Craig Jones has just issued an open call for competitors who are not a part of major affiliations in order to put together a ‘Team Misfits’ for CJI 2. After the success of the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational, it was clear that the promotion was going to return with another event in 2025. It didn’t take long for that to be officially confirmed but Jones decided to switch things up by making CJI 2 a team grappling tournament instead. The idea was to pit each of the biggest affiliations in the sport against one another, with each one selecting their best grapplers in each of the five traditional ADCC weight classes.
There’s still no concrete news on the full list of teams who will be competing, but Jones cited many of the biggest like ATOS, Gracie Barra, and Checkmat when he first made the announcement. There’s several months left for these teams to set their lineups, but so far 10th Planet are the only ones to actually release their competitor list. Although the full roster of teams is still up in the air,Jones has been clear for quite a few months now is that he wants to give grapplers from smaller teams the opportunity to compete at the second Craig Jones Invitational too.
This is where ‘Team Misfits’ comes into play, as it will be made up of 5 grapplers from teams that will not be part of CJI 2. Jones’ first request for competitors on social media drew a ton of attention too, with elite competitors like Gianni Grippo, Ashley Williams, and Julian Espinosa all putting their names forward already. There were plenty of excellent suggestions coming from the fans as well, giving Jones dozens of different options to choose from. Contrary to what the name might suggest, it appears as though ‘Team Misfits’ might actually end up being one of the stronger teams in the tournament.
Craig Jones put out the open call for competitors for the unaffiliated ‘Team Misfits’ at CJI 2 in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
