UFC vet Jeff Curran brought to tears after being forced to close his gym due to coronavirus pandemic

When Jeff Curran finished construction on his new facility in 2018, he believed this was going to be the final home where he would teach martial arts.

Now less than two years later, his gym has been forced to close as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“I’ve never cried so much in my grown life, my adult life,” Curran said when revealing the news to MMA Fighting.

After moving locations nearly a dozen times, the 42-year-old former UFC fighter finally found what he felt was a perfect spot for his gym. He spent months doing construction on the inside of the building while putting together all the necessary pieces to teach Brazilian jiu-jitsu along with several other programs he planned to implement.

It wasn’t cheap but Curran knew that this was gym was going to be the culmination of his life’s work.

“May 1, 2018, I signed a new lease on this building and we had our grand opening Sept. 4, 2018,” Curran told MMA Fighting. “So I worked for four months renovating this place. Maybe raised $125,000 or $130,000 in cash and then put another $25,000 or $30,000 out of our pocket in credit cards. The cash we raised was through these lifetime memberships. These $5,000 lifetime deals. So I had no money to work with. I think we sold 18 of those. Just kind of grinding and just pushing to save money.

“We opened up and we’ve been killing it since. The business has been growing.”

In February, Curran’s office manager told him they were on track to have their best month ever in March. Once he reviewed the numbers, the Pedro Sauer black belt agreed that less than two years after opening, the Curran Jiu-Jitsu Academy was really hitting its stride as a top school in the area.

Soon after, Curran traveled to Wisconsin to teach at an affiliate academy and it was around this time that COVID-19 really started to spread in the United States. Concerns were already being raised about what this could mean for businesses, especially those that required physical contact like martial arts gyms.


“By the time we get back from Wisconsin, I’m like, ‘guys did you see the news? Everybody’s kind of freaking out,’” Curran explained. “There was word that we’re going to have to shut down. I’m like, is this real?

“So to be safe we closed down for the week, it was around March 12 or 13, I put a notice in the door saying we’ll be closing for a week and we’ll let everybody know in a week what’s going on. That was the start of it.”

On March 20, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a statewide stay-at-home order, which prevented people from going anywhere that wasn’t deemed essential. At that point, Curran was forced to close down his gym indefinitely as his state along with many others across the country tried to stave off the COVID-19 outbreak.

At that point, Curran knew his business could be in trouble so he reached out to his landlord hoping to find a solution that would work for both of them.

“I have a 10-year lease and it progressively goes up after the first couple years to get a little closer to what he wanted to make in rent and my goal was to buy the building,” Curran said. “I hit him up on a Saturday night or a Sunday and I said ‘I might have to pay a half month’s rent, I’m freaking out, I might not have any money.’ He didn’t write me back.”

Eventually, Curran’s landlord reached out through his attorney trying to find a solution as the statewide shutdown continued.

Ultimately, he decided to continue paying his full rent to avoid any legal troubles but as more and more time passed, Curran came to realize something had to be done as his bank accounts were being drained.

“About two months in, I presented to him, it’s not looking any better so we either need to re-work a new deal and revisit our old lease once we return to normal and he wasn’t willing to do it on any level,” Curran said. “To his defense, he’s looking to retire. He ultimately wanted to sell the building and he invested in me moving in by giving me some free months and paying a realtor to make the deal so he had some money he wanted to earn back.

“But he still has a mortgage. He still has taxes to pay. I never wanted to short him. I just kept paying but it got to the point where all our funds are gone. A couple of guys have to go on unemployment. A couple of us have to do whatever random things we’ve got to do to make some money. We’re just going to batten down the hatches and see how long this lasts.”

In the end, Curran had to face reality — there was no chance his gym would survive the pandemic.

“It was not getting any better,” Curran said about the shutdown. “I will try to present him an offer to buy out of the remaining eight years of the lease and just see if he’ll take it. He thought about it and took it because he knew my other option would be to file bankruptcy or something. He took the offer, I agreed to get out of here.

“I put everything in a storage shed. This July is our 23rd anniversary for having my first school, my first academy. It’s kind of weird to not have one. I find myself here the past few months knowing that something drastic is coming.”