe cases and causes permanent structural damage even when treated successfully.

Think about that for a moment. One of the most physically gifted and medically supported athletes on the planet — with a team of trainers, coaches, and doctors around him — contracted an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection serious enough to require surgery and leave a permanent scar. This isn't a story about inadequate medical care. It's a story about an environment where the pathogen is so prevalent that even the best-resourced athletes aren't immune.

MRSA doesn't care about your title. It doesn't care about your camp, your tournament schedule, or the fact that you've been training for fifteen years. It's on the mat. It's in the gloves. And the moment it finds a cut, an abrasion, or a pore that's open from training in the heat — it moves fast.

The Most Preventable Death in BJJ History

This is the story that stays with you.

An 18-year-old fighter — young, healthy, his whole career ahead of him — was training at his gym when he lost a contact lens. It fell out during a roll and landed on the mat. Without thinking twice, he picked it up and put it straight back in his eye.

In the seconds that contact lens sat on that mat, it collected staph bacteria. When he replaced it in his eye, he introduced that bacteria directly into one of the most vulnerable entry points on the human body — a pathway with direct access to the brain via the optic nerve and surrounding tissue. The infection travelled. It reached his brain. He died.

Craig Jones told this story on the podcast almost reluctantly — as if he'd processed it enough times that the horror had blunted slightly, but the weight of it was still completely intact. Joe Rogan's response was immediate: gyms should have signs everywhere. New members should be told on day one what the risks are, what infections look like, and what to do when they find one. Instead, most gyms treat it like a secret — something you eventually learn about the hard way, like everyone before you did.

"It Was for ADCC." The Culture That Makes Infections Spread.

Here's the most uncomfortable truth in this entire article: even after everything — twelve months of infections, twelve rounds of antibiotics, knowing exactly how dangerous it was — Craig Jones competed at ADCC while infected with staph.

"It was for ADCC." That was his explanation. And nobody in the room pushed back, because everyone in that room understood the logic. ADCC is the Olympics of grappling. You don't pull out of ADCC for a skin infection. You tape it up, take your antibiotics, and you compete.

He passed staph to two other competitors during that event.

This isn't a story about Craig Jones being reckless — it's a story about a culture. BJJ has normalised competing and training through infection the same way it has normalised broken fingers and torn ligaments. Toughness is the cardinal virtue. Stopping for something invisible — something that "just looks like a pimple" — feels like weakness. It isn't. It's the only responsible choice.

Rogan put it simply and correctly. When a fighter decides to compete or train while infected, they're not just making a personal health decision — they're making it for every person they touch on the mat that day. And those people make it for everyone they touch the next day. One infected competitor at a tournament can seed an infection through an entire regional BJJ community within two weeks.

The culture changes when prevention becomes the norm. When every athlete steps off the mat and applies a pathogen-killing spray as automatically as they drink water after training. When the conversation about infections moves from whispered to open. When gyms stop treating skin infections as an embarrassing secret and start treating them as the occupational hazard they are — one with a simple, daily solution.

Zero Staph. Zero Ringworm. One Month in Thailand.

Colby Thicknesse — UFC fighter — spent a month training at one of the most intense camps in combat sports: multiple sessions daily, shared mats, shared equipment, the heat and humidity of Thailand. Exactly the conditions where Craig Jones caught twelve infections in a year at Renzo Gracie New York.

Zero staph. Zero ringworm. The entire camp.

The difference between Thicknesse's camp and Jones's year in New York isn't luck. It isn't genetics. It's a prevention system applied consistently — a pathogen-killing spray used between sessions, on skin and gear, filling the gap that a shower alone can't cover.

The highest-risk moment in your training day is the 5 minutes immediately after you step off the mat. Your skin is warm. Your pores are open. You've spent 90 minutes in contact with MRSA-positive surfaces and potentially infected training partners. Before you shower, before you change — that's the window where bacteria colonise. That's the window prevention needs to cover.

What actually kills MRSA — without destroying your skin or gear

Hypochlorous acid (HOCl) is the molecule your own immune system produces — your white blood cells synthesise it to destroy bacteria on contact. Applied externally as a spray, it kills MRSA and staph through oxidation of the bacterial cell wall. It's the same mechanism your body uses, deployed before the bacteria find their way in.

Unlike alcohol — which strips your skin's natural microbiome and degrades gear fabric — HOCl is pH-balanced to match human skin, safe for daily use including on the face, and leaves no chemical residue. Unlike antibiotics — which MRSA is specifically resistant to — HOCl's physical kill mechanism cannot be evaded by resistant strains. Zero known cases of HOCl-resistant MRSA exist in the scientific literature.

What Gyms Should Be Doing — And Usually Aren't

Rogan's point on the podcast was blunt: gyms should have signs everywhere. New members should be told on day one. The information shouldn't be something you pick up after your first infection — it should be part of the onboarding.

The reality in most gyms is the opposite. Infections are the subject nobody raises until someone shows up with something visibly wrong. By then it's already been transmitted. The culture of silence — the sense that talking about infections makes the gym look bad — is precisely what allows them to spread.

The gyms that have taken this seriously don't have more infections. They have fewer. Because when athletes know the risk, know the symptoms, and have a daily prevention ritual — the bacteria stops finding pathways in.

The 5-minute routine that changes everything

1. Step off the mat — spray immediately. HOCl to all exposed skin before changing or showering. This is the critical window.
2. Shower within 30 minutes. Spray + shower is significantly more effective than either alone.
3. Spray your gear. Gloves, shin guards, headgear — the inside of a glove after training is one of the highest bacterial density surfaces you own.
4. Wash everything. Gi, rash guard, shorts, socks — every session, without exception.
5. Check your skin. Any warm, growing bump seen within 24 hours. That's the window where treatment is simple.

That's it. Five minutes. The difference between Craig Jones's year and Colby Thicknesse's month.

The Invisible Opponent Doesn't Tap

You can escape a heel hook. You can defend a guillotine. You can weather a storm from a bigger, stronger opponent and find your way back to the top. The invisible opponent doesn't care about your guard, your wrestling base, or your twenty years on the mat. It gets in through a cut you didn't notice, a pore that was open for thirty seconds too long, a piece of gear you didn't clean after last Thursday's session.

Craig Jones lost that fight twelve times in a year. Alexander Volkanovski still carries the scar. An 18-year-old lost it permanently.

The fight is preventable. The outcome isn't inevitable. But it requires treating prevention with the same seriousness you treat drilling — consistently, every session, without exception. Not when you remember. Not when something looks wrong. Every time.