This article revealing the dates and location of CJI is part of our Craig Jones Invitational 2024 coverage. To get live results, play by play, and commentary, we’ll have a live updates article running all weekend.
The dream behind the Craig Jones Invitational has now become a reality as both the dates and location for the inaugural event have been officially announced. It’s always exciting when a brand new promotion emerges of course, but there’s something incredibly special about this one in particular. Craig Jones is one of the best grapplers in the world and he regularly takes aim at some of the biggest organizations in the sport, but he recently announced that he was going to put his money where his mouth is to create a tournament with a total of three million dollars in prize money.
He went on to show evidence that he had already secured the three million dollars he needed to fund the tournament and that he was going to put together two 16-man brackets, where each champion would receive a million-dollar prize. The idea came about shortly after Jones announced that he would not be competing at ADCC 2024, as one of his main criticism of the event at the time was the prize money available. Despite the fact that it’s the world’s most prestigious no gi grappling tournament, the prize for winning a men’s weight class at ADCC is just $10,000 and has been set at that amount for decades.
A large part of the Craig Jones Invitational has been designed as a statement to ADCC in fact, including both the dates and location of the tournament. The event will actually take place in the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, the same place that hosted ADCC 2022, and it will clash with ADCC 2024 as well. It is due to take place on August 16th and 17th, 2024, which means that the final day of this tournament is at the same time as the first day of ADCC. Jones also announced that he will be offering a guaranteed purse of $10,000 to every competitor too, giving elite grapplers a huge reason to compete at his event instead.
The dates and location for the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational were announced in the very first post to the promotion’s official Instagram account:
