The Craig Jones Invitational was a big success and now it’s founder, Craig Jones, has opened up about the possibility of doing a women’s division at the next edition of CJI in 2025. The inaugural edition of the tournament featured two men’s divisions at under and over 80kg, but there were some women competing at the event. Obviously Gabi Garcia competed in the intergender superfight against Jones himself, but there was also another huge superfight between two of the best female grapplers of all time. Reigning ADCC world champion Ffion Davies took on Mackenzie Dern and both women gave it everything they had.
Immediately after the event concluded, Jones conducted an interview with combat sports reporter Amy Kaplan and she asked about the possibility of an entire women’s division next time around:
“It’s obviously hard to get funding. I didn’t want to do a women’s division and pay them less. So I was like ‘let’s put on the best women’s fight we could ever put on, show how exciting the women are, and then I can use that to leverage sponsors to give them a proper million-dollar division.”
It makes sense that Jones would want to pay female competitors the same as men, as that was one of the biggest criticisms that he and Ffion Davies levied at ADCC originally. The superfight between Davies and Dern was fantastic as well, with non-stop action until Davies eventually managed to find the finish in the second round. If Jones’ aim was to use that match as a proof of concept for a women’s division next time around then it really couldn’t have gone any better, and if Davies returns then it’ll be interesting to see if she can keep up her winning record in the CJI alley.
The interview with Craig Jones where he discusses the possibility of a women’s division at the next edition of CJI was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Amy Kaplan:
