This article is part of our ADCC 2024 coverage. To get live results, play by play, and commentary, we’ll have a live updates article running all weekend.
There has just been a huge change to the way that the ADCC world championship operates, as a brand new women’s weight class has been added ready for the upcoming trials and ADCC 2024. This represents not only a massive opportunity for female grapplers around the world, but also signals that even more significant changes may be coming. For the last 14 years, the only weight classes available for women have been either under or over 60kg. ADCC 2005 and 2007 are the only editions of the event that has had more brackets than that, with an absolute division running in 2005 and four weight classes and an absolute division in 2007.
Head organizer Mo Jassim is at the helm for his third consecutive edition of the ADCC world championship in 2024 and he’s clearly got the future in mind now that he’s making changes to the event structure like this. The inclusion of a third weight class has meant that the other two have changed slightly, helping to spread out the available talent evenly across them. Now there will be under and over 65kg divisions instead of 60kg, and there will be a brand new 55kg division available for lighter competitors.
Jassim has been open about wanting to add more women’s weight classes even before ADCC 2022, but changes this like undoubtedly take quite a lot of time and work. The timing really couldn’t be better either, as there’s still a few months left before the first ADCC Trial for 2024 takes place and competitors have plenty of time to decide which weight class they want to enter. It’ll be interesting to see how these changes effect the lineups for ADCC 2024, as prior under 60kg competitors have the choice to either cut or gain weight and prior over 60kg competitors have the choice to either fit into under 65kg or continue in the unlimited weight class.
ADCC announced the news that they were adding a third women’s weight class for the upcoming trials and world championship in 2024, in a post to their official Instagram account:
