Brazilian Jiu Jitsu league benefits from the sport's growing popularity

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The combat sport of Brazilian jujitsu is a mixed martial art of ground fighting, grappling, and submission hold. Its popularity has grown in the United States to the point where it now has its own league. One jujitsu federation out of Alabama is hitting the big leagues in 2024. It's moving to Las Vegas. The Gulf States Newsroom's Joseph King has the story.

(CROSSTALK)

JOSEPH KING, BYLINE: Two athletes are rolling on a mat. They are trying to overpower each other, grabbing and twisting limbs. Cameras are following their moves. This is jujitsu.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Five seconds. Three, two, one, time.

(APPLAUSE)

KING: But this is not a gym. This is the sanctuary of BComing Church in Decatur, Ala., which doubles as the venue for the Professional Grappling Federation - but never on Sundays. The small north Alabama town is home to Brandon Mccaghren.

BRANDON MCCAGHREN: This is the big city to me.

KING: Mccaghren is a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. And it becomes clear as he shows me around the mat.

MCCAGHREN: Oh, here - let's walk this way just a little bit so I can get a good look. There we go.

KING: Two professional fighters, Paul Bahri and Luke Church, go head to head on the mat. Mccaghren gets excited at a specific move.

MCCAGHREN: One of these athletes is looking to get to the top position. Church makes a huge sacrifice throw over the top. That was incredible.

KING: These matches can be seen on pay-per-view. Mccaghren learned at a gym in Los Angeles and brought the sport to Decatur. And five years ago, the idea of a professional federation was born.

MCCAGHREN: To me, it's just, like, a no brainer. We already know what's palatable - the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball - these are all leagues. College basketball, college football - they're leagues. And so what I decided we should do is to take jujitsu and just lay it on to a format that we know works already.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: They call the Professional Grappling Federation PGF. Instead of one-off tournaments, the PGF has matches that happen throughout a whole week.

MCCAGHREN: The coolest thing to me about the PGF is because of the way that we stretch it out over multiple matches, multiple days, we take a whole week to dig into results. It's not always the, quote, unquote, "top guys," the best guys that make it to the playoff.

KING: For viewers, they get to watch athletes grow and adapt. One of those athletes is Nekiaya Jackson, the current champion in the women's division. She lobbied Mccaghren to add women into the mix.

NEKIAYA JACKSON: He had two seasons. And I was like, you need to get some women in here. Like, I compete a bunch. I compete all over. And he had never invited a bunch of women in. And I was like, dude, you got to start a season for women.

KING: Jackson is from Mississippi. You can say her path into jujitsu was unorthodox. She came to Alabama for engineering internship but started training. She fell in love with grappling on a mat.

JACKSON: The sport's growing. It's something that all people can get into. The barrier to entry is pretty low.

KING: But it takes a lot of training. And after five years of running the PGF out of Decatur, Ala., big changes are ahead.

MCCAGHREN: We're going to Vegas.

KING: Mccaghren hopes the move will lower travel expenses and make it easier for athletes from the West Coast to join the federation. And even though the league is moving west, Mccaghren says he'll continue to run his gym in his hometown. For NPR News, I'm Joseph King in Decatur, Ala.

(SOUNDBITE OF SHIGETO'S "RINGLEADER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.