Inside Zamaya: B Team's Multi-Million Dollar BJJ Jungle Resort

If you needed proof of how far Jiu Jitsu has come as a lifestyle sport, Craig Jones just delivered it from the middle of the Mayan jungle. This week the B Team co-founder shared an early tour of Zamaya, a sprawling multi-million dollar training resort in Mexico that's set to become the squad's new home — and it looks less like a gym and more like a five-star holiday built around a 20-by-20 metre mat.

You can watch Craig's full walkthrough on YouTube, and it's worth every minute. But the story behind the place is just as interesting as the drone shots.

Eight years in the making — and not by a grappler

Zamaya isn't a vanity project thrown together by a promoter chasing a trend. It's the result of eight years of work by Dave Foran, an Irish former professional rugby player who spent his post-rugby years doing what so many of us dream about: travelling the world to train. Muay Thai in Thailand, jiu-jitsu in Brazil, boxing camps in Cuba. Somewhere along the way he asked the obvious question — where's the one place built specifically for people like us, whatever the discipline?

His answer, per the tour Jones shared, is a complex spread across seven training areas. The centrepiece is a bamboo-and-steel main pavilion with a spiral staircase climbing to a jungle viewpoint, connected by bridges to a striking facility housing a ring, an octagon, and sixteen heavy bags. The Jiu Jitsu studio gets pride of place on the top floor of its own building — that huge 20×20 metre mat with views across the entire property. Foran told the Bali-based architects who designed it to "double the craziness," describing his goal as "Willy Wonka's fitness and training factory," as reported by BJJEE. Looking at the footage, it's hard to argue he missed.

The recovery wing alone would embarrass most commercial gyms: three always-running ice baths, a jacuzzi, a sauna, nine massage rooms, and a flotation tank, with on-site nutritionists planning meals and macros for guests. Add 48 hotel rooms, 48 three-bedroom villas, a 90-seat restaurant, and a 70-person seminar room, and Zamaya can hold nearly 300 people at capacity.

From sleeping on academy mats to jungle villas

Here's the historical context that makes this genuinely remarkable. Twenty years ago, the pinnacle of "destination training" in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was flying to Rio, sleeping on a bunk (or the mats themselves) at a famous academy, and eating açaí between sessions. It was glorious, it was grimy, and it was strictly for the obsessed. The idea that BJJ would one day support a purpose-built luxury resort — with jiu-jitsu as an anchor tenant rather than an afterthought — would have sounded like fantasy.

But the trajectory has been pointing here for a while. Camps and retreats have grown from niche offerings into a real industry, and B Team itself has always understood that modern Jiu Jitsu is as much about culture and content as it is about competition. Moving the team's home base into a jungle resort is the logical, if audacious, next step: train in paradise, film everything, and invite the world to come roll with you.

What it means for the rest of us

You don't need villa money for this to matter to your jiu-jitsu. The bigger signal is that the sport's economy keeps maturing. Facilities like this create room for longer, better-structured camps, proper recovery for athletes who've historically iced their knees in a bucket, and seminar spaces where the best grapplers alive can actually teach at scale. When the ceiling of the sport rises, the whole building gets taller — the instructionals get better, the standards travel, and your local academy feels it eventually.

And on a simpler level: Jiu Jitsu people have always organised their holidays around open mats. Zamaya is just the first place honest enough to build the resort around the mat instead of the other way round.

Will it work as a business? That's the multi-million dollar question, quite literally. But if there's one team with the audience and the personality to fill 300 beds in the jungle, it's Craig Jones and B Team. We'll be watching — and, let's be honest, checking flight prices to Mexico. See you on the mats, wherever they happen to be.

Original report via BJJEE.