Grappling with 2024
A brief recap of all the wet, wild, and wacky events in jiu jitsu over the past year.
I’ll be honest, I did not write much, if at all, about jiu jitsu this past year. I could blame it on a super secret exciting new project that I spent months toiling away on, but the reality was: I had other work to do and forgot I was a contributor here on Fight Island.
HOWEVER, I will not the end of the year come and go without putting in my contractually obligated article summarizing a sport I both want to see succeed, and also have grown increasingly frustrated with due to the lack of direction.
So let’s take a moment to look at the major events that defined the sport this year and maybe try to make sense of everything.
CJI Saved This Year
Craig Jones has, quite smoothly, transitioned from just being a jiu jitsu competitor known for his banter. He is now a gym owner, a content creator on YouTube, and now, a tournament promoter who might have saved jiu-jitsu from tedium this past year. The Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) raced into our lives seemingly based off a joke to try to ensure jiu jitsu competitors at ADCC actually would make money. What started off as a rough idea quickly took form and materialized in just a few short months and put on, easily, one of the highest profile jiu jitsu events.
CJI’s success lay in its ability to strike the perfect balance between spectacle and substance. Matches were refreshingly fast-paced thanks to a rule set that encouraged action, a stark contrast to other rule sets, helped mostly due to the introduction of the walled in grappling area stolen from the Karate Combat organization. The existence of rounds during the matches made sense, allowed for a whole fight to easily be tracked with the open scoring, and just made it the most easy to approach sporting event within the grappling world.
Added to all of this was the fact that the two weight divisions on display were competing for a $1 million dollar grand prize each, which saw Nicky Rodriguez and Kade Ruotolo take home the championships which, fittingly, were just briefcases full of cash. I mean, game respects game in that respect. It showed that competitors in jiu jitsu can, and should, expect higher pay and better treatment by organizers. My own conversations with ADCC competitors of the past all indicated that there is a ton of favoritism in the treatment competitors get at different events. Not specifically in matchmaking, but how much of an undisclosed payout someone may get. To me, that’s just shady and not something I want to see within the sport. Athletes, regardless of placement on a card or ranking, deserve the same equal amount of support, treatment, and pay. Much like how MMA has been long lambasted for not paying fighters a fair amount of the revenue compared to the NFL, and MLB, I don’t want to see that continue as it just means more and more people will be exploited by asshole promoters.
Beyond the matches, CJI really found its identity by leaning into its identity as a counterculture event. The production value was surprisingly slick, yet it never felt polished to the point of pretension like other grappling events (I’m looking at you Metamoris and WNO). The streams on YouTube was brilliant, and even more so as other events would have tried charging a premium made it evident that you can put on a free broadcast and still make a dollar or two as well. Craig Jones’ approach to marketing—self-deprecating, heavy on the jokes, and irreverent—resonated with the audience both inside and outside of the jiu jitsu community, and poked plenty of fun at the sport’s sometimes overly serious tone. If you didn’t watch CJI this year, you missed out on a rare blend of elite grappling and genuine fun, something jiu-jitsu sorely needs to embrace.
With the announcement of CJI 2 coming in August 2025, it isn’t that crazy to argue that it will be 2025’s event of the year as well.
ADCC Happened (I Think)
ADCC 2024 was, as always, the pinnacle of no-gi grappling…but also not really?
While the matches were undeniably high-level, the event left me scratching my head purely because of the sheer absurdity that seems to come with every ADCC production. Where else can you experience constant delays in what is meant to be the highest pinnacle of the sport? Let alone the fact that a fair number of ADCC competitors jumped ship to participate in CJI because they knew their value and how ADCC wasn’t really treating them properly.
This year’s tournament certainly showcased a new wave of talent, including breakouts in the women’s divisions and surprise upsets in the men’s brackets. But it also highlighted the ongoing “ADCC Paradox”: an event that is the premiere tournament of the sport that is seemingly allergic to organizational coherence. While you can argue that this chaos is in all jiu jitsu organizations, it feels more so a thing ADCC really likes to take pride in showcasing how far they can go. The year saw constant Instragram streams by head organizer Mo Jassim talking up the production, but then talking down paying competitors a a fair wage. Then when CJI was announced, suddenly that money became available not only for the women’s division (who were being paid less than the men) but for all divisions.
Issues like those and the poor quality of the event (both streaming and accessibility related) make it feel like it is time to embrace professionalism and have a much clearer vision for how the event is presented to the audience. I like jiu jitsu, but I don’t have time to manage 3 different streams of the three different matches all occurring at the same time across a 10ish hour day. I don’t think anyone does. I hope nobody does.
