- Nicholas Meregali says being against anabolic steroids early in his career left him physically behind — and cost him matches.
- Nicholas Meregali blames steroids right as he prepares to return after a 17-month injury layoff that included four operations.
- He’s also taking a shot at the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI), saying it “entered to divide the industry,” while praising UFC BJJ’s structure.
- Meregali says the plan is to compete four times in 2026 — and he’s framing UFC BJJ as a turning point for fighter pay, promotion, and legitimacy.
Nicholas Meregali has a gift for dropping one sentence that turns into three different arguments. This week’s version is a beauty: Nicholas Meregali blames steroids — not by pointing fingers at rivals, but by saying his early refusal to touch them left him “skinny and frail” and losing to more physical opponents.
That would be enough on its own in a sport that has spent the last decade arguing in circles about PEDs.
But Meregali didn’t stop there. With his UFC BJJ return coming up after a long injury spell, he also fired a warning shot at CJI, and pitched UFC BJJ as the first serious attempt to build a real “career ladder” for elite grapplers.
In other words: comeback season, but make it combustible.
Nicholas Meregali Blames Steroids Before UFC BJJ Debut
Meregali’s comments came on a recent appearance on the Connect Cast podcast, where he looked back at his early competitive years and how he thinks his game — and body — changed over time.
I was always a very skinny and frail guy. And I lost matches because of a lack of physicality. I was always against anabolic st**oids, etc., blah blah blah.
– Nicholas Meregali –
That line hits a nerve because it’s doing two things at once.
First, it’s a blunt admission: he believes he got out-muscled early, and that mattered. Second, it’s a not-so-subtle nod to the reality of high-level grappling, where “physical development” isn’t always explained by kettlebells and chicken breast.
Meregali didn’t frame it as a moral victory, either. He framed it like a competitive mistake — almost like saying he tried to play chess while everyone else brought a shotgun.
He also broke down what he considers the four pillars of success — and said he was missing two of them.
I didn’t have those two, those other two aspects, the tactical and the physical.
– Nicholas Meregali –
Whether people agree with his logic or hate the implication, the reason the clip spread is simple: it’s rare for an athlete at that level to talk like that publicly without wrapping it in layers of PR foam.
The Meregali Comeback Setup: 17 Months Out, Four Surgeries
The timing is a huge part of the story. Meregali is preparing to return after roughly 17 months away from competition, a stretch tied to multiple injuries and four operations.
That matters because it changes how fans and rivals interpret everything he says. If he shows up looking sharp and runs through opponents, the quote becomes a “told you so” moment. If he looks slower, smaller, or tentative, it becomes ammunition in the other direction.
Meregali has also pointed to tactical maturity as a major factor in his rise — and credited a more systematic approach for helping him understand how to control matches beyond just being technically better.
Then, when I moved here and I started to understand a little bit. How John (Danaher) sees the jiu-jitsu, (and) that was naturally put into my game… I kind of came to understand this issue of grip control and tactical issues.
– Nicholas Meregali –
He’s even linked a major injury moment to tactical decision-making.
Because of over-confidence I forgot tactics.
– Nicholas Meregali –
Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) Catches A Stray — And It’s Not Just Promotion Beef
Meregali didn’t just praise his new home. He also went out of his way to frame CJI as the wrong kind of disruption — the kind that fractures an already small ecosystem.
CJI entered to divide the industry in a negative way.
– Nicholas Meregali –
That’s a loaded statement, because “divide the industry” is basically grappling’s current religion: everyone believes the sport needs growth, and everyone has a different theory for how to get there.
Meregali’s theory is structure. He’s painting UFC BJJ as the first entity that can offer something like a modern fight-business model — incentives, media pushes, and a clear path upward.
I think they are entering to add, they are entering to professionalize. They have structure to put me where I want, in the sense of career, brand, finances.
– Nicholas Meregali –
He also laid out the type of performance-based ladder he thinks grappling has been missing. If you’re trying to build a “click-first” storyline, it’s almost perfect: a star grappler returns, stirs the PED pot, and plants a flag in the middle of the sport’s promotion war.
Nicholas Meregali Blames Steroids and Calls for “Professional” Grappling
Here’s why this story isn’t going away in a day or two: the three arguments Meregali sparked all point at the same question — what does “professional grappling” actually look like?
If a promotion wants to present itself as a “big leagues” platform, people will ask about the full package:
- Consistent matchmaking.
- Real marketing.
- Athlete pay that scales.
- And yes, how they handle PEDs.
That last part is unavoidable now that Nicholas Meregali blames steroids in public and ties it to competitive outcomes. UFC BJJ has already been discussed as a promotion looking at UFC BJJ drug testing in 2026, but details around how that would work haven’t been clearly defined publicly — whether it would be comprehensive, limited to champions, or handled differently than fans expect.
And beyond the competition side, grappling’s “professional era” argument is also getting pulled toward gym culture and safety standards.
In the same week Meregali is selling a cleaner business structure, other voices in the sport are pushing for cleaner guardrails around academy conduct — background checks, clear policies, and accountability systems more common in other youth sports.
So Meregali’s quotes aren’t just “spicy takes.” They’re gasoline on questions the sport has been dodging for years: who gets paid, who gets promoted, what rules actually matter, and what kind of oversight comes with growth.
