B-Team Confirms Craig’s Departure
On the latest episode of the Simple Man Podcast(B-Team crew minus Craig and Nicky Ryan), they discussed the future of the gym. The first topic that they covered was confirming that Craig Jones and money man Seth Belisle are stepping away from the team.
The heads of the team will now consist of Nicky Ryan, Nick Rodriguez, Ethan Crelinstein, and Damien Anderson. Damien started by confirming the departures of Craig and Seth.
“Basically, what’s happening is, Craig and Seth are super busy with CJI, right? It’s a fn massive tournament. It’s just easier for us to run the ship; we’re already doing it. So it’s just a transfer of ownership, literally nothing is changing in the gym.”- Damien Anderson.
Rodriguez chimed in to announce that there will be some changes to the gym’s culture and training style
“Some things will change. We’ll adjust the culture a little bit, different ideology behind training. Especially with this whole eco stuff, it’s like making a transition towards it. It’s more of a rebrand than an ending of anything.”- Nicky Rodriguez.
B-Team Branching Into MMA
Anderson later confirmed that B-Team will be branching out of just being an adult Jiu-Jitsu gym. The gym will soon include an MMA section and also include family-friendly(kids’ classes.
“We want to rebrand to a family gym where we can focus on the next generation of athletes and have a full encompassing martial arts. It’ll be striking, wrestling, grappling. We’ll specialise obviously in Jiu-Jitsu, but when we’re ready for the expansion of other martial arts like striking, we’ll make sure that we have somebody who’s absolutely one of the best coaches in the world.”- Damien Anderson.
With Damien being the sole MMA fighter in the B-Team, it would be an obvious choice for the gym to branch out into MMA.
Nicky Ryan expanded on the reason for branching out into MMA is mainly due to Austin becoming more of a Jiu-Jitsu city, and there are now fewer options for MMA.
“There are not too many like full MMA gyms in Austin; there’s a lot of Jiu-Jitsu gyms, but there’s not really any like super high-level MMA gyms. So we kinda plan to become like one of the first ones in Austin.”- Nicky Ryan.
As for changing from B-Team to another name, the group hasn’t yet confirmed it. Watch the full podcast below to see them break down the upcoming changes to the gym.
Bobby is martial artist for almost 20 years with a BJJ black belt under Professor Sergio Miranda. He is also a karate black and former combat sports athlete, who loves all things grappling.