ADCC really didn’t feel like THE event this year. It felt like an after thought not only by fans, but by those in charge. The folks running the show didn’t really seem to be phased at all by the fact CJI was happening in the same town on the same weekend and poached so much of their talent. They just dismissed it and then spent money to allegedly pay the UFC’s Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones to show up and watch, supposedly for more money than what the athletes were being paid. So yeah, I don’t know, I feel less interested in ADCC at this stage which sucks because I used to argue they’re what the sport’s main league should be.
The Evolution of UFC Fight Pass Invitational
2024 saw the UFC doubling down on its effort to make grappling a commercial spectacle through its Fight Pass Invitational series. With Dana White’s fingerprints all over it, the FPI felt less like a jiu-jitsu tournament and more like a marketing machine for a future product. The production value, as with pretty much all of the UFC’s products, was strong. Little issue ever occurred with knowing when an event was, or how to access it (unlike say FloSports’ work but I’ve yelled about them enough).
But for all its glitz, the FPI felt, much like most of the UFC’s endeavors in other sports, like it was a bit too…cold. Rule sets seemed tailored to create highlight-reel moments, often at the expense of technical nuance. The grappling space being elevated caused competitors to have to stop and reset once they were too close, or even off, the platform which is just…weird. While its clear there’s an ambition to create an exciting MMA fan friendly event, there’s just not much else going for it. There’s no hard and fast weight divisions, no structure for a champioship narrative (aside from the one-night tournament format which is becoming dull). Discussions have been coming out of the UFC restructuring FPI into a unified grappling organization, meaning there could become a more standardized structure and more longevity to what FPI is.
The Year of Nicky Rod Part Deux
In 2023, I said that it was the Year of Nicky Rod. If that is true, then this year served as his coronation. He has transcended the “blue belt with abs” who shocked the world at the 2022 ADCC World Championship to establishing himself as one of the most dominant forces in jiu-jitsu today. He ripped through the CJI tournament this year to winning a cool $1 million dollars and cemented himself within jiu jitsu’s history.
Rodriguez’s game has evolved beyond his wrestling roots, incorporating better submission entries and positional control that rival the best in the sport. What sets him apart, however, is his adaptability. He seemingly finds ways to impose his game that just break his competitors. And let’s not forget his unrivaled cardio, which has become the stuff of legend—it’s like he’s powered by some secret government experiment.
Beyond the mats, Rodriguez has embraced his role as a larger-than-life personality. His candid social media presence and willingness to engage with fans have made him a relatable figure in a sport often criticized for its lack of marketable stars. As Nicky Rod continues to dominate, the question isn’t whether he’ll remain at the top but who will be the one to stop him.
Jiu Jitsu The Sport: It Exists!
Jiu-jitsu, as a sport, continues to exists. That’s good! Despite the occasional viral moment, it’s hard to argue that 2024 brought any meaningful growth in the sport’s mainstream appeal outside of CJI. Sure, there are more tournaments, more athletes, and more YouTube breakdowns of obscure guard passes than before, but when it comes to crossing into mainstream consciousness, jiu-jitsu remains on the fringes.
Part of the problem is accessibility. Jiu-jitsu’s complexity is both its greatest strength and its biggest barrier to entry for a spectator. Trust me, I’ve tried to convince people and cats to watch and they tend to lose interest pretty quickly. The average viewer doesn’t need to entirely understand all the technical terms or positions, but they also face an issue of a very niche community trying to promote their niche sport to them in a hamfisted way. If grappling wants to grow, it needs to meet audiences where they are. Again, I won’t scream about FloSports but they’re terrible at this. CJI being on YouTube is a big step in a right direction. PGF following suit, also helps tho its not as widely talked about. There’s less of a need to pony up with FITE, UFC Fight Pass, or FloSports as their dollar entry puts off prospective new fans. Using services that are free like YouTube or Twitch, is the best way to reach an audience easily and smoothly. We just saw this work successfully with CJI, so it is possible to replicate. Additionally, using simplified commentary, better production, and rule sets that ultimately are easy to comprehend and follow as a spectator will help bridge the gap to make the sport more accessible to new fans.
Until something significant helps push the sport jiu jitsu to the eyeballs of fans, it will continue to exist purely as a niche sport with a passionate but limited audience. That said, maybe being niche is good because having to explain why the promoter of an event ripped his pants off to show his thong underneath as they entered an arena for a match is probably more difficult than anything else.