Elite competitors around the world can now start their preparations as both the dates and location for the 2022 IBJJF World Championships have just been announced. The world’s biggest gi Jiu-Jitsu tournament will be returning to it’s regular location of the Walter Pyramid in Long Beach, California, and this year it will take place from the 1st to the 5th of June. This signals something of a return to normality after the chaos of the last two years, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, that forced the Worlds to take place at unfamiliar times.
Regardless of the upheaval, the 2021 Worlds was still one of the most exciting tournaments of the year and delivered plenty of memorable moments. Some were matches well worth rewatching, like the Ruotolo brothers’ epic battle for gold in the brown belt lightweight division, and some were moments that are memorable for the wrong reasons; like Nicholas Meregali being disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct. Although the IBJJF world championships is always a great event, the 2022 edition might suffer a little from the events surrounding it.
Kaynan Duarte recently spoke out about the low pay offered to athletes at IBJJF worlds, even going so far as to say that he might not be competing this time around and he certainly isn’t the only athlete thinking this way. Then of course is the difficulty that this year is also going to contain the first ADCC world championships since 2019. Some elite competitors will put more stock in ADCC, not least of all because of it’s significantly higher pay, and may choose to focus on training for that instead. We’ll still be on hand to provide a breakdown of the results and key performances from the event of course, but don’t be surprised to see some key names absent.
The announcement of the dates and location for the 2022 IBJJF World Championships was made in a post to the promotion’s official Instagram account:
