Craig Jones made a pretty bold decision for the second Craig Jones Invitational (CJI 2), pivoting away from a format that was a huge success in to completely new territory with a team grappling ruleset. The initial announcement was met with both support and criticism in pretty equal measure, as fan-opinions were pretty divided. There was method to the madness according to Jones though, and there was a very specific reason that he chose to change things up. He is actually a veteran Quintet competitor of course, so he knows better than most exactly what the pros and cons of the format are.
Ariel Helwani asked Jones about the change of rules for CJI 2 and he revealed that it wasn’t just a spur of the moment decision, it was actually planned in advance:
“For me it was about growing the sport and I’d always planned, knowing full well that it was going to be mimicked in some capacity by other people in the industry. To the extent that it has been? That was surprising. I think that’s a testament to the success of the first event, but I always wanted to do something different for the second event.”
Jones is right too, both the pit structure and the three-round format have been used far more often over the last year and the success of the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational is clearly the reason why. While some of that response was fairly predictable, nobody could have seen the UFC BJJ bowl coming. Given that fans have now become accustomed to seeing similar formats to CJI, the switch to team grappling will help the event feel fresh again. Jones says the new format isn’t permanent though:
“For the third event, we probably likely go back to the million-dollar 16-man style event but I wanted to showcase how exciting grappling could be. So we hooked the best athletes with one million for the first one, now I really want to double down and show the fans that this is the most exciting format from a spectator’s perspective.”
Jones already did a great job of creating an exciting event for his first attempt, and he wants to take things to the next level:
“Quintet, for someone that doesn’t train, will have the most appeal. It’s the chaos, it could be a small guy against a big guy and that’s really the goal for this event.”
The full interview with Craig Jones where he explains why he chose to make CJI 2 a team grappling event was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Ariel Helwani Show:
