The IBJJF has just announced a fantastic lineup for the women’s lightweight division at The Crown, which is scheduled to take place on November 19th, 2023. The event is a completely new idea for the promotion but they’ve clearly been putting a lot of effort into creating one of the best professional grappling tournaments of the year. There’s a total of $120,000 of prize money available across 6 divisions and the winners of each of the brackets will receive $15,000 each. The IBJJF has been slowly revealing the competitors for each of the divisions since the first announcement, starting out with a stacked men’s featherweight division earlier in the year.
Now one of the two women’s divisions have been announced as well, and the lineup at lightweight is equally fantastic. It’s going to be tough for any of these women to emerge victorious but Janaina Lebre stands out, particularly after a fantastic performance at the IBJJF Grand Prix last year. That win announced her arrival at the highest levelt and she’s already beaten some of the biggest names in the sport despite still being pretty early on in her career. Lebre also won a silver medal in the women’s lightweight division of the IBJJF World Championship earlier this year and without the gold medalist in the bracket for The Crown, she has a great chance.
Brianna Ste-Marie is also competing in the bracket and although she’s one of the world’s top no gi competitors, she’s also managed to earn a bronze medal at the IBJJF World Championship in the gi. Alongside her, the presence of elite competitor Nathalie Ribeiro will also make things incredibly difficult for the other women in the division. The final woman rounding out the bracket is a former IBJJF World Champion and although it’s been a few years since Luiza Monteiro has won gold at the event, she’s still a huge challenge for anyone and stands just as much chance as the rest of winning.
