Craig Jones has just announced that the Craig Jones Invitational 2025 (CJI 2) will feature the promotion’s first ever women’s tournament. It’s a huge move that has been very well-received, as he’s also offering the biggest prize in the history of female grappling at $100,000. It’s a big step forward from the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational, that only featured a single women’s match as a superfight while the men fought for two million-dollar prizes. CJI 2 will still feature a million dollars in prize money for the men but with it being a 5-man team grappling tournament, the winning team will split that at $200,000 each.
The women’s prize money is half that amount, but the champion will only have to win two matches in order to take it home. Jones announced that this will be a four-woman bracket and although he didn’t specify a weight class, he asked for fans to ‘tag your 4 best women athletes’ in the social media post announcing it. This seems to imply that the tournament will be openweight, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see them fit a weight class around whoever the 4 competitors are. Given that CJI 2 doesn’t clash with any major no gi grappling event this year, there’s no real reason that any female competitor wouldn’t want a place in the bracket.
Ffion Davies is probably the most obvious choice given that she already has a winning record in the CJI pit, but there’s plenty of competition for all four places. Adele Fornarino won both the under 55kg and absolute divisions at ADCC 2024, so she’s a clear top contender for one of the other spots as well. Things get quite a bit tougher from there on, but two other women did walk away with gold medals at ADCC 2024 too. Ana Vieira and Rafaela Guedes were the other two champions, as they won the under and over 65kg division respectively. Whoever fills the lineup for the CJI 2 women’s tournament, it’s sure to be an action-packed night of high-level grappling with that much money on the line.
Craig Jones announced that there would be a $100,000 women’s tournament at CJI 2 in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
