Grappling with January 2024
A quick rundown of events in the world of sumo, jiu jitsu and judo for January 2024.
We did it. We survived the week long binge of Christmas dinners, cookies, ginger bread houses, and copious amounts of champagne to close off 2023. Sorry, what’s that? There are other people out there that didn’t put on 3 kilos of weight eating sweets because they’ve been dieting and training for tournaments the second week of 2024? *sigh* I guess I’ll get up off the couch and do a rundown of these events, but I’m not putting away the snicker doodles while I do it.
Jiu Jitsu
Event: Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Jiu Jitsu World Tour
When: January 14, 2024
Venue: Ota Gymnasium, Tokyo, Japan
How to watch: AJPTour.tv
One thing I mentioned in my recent article was that I felt that jiu jitsu, as a whole, does not really have a proper professional or organized sports body compared to that of judo. Sure, jiu jitsu has the IBJJF but realistically I don’t think anyone would call what they do, well, very impressive. Stuff like ADCC has, in my opinion, overtaken the IBJJF as THE organizing body for no-gi jiu jitsu. However that’s just one half of the jiu jitsu puzzle, ironically though its another Abu Dhabi based organization that has more or less become in some respects the top professional gi jiu jitsu organization. The Abu Dhabi Jiu Jitsu Pro is another organization hailing from an oil rich country that well…look just go read Karim Zidan’s Sports Politika for more info on why being tied to the United Arab Emirates is a thing worth noting. He is far more skilled at explaining the nuances of it.
With that said, AJP has been described by a lot of top level gi practitioners as one of the best organizations to do events at as an athlete. Things are smoothly ran, the event facilities are apparently well laid out and maintained, athletes are compensated (unlike IBJJF) for their matches at the “professional” tier, and aside from dealing with timezone differences their streams are actually watchable and not bogged down with technical issues.
In essence, AJP is seemingly trying to become the gi jiu jitsu equivalent of the International Judo Federation (IJF) for the sport and are succeeding. They’re hosting events at various locations around the world with future events in 2024 being in Rome, Abu Dhabi, Sao Paolo, Sydney, and the Netherlands that seems to mirror the large IJF Grand Slam and other top competitions for judo. In addition, much like the IJF, the AJP also runs a teams competition format akin to the IJF Mixed Teams or wrestling dual meet. A format that I have professed as being probably the best way to get spectators to watch jiu jitsu in general, and ease them into the individual competition formats.
While watching gi jiu jitsu has been long considered a relatively boring prospect compared to no-gi, AJP has been able to attract some of the worlds top competitors which in turn leads to exciting matches. IBJJF wants to be what AJP is, but AJP is doing it better in my view.
So with that said, the AJP Grand Slam in Tokyo should be a good event. I’d recommend just watching the Professionals division for the higher caliber matches.
Judo
As hinted at in my retrospective for 2023, I stated I wanted to do a bit more write ups for events in grappling I think are worth watching and to solely focus on jiu jitsu events would be both light in content, and also somewhat boring. Jiu jitsu as a sport is great, but I also feel that if you enjoy jiu jitsu then you should be able to enjoy other grappling focused martial arts which is why in 2024 I’m going to make an effort to try to watch (and even learn) more judo than in previous years. Which brings us to the first big judo event in 2024, just a few months ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris later this year.
Event: IJF Grand Prix Portugal 2024
When: January 26 to 28th, 2024
Venue: Pavilhão Multiusos de Odivelas, Odivelas, Portugal
How to watch: JudoTV.com
The IJF Grand Prix/Grand Slam series of events always seemed to stick out to me. I’m not a judo expert, Neal is, but this year I am going to try my hand at the sport in a more concerted effort.
With that said, 2024 is also an Olympics year meaning judoka vying for entrance into the games in Paris need to rack up points to get accepted. How does one do that? Well, from what I understand of the system, in the IJF you get points depending on how well you do in any of their big international tournaments like the Grand Prix Portugal. Placing high in the tournament gets you more points towards your Olympic qualification.
That means that from now until a bit later in the year we’ll probably see a lot of intense and competitive matches amongst the athletes who are just on the edge of qualifying. It makes for potentially great highlights, but also an opportunity to watch judo at a higher caliber than say in a year where the Olympics aren’t being held.
With nearly 300 judoka competing, this should be a good event and even if you don’t watch live you can always check out the highlights on YouTube as there are a host of channels (such as Non-stop Newaza, Judo Highlights, and Judo Fights) who all upload content from the events shortly after they occur.
Sumo
Event: Tokyo Grand Sumo Tournament (Hatsu Basho) 2024
When: January 14 to 28th, 2024
Venue: Ryogoku Kokugikan, Tokyo, Japan
How to watch: NHK (Japanese TV network) or Twitch.tv*
*Note: The Twitch.TV streams are technically not in accordance with the broadcast rights, and may be taken down via DMCA/copyright strikes. This is, aside from using a VPN, one of the only reliable ways to watch sumo live outside of Japan.
OK, so I may have been wrong about ALL the athletes having to diet during the holidays since sumo guys well…I’m sure they do diet but they’re probably not having to cut a whole bunch of weight all the time like judokas and jiu jitsu people do.
Every January the Hatsu Basho or Tokyo Grand Sumo Tournament brings in all the majesty and ritual we love about sumo in just the second week of the new year. Sumo is, genuinely, one of the most easy to watch sports in terms of grappling and if you’re not familiar with the nuances of sumo just check out the Big Boy’s Primer to Sumo I wrote last year. It’ll catch you up on some of the more importent elements, the rest you’ll pick up as you watch.
This year we are entering with only one Yokozuna, Terunofuji, which isn’t hugely important but something I wanted to point out as Terunofuji is pretty good overall. The three Ozeki, the rank under Yokozuna, are all trying to get that prestigious rank and join Terunofuji at the top of the sumo mountain.
Sumo tournaments last for two weeks, with each competitor only having one match per day meaning even if you miss a day or two you’re not too far behind. Being as into grappling as I am, I can’t explain to you why and how watching sumo is just so satisfying aside from saying that it really is something amazing to watch a rikishi (sumo wrestler) do a hip toss of a guy who is around 150 kilograms or more. For a rundown of the rankings for the tournament (banzuke) I really recommend Salt City Sumo’s breakdown on as its relatively easy to understand and digest.
The hardest part of sumo watching really is just getting access. The TV rights are held very tighly by NHK, a TV broadcaster in Japan, meaning any attempts to restream it, reupload the events, etc. are met with issues where copyright law is being violated. Even though non-Japanese audiences will gladly pay for access to the sumo events, NHK seems disinterested in catering to that market for the most part so you’ll have to scour YouTube and other sites to get some of the content if you can’t watch live or through a VPN. It’s annoying, but worth the effort.
And those are the major grappling events of January 2024, just a taste of pretty much everything there is to see or experience in these very interlinked sports.