Modern Wisdom
#950 - Craig Jones - Drugged In Colombia, Escaping Jail & Defeating UFC Wrestling
Thu, 05 Jun 2025
Craig Jones is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete, owner of B-Team and Founder of the Craig Jones Invitational. From wild nights in Medellín to ketamine trips with Ethiopian locals, Craig Jones has turned his life into a world of fun and chaos. From rolling with legends, clowning on traditions, and building a jiu-jitsu empire that’s as unorthodox as it is elite, Craig proves every day that you can be world-class without following the old playbook. Expect to learn what happened to Craig Jones while in Colombia, what it was like meeting Pablo Escobar’s sister, why Craig Jones was in Ethiopia and doing ketamine with the locals, why Craig got an MS13 Tattoo and why he subsequently went missing for a while, the biggest updates from the world of BJJ, UFC, and wrestling, Craigs thoughts on Greg Souders, Jon Jones & Gordon Ryan and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What wild experiences did Craig have in Colombia?
I did unintentionally get drugs. So like, obviously, so to set up the story, obviously we're there on a bender, but I went down there for four or five weeks and like all my friends that hit me up being like, you're in Columbia, I'll come down. And it's like, when you live in a tourist spot, people are like, they want to do all the tourist shit when you come down.
So like every time a new friend comes down, they put my body through the ringer. But those last two weeks, I tried to pace myself for a bit of survival. And then again, my personal assistant, Seth, he came down there exploiting my name for some stem cells at a stem cell company because they get the real shit down there in Columbia. So he comes down and we decide to hit the main strip.
And usually I would stay at the house, we'd get obliterated, and then we'd adventure out into the streets of Medellin and see what we could find, right? But this night we went out just for a couple casual cocktails because, of course, you have stem cells. You're not meant to drink. You're meant to stay healthy. So we're actually on the main street of Columbia and Seth had stem cells in his neck.
So I definitely positioned him with his sort of back towards the crowd and his stiff neck every time I pointed at an attractive Colombian woman who's in paralysis trying to turn around. And then, so I don't know who drugged me, but have you heard about the drug scopolamine, the devil's breath? No. You haven't heard of it? No. All right. So basically there's a substance.
It's kind of mythical in its nature because it quite often is guys heading to a strip club or something. And what happens is they wake up with no money in their account. So it's a bit of a, it's a great boogeyman of a story for the missus. Oh no, it was the devil's breath. I must've been drugged. So like, I think it's largely exaggerated, but still a lot of people die down there.
Two jujitsu guys sat next to me rambling while I was having a couple of cocktails with Seth. They met with a couple of Tinder dates and Tinder down there is pretty dangerous because obviously these druggings and stuff. And then I don't know who put it in my drink. Could have been the bartender. Could have been the guy's Tinder date. I tried to steal that night. Could have been him.
But from that point on, just basically, and usually I can handle a few drinks. I probably only had three, four drinks. And I remember just distinctly the last memory I have, we had two shots there and Seth was trying not to drink because of the stem cells. And I was like, you're a pussy. So I drank my shot and his shot.
And ordinarily that's something I would do because given his five foot three size, a full margarita might kill the man. So usually I'm jumping on bullets for him as it is. But what ended up happening was we went to our next destination, which is obviously a family friendly place. As you can imagine in Medellin, Seth walks into the bathroom and finds me basically pants down.
I've pulled my shirt off. I've gone to the bathroom. I'm overheating. He thinks it's a dream come true. He's found me in the bathroom, unconscious with my pants down, but he has to get me out of there. And the funniest thing is he had to carry me out of there with his stem cell ridden damaged neck. So he could, uh, I mean, he could barely lift me as it is, but with the stem cell injury.
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Chapter 2: Who did Craig meet in Medellín?
And the guy was like, oh, yeah, pass. And I was like, you think you'd leave a sanctioned country? I'm really testing the limits. I do have a tattoo reveal for you.
You've got a tattoo reveal?
Yeah. I'm really testing the limits of US deportation here. Okay. And really it's based on the idea that really there is an avenue out there for an all expenses paid trip to the beautiful country of El Salvador. And it just comes at the small price of a tattoo.
Just stand up for a second for me. Put that.
Oh, you want me to get it out? Yeah. Marvel at the size of the quad, too. Thank you, Pierce. You got the connections, though, if I get sent El Salvador.
You want Tim Candy to come and fix you?
Yeah, well, I mean, we need to pull in some government favors on that deportation when they come for me.
So you've got an MS-13 tattoo.
And I was a bold choice. We were just down in Mexico the other day, and I thought it'd be a funny idea. And then you got your feet tattooed. Yeah, that was a mistake, honestly. Here was my vision, right? In jiu-jitsu, people often criticize guard pullers, people that scoot on their butt along the ground, right?
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Chapter 3: What happened when Craig got drugged in Colombia?
Everyone $10,001 to show up this year, $10,002 to show up. So for the athletes, that sadly is a significant amount of money for a lot of them. Jiu-jitsu is like a top-heavy payment structure, but there are organizations out there that will overcompensate the top of the bill and severely underpay the bottom part.
So really, for me, it's like protecting the next generation of athletes that might get caught up in the allure of being attached to big organizations and let that blind them from
jujitsu really is and how it's different to other sports and we have a opportunity here to kind of prevent it being monopolized interesting that a flagrant personal vanity project has now become some stalwart like protective fortress against big business coming and ruining a sport
I mean, that's the thing, really. It's like everything I do is completely self-interested, selfish, and for my own benefit. But when it comes to a talk show, we can sell it anywhere we want. Let's repurpose that.
Like you say, it's not really what you're doing or why you're doing it. It's why you say you're doing it and whether or not people believe it.
Yeah, which is, I might pivot into politics too, run against it.
I only found out about Greg Souders recently. He seems like an interesting guy. What do you know about him?
Interesting character, yeah. He's the coach of the Misfits team for America. So he's putting together an American squad. So, like, I mean, I haven't gone too much into this. It's a difficult conversation to listen to, you know, people talking about different learning models in jiu-jitsu. But, yeah, I believe from my understanding he's –
thought process is that you don't need to be just doing static repetitive drilling and understand and like being taught techniques. He's sort of given the credence over to the people's ability to solve problems themselves with, through the positional sparring.
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