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First Things First

The biggest weekend in professional grappling history just ended and it overdelivered. The weekend’s live streams gave us more than 28 full hours full of grappling action. Today we’re talking about who’s walking away better for it and what is looking like it needs to be improved.

Here are the winners and losers from the biggest weekend in grappling history.

Winners

Millionaires

Let’s start with the most important part of prizefighting. The prize.

CJI was able to make such a splash because they put two million-dollar prizes at the end of their two brackets. The runs to them were incredible.

Nick Rodriguez was flawless in his matches. He submitting four people with rear naked chokes to claim his million. Along the way he took out his old foe Owen Livesey, former IBJJF Pan American Champion Max Gimenis, and the IBJJF Pan American, European Champion, and World Champion, Felipe Andrew.

In the under 80 KG division, grappling wunderkind Kade Ruotolo ran through former ADCC Champion Matheus Diniz, former IBJJF No Gi World Champion Tommy Langaker, up-and-comer Andrew Tackett, and former Pan American and European Champion Levi Jones Leary. Along the way, he may have had the most exciting match ever with Tackett.

This match was even exciting enough to earn the favor of technocrat billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg.

Atos Outclasses

Going into ADCC weekend the talk was all about B-Team and New Wave’s ongoing rivalry. This left many over looking San Diego super team Atos. When all was said and done Atos dominated the weekend with six gold medals including two absolute champions.

Duarte won double gold with seven submissions across eight matches. He even guillotined Abreu a second time in the Absolute finals. I would say that is unquestionably the second best ADCC run ever behind Roger’s perfect 8 submission year if not for the run his teammate had.

Fornarino didn’t get as many submissions as Duarte. The context in which she won is what makes her victory that much more impressive.

Fornarino took out several multi-time IBJFF World Champions, two of which were former ADCC Champions, and the best woman’s jiujitsu player ever, Beatriz “Bia” Mesquita. Fornarino is only in her second year competing at black belt and she ran through one of the toughest brackets ever as the smallest competitor. Insane.

This was the first year ADCC ever hosted a women’s absolute division. The fact that the smallest person won and became the first Australian ever to do so makes it that much more impressive. This brings us to the next series of winners.

In With The New

ADCC weekend is always good for some new faces to break through. This year was no exception.

On the first day of the tournament several major upsets happened in dramatic fashion. My friend and late addition to the tournament Chris Wojcik tapped the three-time IBJJF No Gi World Champion Josh Hinger.

Wojcik also writes a newsletter called The Grappler’s Diary. It’s a good look into the mind and personal experience of a jiujitsu competitor from a first person point of view.

Wojcik’s up-and-coming B-Team stablemate Owen Jones took a dramatic submission off of 2022’s ADCC Silver Medalist, Gabriel Sousa.

You can read my ADCC Rookie Report on Owen Jones here.

The veteran Garry Tonon came back from MMA to try his hand at ADCC again. He’s known for having one of the most exciting styles ever. He was also half of one of the best matches ever against Kron Gracie.

Tonon took on Polish leg locking star Mateusz Szczeciński.

K guard is generally used to attack leg locks. Often you’ll see grapplers posture and extend their limbs to push leg lockers away while defending k guard. This can open up triangles and arm bars like we see above.

In CJI my bracket got busted in the first round. Australian leg locker Lucas Kanard shook up the world with a huge upset over former IBJJF No Gi World Champion and three-time Gi World Champion Victor Hugo.

Kanard is one athlete I regret not doing a Rookie Report on. His ADCC run was nearly flawless with him submitting every one of his opponents except one. The most shocking win of the weekend came in ADCC’s -99 KG division.

Multi-time IBJJF World Champion and former ADCC Silver Medalist Nicholas Meregali met Michael Pixley in his second-round match. Going into the event, Meregali was building his winning brand on social media prematurely posting about his double gold to be. Pixley did not read the memo.

Ahead of the match I called Pixley a live dog. He was my dark horse in my ADCC write-up for one reason, wrestling.

There’s a difference between being a good wrestler for jiujitsu and being a good wrestler. The former D2 Wrestling National Champion, Pixley, is the latter.

Good wrestlers have feel. They can flow and improvise on the go. Their attacks come in twos and threes, not single set-ups and resets.

It’s like watching an experienced striker move with a newcomer. Their feet skip, they bounce in and out to set traps, and when the newcomer overextends on a false opening they find themselves face up on the canvas. You can read more about the traps Pixley sets here.

Speaking of canvas and surfaces brings us to our next winner.

