The Craig Jones Invitational and ADCC 2024 World Championships rivalry has led to what is likely the biggest ever weekend for professional jiujitsu.
While grappling shows typically attract mostly just practitioners of the sport, these two high-profile events drew in more casual viewers and MMA fans, likely helping elevate the industry as a whole. While FloGrappling’s numbers are more opaque, CJI’s YouTube streams alone have over 3 million views as of this writing, and they also streamed it on Facebook or Twitter.
Each of their two-day events had elite BJJ talent, massive upsets and a lot interesting moments, and below we’ll rundown the biggest winners and losers from both CJI and ADCC.
Related: Full results and highlights for ADCC 2024 and the Craig Jones Invitational
WINNERS
Kade Ruotolo and Nick Rodriguez
Kade Ruotolo won what is probably among the most stacked divisions ever in BJJ, while Nick Rodriguez dominated his +80 kg tournament and submitted all four opponents at the Craig Jones Invitational. A lot of grapplers may have had similarly impressive performances, but the biggest winners from this weekend are clearly these two new millionaires.
Ruotolo and Rodriguez each left the storied prestige at ADCC for a chance at better money in CJI, and it paid off, literally.
Kaynan Duarte
Kaynan Duarte put on the best performance of his life these past two days, and just absolutely ran through his competition to win double gold at ADCC 2024. He won both the -99 kg and the absolute divisions, while impressively landing submissions in seven out of eight matches this weekend.
Duarte, who is still only 26, is now a four-time ADCC gold medalist. After winning his first Absolute gold, he gets to take on Gordon Ryan in a super-fight at ADCC 2026… supposedly.
Adele Fornarino
Adele Fornarino completely shined at ADCC 2024. The Australian won gold in a pretty deep -55 kg division, then followed that up by a historic run at the absolute division. Despite being the smallest grappler in the tournament, she submitted far bigger BJJ champs in Brianna Ste-Marie and Rafaela Guedes, before dominating an all-time great in Bia Mesquita in the final.
Fornarino is now the first women’s absolute champion from the smallest division. Apart from the career making double gold performance, the 24-year-old also made a nice call out against CJI star Ffion Davies after.
BJJ fans and athletes
Competition is always good, both for the consumers and the athletes involved. BJJ fans got two stacked and entertaining events in one weekend, while dozens of athletes got paid significantly more than what they would normally get.
In something unheard of in BJJ, CJI gave $10,001 show money to every participant, $70,000 in bonuses, and produced two new millionaires. Craig Jones’ disruption also ended up helping even those that didn’t compete in CJI. Soon after Ffion Davies and CJI raised their issues about how the sport is run, ADCC improved the prize money for women to match their male counterparts. They also never gave “show money” prior to CJI, but ADCC now reportedly handed out large sums to many of their stars to convince them to stay with their event.
ADCC and its biennial world championships will always hold that significance and prestige, but competition is always good. It’ll be interesting to see if athlete pay can continue to improve as the sport grows, and if CJI can stick around for the long run. For what it’s worth, Craig Jones did announce plans for CJI 2025 at the end of their event.
LOSERS
Nicholas Meregali
While his teammate Gordon Ryan normally gets most of the hype, many felt that this could be the ADCC edition where Nicholas Meregali gets to really shine. Meregali was pegged as a favorite to win gold not just in his division, but in the absolute as well, especially after several grapplers defected to CJI. Meregali himself also made several bold proclamations that it’ll be so “easy” to win double gold and everyone at ADCC will simply be “statistics” in his great record.
Michael Pixley had other plans though, as he scored a massive upset by literally tossing Meregali around and submitting him with a darce choke. As if getting eliminated in Day 1 wasn’t bad enough, Meregali’s shoulder also got injured with that judo throw, removing the chance to join Day 2 and compete in the absolute division. After all the talk, this turned out to be worst case scenario for Meregali.
ADCC’s mats and out of bounds rule
ADCC allows competitors to continue to grapple outside the mat if they’re in the middle of a submission and intense exchange. Whether you think the optics of that spillover into the crowd is “cool” or lowbrow, CJI’s fighting surface clearly proved to be superior this weekend. Similar to Karate Combat’s pit, the angled walls of CJI’s “alley” added an interesting dynamic to the grappling exchanges. More importantly, it really prevented those repeated resets and awkward out of bounds rules, making for a more seamless and entertaining viewing experience for fans.
It’s still up for debate on which of ruleset helps make grappling a better spectator sport, but as for the contrasting fighting surfaces, CJI’s alley better achieves that goal. Andrew Tackett vs. Kade Ruotolo was probably the wildest match this weekend, and a lot of those crazy exchanges wouldn’t have happened without the alley wall.
CJI’s pacing
While CJI’s pit made for better action, they do have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the pacing of their events. There will always be growing pains from a first event, so it’s hard to really fault them too much, but Day 1 being 10 hours is certainly a bit too much if your goal is to make this a spectator sport. Commercial breaks and long YouTube trailers after matches also stalled a lot of the excitement.
Day 2, with fewer matches and higher stakes, went a lot better at a little over 4 hours. ADCC’s pacing isn’t perfect either, but there’s a reason large events with dozens of matches like that use multiple mats simultaneously. Perhaps Craig Jones and his team should consider using at least two pits for their next event, especially for the opening rounds and if/when they add more divisions. Either that, or split it to three days instead. Anything but another 10 hour show.
NEITHER
Gordon Ryan
Gordon Ryan technically won two super-fights against Yuri Simoes and Felipe Pena, but he didn’t look particularly great, especially against the latter. He looked slow and risk averse for the most part, even against Pena, who was a bit worn out from competing twice prior to their match. Also, do you know how ADCC changed the rules and created a new medal, then announced it made Gordon Ryan their new record holder? Yeah, that wasn’t a very good look.
