Diego ‘Pato’ Oliveira and Ashley Williams will now be competing against one another in a gi match that will serve as the main event of Polaris 29 on September 7th, 2024. It’s a it of a change of pace for the promotion as they usually focus on no gi matches for their main events, but they picked very exciting competitors who will no doubt put it all on the line. Williams is obviously a fan-favorite at Polaris after becoming a triple-weight champion back in 2020, and he’s been able to establish himself at the highest levels of the sport in the years since then.
Williams won ADCC Trials and made his ADCC debut in 2022, before being invited to return for the 2024 edition of the tournament. At the same time he’s been travelling around the world and facing some of the best no gi grapplers possible in the lighter weight classes. Before any of this, Williams was actually a frequent gi competitor on the IBJJF circuit and now he’ll be returning to his roots. He couldn’t have picked a tougher test for his first gi match in several years as well, as Diego ‘Pato’ Oliveira is a three-time IBJJF World Championship gold medalist.
In fact, Oliveira is one of the few grapplers who is able to succeed at the very highest level of the sport in both gi and no gi tournaments. He’s also won the IBJJF No Gi World Championship twice and has both a bronze and silver medal from the last two editions of ADCC. This will be a fantastic match between two exciting veterans of the sport and it will take place after a series of other excellent matches too, as the promotion has announced Tainan Dalpra vs Max Lindblad and Fellipe Andrew vs Arya Esfandmaz among others.
Polaris announced the news that Diego ‘Pato’ Oliveira and Ashley Williams were going to compete in the gi main event of Polaris 29 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
