ADCC 2022 marked a huge moment for B-Team Jiu-Jitsu as they took their very first team to a major tournament, with Craig Jones leading the way with his performance on the mats. They were always going to have a strong presence at the event as several of their athletes received invites to compete on the merit of their past performance like Nicky Ryan, Nicky Rodriguez, Ethan Crelinsten, and Craig Jones himself. The team then went on to exceed expectations during the build-up for ADCC 2022 though, when Jacob Rodriguez won the 88kg division of the North American West Coast trials.
Then just a matter of months before ADCC 2022 took place, Izaak Michell won the 99kg division of the Asia and Oceania trials. Kenta Iwamoto also won the 77kg division of the same trials and although he didn’t officially represent B-Team Jiu-Jitsu at ADCC 2022, he spent a lot of his time training with Craig Jones and the rest of the squad during the build-up to the tournament. In the end, the B-Team stuck to their name somewhat poetically and came away from the world’s most prestigious no gi grappling tournament with a pair of silver medals courtesy of Nicky Rodriguez and Jones himself.
Outside of those two, the rest of the B-Team all went out in the opening round of their respective divisions. Although it’s worth noting that they all gave a great account of themselves at ADCC 2022 and they will almost all be likely to return to the ADCC world championships next time around, eager to do one better than they did this year and strike gold.
Craig Jones evaluated the performance of himself and his B-Team Jiu-Jitsu teammates at ADCC 2022 in a recent video uploaded to the team’s official YouTube channel:
