Bookings are officially open at Zamaya, the jungle training resort outside Tulum, Mexico that will serve as the new home of Craig Jones and the reborn B-Team. The Australian grappling star and Craig Jones Invitational founder confirmed the partnership earlier this month, and the resort itself has now put a hard date on the doors opening: September 17th.
From “B-Team Is Over” to a Jungle Mega-Resort
The road here has been a fast one. Jones announced B-Team’s shutdown and his own retirement from competition roughly a year ago. By late June, reports surfaced that B-Team would return with a brand-new headquarters academy in an undisclosed location, and speculation ran wild over where it might land, Austin again, Puerto Rico, Thailand. The answer arrived on July 1st: a resort called Zamaya, tucked into the Mayan jungle just outside Tulum.
The project is the result of eight years of work by Dave Foran, an Irish former professional rugby player who set out to build the kind of training destination he wished had existed on his own travels through Muay Thai camps in Thailand, jiu-jitsu in Brazil, and boxing camps in Cuba. Foran has reportedly cut the 600-meter jungle access road to the site himself before construction even began, and around 200 workers are now racing to finish the build in time for the September opening.
What’s Actually There
Zamaya isn’t just a gym with hotel rooms attached, it’s being built as a full training campus. The complex spans seven distinct training areas, anchored by a bamboo-and-steel main pavilion with a spiral staircase leading to a jungle viewpoint, connected by bridges to a boxing and Muay Thai space featuring a ring, an octagon, and roughly 16 heavy bags.</cite>
Beyond the striking main pavilion, the property includes a dedicated jiu-jitsu academy, a weights and calisthenics gym, and a running track looping the grounds. <cite index=”41-1″>The jiu-jitsu academy itself sits on the top floor of its own building, with a 20-meter mat floor.</cite>
Recovery gets serious treatment too. The resort’s spa and recovery block includes three always-on ice baths, a sauna, a jacuzzi, nine massage rooms, a flotation chamber, and a temazcal a traditional Mayan sweat lodge.
On the hospitality side, Zamaya is built to house nearly 300 guests at capacity between 48 hotel rooms and 48 three-bedroom villas, along with a 90-seat restaurant and a 70-person seminar roomVillas were reportedly nearly sold out at the time of a recent construction tour, with only a handful remaining.
Craig Jones Moves In
Jones will run B-Team’s new headquarters academy out of Zamaya, with a full-time B-Team black belt based on-site from opening and other B-Team members expected to rotate camps through the venue. Jones has targeted his own first camp for early October, though he’s floated the idea of squeezing something in sooner.
That urgency reportedly ties into September’s calendar being unusually crowded on the grappling side: the ADCC World Championship runs September 12–13 in Kraków, Poland, and rival camps from other high-profile names are being planned around the same window. With demand already building well ahead of the doors opening, a waitlist has reportedly formed for spots in Zamaya’s early camp offerings, a strong early signal for a facility that hasn’t even finished construction yet.
Importantly, you don’t need to book a camp or a villa to train there. Zamaya has confirmed the B-Team academy will take drop-ins, weekly passes, and monthly passes, meaning training on-site requires zero nights in a suite.
The Price of Admission for BJJ
Given the scale and polish of the facility an eight-year build, a purpose-built fight pavilion, a nine-room massage block, a sweat lodge the day-to-day training costs are notably accessible. Zamaya’s published rates for unlimited functional classes (CrossFit, HYROX, HIIT, and open gym access to the Main Pavilion) run:
| Pass | Price |
|---|---|
| Day Pass | $350 pesos (~$20 USD) |
| Week Pass | $1,400 pesos (~$80 USD) |
| Month Pass | $2,700 pesos (~$160 USD), or $1,700 pesos with INE (local Mexican ID) |
For context, that’s a fraction of what a comparable week of destination training and recovery access would typically cost at a boutique fitness resort elsewhere in the world particularly one boasting an octagon, a Muay Thai ring, ice baths, and a jungle-canopy training pavilion. The local-resident discount (with INE) also suggests Zamaya is angling to build a genuine home membership base in Tulum, not just cater to visiting BJJ tourists.
A freelance journalist with more than seven years of experience covering a wide range of topics, with a focus on delivering accurate, engaging, and well-researched reporting. He studied at the University of Birmingham, where he developed a strong foundation in journalism and communications. Martin is a 10th Planet BJJ brown belt and has been training for approximately 10 years and a keen follower of submission grappling.
