Faris Ben-Lamkadem has just revealed that he will be serving as the coach for Team Misfits Europe at the upcoming Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) 2. Ben-Lamkadem is the second of the three Team Misfits coaches to be confirmed after Lachlan Giles stepped up to coach the Australasia team, and only the Americas remain right now. News on the event is still being dripfed to the public at present though, so it shouldn’t be long before the final spot is taken. The full CJI 2 team and competitor list is still being announced too, as only three of the other five team spots have been confirmed.
It remains to be seen whether Ben-Lamkadem will be competing as well as coaching, but he’s very much an active competitor so it wouldn’t be surprising. If he did choose to do so then he would most likely occupy either the under 88kg or under 99kg weight class, although he’d be just as valuablr as a coach alone. Ben-Lamkadem is the first British man to win the IBJJF No Gi World Championship and is one of the top competitors that the country has ever produced. He has a ton of experience training with the best in the world as a Roger Gracie black belt and he currently represents Los Banditos, a hotbed for top UK competitors right now.
Faris Ben-Lamkadem actually announced the news that he was going to be the coach for Team Misfits Europe at CJI 2 immediately after his co-main event match at ADXC 9:
“You’re looking at the new coach for CJI Team Europe and that’s Faradinho, King of the gringos. So you’ll see me at CJI with my team and we’re gonna take over, taking everyone. Shout out to Craig Jones, shout out to everyone involved, and I appreciate all of you guys. We’re gonna show them that the gringos are on top man, and they hate to see us win.”
There’s no news yet on who else might be on the team either, but there’s dozens of elite grapplers all across the continent to choose from. Ben-Lamkadem has some serious firepower in his own gym like Eoghan O’Flanagan, but there’s also plenty of serious threats from elsewhere in Europe as well. Ben-Lamkadem said this when we asked about his new appointment:
“They hate to see the gringos winning, so we gotta make them hate us a lot more, starting with winning CJI. Team Europe will have one of the strongest teams in the event. Stay tuned for who will be on the team with some big surprises coming soon.”
Grapple Culture announced the news that Faris Ben-Lamkadem would be the coach for Team Misfits Europe at CJI 2 in a recent interview with him on their Instagram account:
