JACKSONVILLE, FL — Summit Sub-Only 12, the eighth rebrand in four years of promoter Rick Harkness’s traveling submission grappling franchise, announced Monday that the May 31 card at the Jacksonville Armory will feature a $10,000 increase to the total prize purse, which the press release described as a direct response to community pressure about athlete pay.
The next paragraph of the same press release introduced a new mandatory ‘Production Fee’ of $140 per athlete, collected at check-in.
Across an 80-athlete card, the fee will collect $11,200, leaving the net change to the prize pool at negative $1,200.
The press release uses the phrase ‘investment in the athletes’ four separate times. The phrase ‘sustainable pay model’ appears twice. The word ‘fee’ appears once, in a paragraph that begins with the word ‘exciting.’
‘This is a watershed moment for sub-only grappling in the southeast,’ wrote Harkness in a statement attributed to himself, sent from his own email, signed twice. ‘We are putting our money where our mouth is and demonstrating real, structural belief in the future of our sport’s underpaid working class.’
The Production Fee, per the release, covers ‘broadcast infrastructure, venue rental, and referee training.’
A line-item production budget — obtained from state business filings by athlete Marissa Kolek, 27, a two-stripe brown belt and paralegal at a downtown Tampa firm — included $1,100 for folding chairs rented from a vendor called Harkness Family Events, a Polk County party-rental business owned by the promoter’s cousin Reggie Harkness.
The same budget listed $340 for a Twitch subscription that Rick Harkness, according to two former associates and his own publicly visible profile, had already been paying for since 2021.
The line item for ‘referee training’ was $0. There is no referee training. There is no referee training program. There is no referee training curriculum, vendor, certification process, or single documented hour of referee training in the four-year history of Harkness’s previous seven event series, which include GrappleWar East, Florida Subonly Open, Submit-Or-Die Saturdays, Bracket Justice, Pro-Am Slam Sundays, Final Round Open, and a one-time event in 2023 simply titled ‘Grapple.’
‘He told me on the phone that the referee training would be ongoing,’ said Kolek. ‘I asked him what ongoing meant in this context. He said it meant always going. I asked who runs it. He said, mostly me. I asked when the last training session was. He hung up.’
The production company listed in the state filings changed its legal name on April 2, 2026, from ‘Harkness Productions LLC’ to ‘Athlete Opportunity Group LLC.’ Same LLC number. Same founding date. Same registered agent. Same founder. Same Jacksonville UPS Store mailbox.
Kolek’s roommate, an actual CPA at a Big Four firm, estimated the rebrand took fourteen minutes of paperwork and a $75 filing fee with the Florida Division of Corporations.
‘It is the cheapest possible legal action a person can take in this state,’ said the roommate, Stephanie Park, 28, who asked to be quoted by name because her firm has a policy against employees commenting on industry matters and she would like to be fired. ‘He didn’t even change the address. He just changed the word Productions to Athlete Opportunity Group. That’s it. That’s the entire act of contrition.’
Summit Sub-Only 12 is now accepting new athlete registrations at a $185 entry fee. Late registration, which begins three weeks before the event and ends six hours before the event, runs $225.
The winner of the open-weight heavyweight bracket will receive $1,500 cash, a printed certificate of achievement, and a branded neoprene koozie. The koozies, sourced from a custom promotional supplier in Shenzhen, cost $4.20 each in bulk.
The koozie order is itemized in the press release under ‘athlete retention investments.’
‘I think the koozie is actually nice,’ said Tyler Brennaman, 24, a Florida-based purple belt who plans to register. ‘I don’t agree with the fees. I don’t agree with the rebrand. I have read the budget. I am still going to compete. I do not have a good answer for why.’
Brennaman, asked to clarify, paused for nineteen seconds.
‘It’s the only sub-only event within driving distance,’ he said. ‘I am part of the problem.’
Harkness, reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, declined to answer specific questions about the cousin, the chairs, the Twitch subscription, the LLC rebrand, the koozie supplier, or the referee training program. He instead read aloud a 340-word prepared statement that included the phrase ‘investment in the athletes’ two additional times, bringing the total across all official statements this week to six.
When asked whether the new $10,000 prize pool addition was, in fact, a $1,200 net reduction once the Production Fee was applied, Harkness said the question was ‘framed in bad faith’ and ‘not how the math works.’
‘We do not subtract the Production Fee from the prize pool,’ he said. ‘We add it to the production. They are different categories. You are confusing them.’
The press release also confirmed that Summit Sub-Only 13 has been preliminarily scheduled for the third quarter of 2026 and will feature ‘even bigger prize pool upgrades,’ ‘expanded broadcast infrastructure,’ and a new ‘Athlete Advancement Surcharge’ that the release described as ‘modest.’
A copy of the registration page, screenshotted by Kolek before the page was edited Tuesday morning, included an opt-in checkbox at checkout pre-set to ‘Yes,’ authorizing the deduction of an additional $20 toward what the original page had labeled ‘Founder’s Vision Fund.’
By Wednesday evening, the field had been removed from the public-facing page.
The page source still contained it.