New Fields Of Play

Going into CJI I was skeptical. I thought the sloped walls of “the alley” were a gimmick. I could not have been more wrong.

Generally, I don’t think the field of play does that much to make events more exciting. Athletes do.

What new arenas can do is remove the referees from the action. That is unequivocally a positive.

Most grappling matches happen on open mats, elevated floors, and in cages. These all have pros and cons.

Broadly speaking, CJI’s slanted walls solve all of these issues. More importantly, it almost entirely removes the referee from stepping in to reset the action in the center and pull athletes off of the wall. The alley makes it so the action never stops.

CJI’s officiating wasn’t all a win though.

Who’s Walking Away Worse?

Inconsistent Scoring

CJI really went out on a limb with their scoring. They used MMA and Boxing’s 10-point must system with open scoring to give round-by-round results.

I think the open scoring was a win. Announcing who was leading each round seemed to excite the crowd and incentivize action. Who actually was winning seemed a bit inconsistent according to the judges.

CJI rules are supposed to reward forward pressure. Action. But how do submission counters play into that? What if someone is laying traps to trick someone into falling into a submission? This question seemed to be split in judges’ minds as well.

I don’t know how Felipe Andrew’s third round on Daniel Greg Kerkvliet is anything other than a 10-8 but some judges only gave him a 10-9.

You could also look at Tye Ruotolo’s match with Jason Nolf. The second round was scored 10-9 for Ruotolo, 10-8 Ruotolo, and 10-9 for Nolf. If the scoring creates that much inconsistency with one round, the system probably needs an audit. What really needs an audit is where action actually happens.

Concrete Floors

ADCC is notorious for letting the action play out. There is no barrier and people often go off of the mat.

I’m not going to pretend that this can’t be exciting. I’m also not naive enough to think that this doesn’t present a huge problem waiting to happen.

What’s going to happen when someone goes off the mat and gets a career-ending injury? How will the sport change when someone hits their head on the concrete and is left concussed, paralyzed, or worse?

Injuries are a part of combat sports. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do whatever we can to reduce the likelihood of incidental injury. With CJI literally creating barriers to change the field of play, ADCC would be well served to at least add some padding or more space between the mats and the concrete floors that could literally end careers.

While we’re going on about injuries we need to talk about the biggest upset of the weekend more.

Meregali Might Need Surgery

This is combat sports. Nothing comes for free and wins don’t happen in isolation. For every feel-good story in fighting there are literal graves filled with disappointing stories, battered bodies, and broken limbs.

Nicholas Meregali left the arena in a sling. The throw he suffered left him injured to an extent we don’t fully understand yet.

Meregali just turned 30 and shoulders are notoriously tricky joints. They provide so much movement and surgeries for them are challenging for athletes to overcome. While I might not enjoy Meregali’s online schtick, that doesn’t mean I can’t love watching his jiujitsu.

Sports are better when we have personalities. Heroes, villains, and complicated characters just make watching everything more fun. Say what you will about Meregali, but you can’t say his artistic flair makes the sport less interesting.

I can’t help but feel bad for him suffering this injury and I hope he can recover to get back in the sport. The only question I have is, what sport will he come back to?

Where Do We Go From Here?

The drama for the better part of the last few years was all around Austin’s two super teams, B-Team and New Wave. With Kaynan Duarte’s win, things just got a lot more interesting.

Kaynan Duarte and Nicholas Meregali have had a heated rivalry for the past six years. Meregali is currently up 3-2 with a submission win over Duarte at WNO. We all thought they were going to meet in ADCC’s finals until Meregali’s injury spoiled the promotion’s dream finals. Now Duarte has bigger fish to fry.

Gordon Ryan won his absolute super fight over Yuri Simoes. This sets up a meeting between Ryan and Duarte in two years at the next ADCC.

You may recall that Ryan has famously denied Duarte a rematch for years. The story goes that they both were a part of Mo Jassim’s super event, “2020 Modolfo ADCC Camp”. A DVD of the sparring footage was released afterwards but Kaynan is missing from the footage, allegedly, because and Ryan completely worked him. Ryan claims this cost him money, like a lot of money, and he doesn’t want to give Duarte any opportunities to make money off of his name in competition. Now he has to.

This is a grudge match years in the making. And the sport will only benefit from it. That is, if Ryan’s health issues even allow him to make it to the match.

That was a big overview of the highlights from this past weekend. But this weekend’s chaos deserves more attention. This Friday we’ll be giving this weekend that attention by looking at some of the more interesting technical maneuvers from the weekend.

Come back Friday to see who and what you need to study from ADCC and CJI.

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