Craig Jones, Nicky Rod (Nick Rodriguez) and Nicky Ryan — Founders/leaders of B-Team Jiu Jitsu in Austin, Texas, elite no-gi grapplers who split from John Danaher's 'Donaher Death Squad.' Craig Jones is a two-time ADCC silver medalist and coach; Nicky Rod is also a two-time ADCC silver medalist; Nicky Ryan is Gordon Ryan's younger brother.
The gist
Lex Fridman talks with three B-Team Jiu Jitsu founders about how the legendary Danaher Death Squad fractured and why they followed Nicky Ryan to form B-Team in Austin. The conversation is heavy on irreverent humor as they break down the ongoing rivalry and trash talk with Gordon Ryan, including the greasing and steroid accusations from a recent EBI match. Craig Jones recounts coaching Alexander Volkanovski against Islam Makhachev and what makes Dagestani fighters and Volkanovski so dominant. They get into training philosophy: constraint-based learning, positional sparring, the value of NOT warming up, injury and overtraining, ego, and how to coach hobbyists. Lighter tangents cover how they'd fight a bear, lion or kangaroo, street-fight strategy, and Texas mutual-combat law.
Big reveals
- Craig admits his early game was 'basically a rip-off version' of the DDS leglock system after watching Eddie Cummings.
- Nicky Ryan describes John Danaher as a father figure and how the split separated him from his brother Gordon for almost two years.
- Nicky Ryan reveals he and Gordon hated each other after the split but Gordon recently reached out and the animosity is cooling.
- Craig calls steroid use 'cheating for sure whether they test for it or not,' while joking he uses 'all of the steroids.'
- Nicky Rod explains he publicly called Gordon a steroid user only as a rebuttal after Gordon accused him of greasing in their EBI match.
- Craig argues Charles Oliveira would beat Islam Makhachev in a pure submission-grappling match.
- Nicky Rod competed at ADCC on a fully torn ACL, only getting the MRI after the event because 'ignorance is bliss.'
- Lex says he's 'internalized the cowboy' from playing Red Dead Redemption while discussing Texas mutual combat.
Things worth remembering
- Nicky Rod is still a no-stripe brown belt despite beating black belts, because B-Team grades on knowledge, not competition results.
- Nicky Rod rehearses his exact warm-up for weeks so competition day feels like 'another Tuesday.'
- Craig deliberately does NO visualization or warm-up: 'there's no warm-ups on the street.'
- The 'buggy choke' (popularized by the Ruotolos) works by threatening embarrassment, making the top player abandon a dominant position.
- At ADCC there is no drug testing; Craig jokes they 'test to make sure we're on steroids' so the show looks good.
- Craig champions constraint-based learning: give beginners a problem first, then the technique, so they have an 'aha moment.'
- What makes Volkanovski special, per Craig, is an unbreakable gas tank and willpower rather than raw skill.
- Craig claims a strong correlation: the people who spend the most time warming up are the most often injured.
- Mount and turtle positional sparring is described as the most psychologically grueling training because of constant emotional ups and downs.
- In an aside they debate that grizzly bears 'gas out' and get bored within 20 seconds, like a weak cardio gas tank.
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