Felipe Pena had great success when he competed at the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) for the very first time and now he believes that their unique pit structure is something that all events should adopt. Pena competed at CJI 2 and although the team he was on didn’t make it to the final, he put in some great performances against elite opponents. It seems as though one of the biggest unique selling points that CJI has really appealed to him, even though he’s only spent a total of 3 matches in it. It’s become an increasingly popular stance in Jiu-Jitsu over the last few years though, and UFC BJJ even created a similar bowl for their events.
When asked about the slanted walls that CJI makes use of, Pena was very clear that he was a fan of it:
“I think every event should have a wall, something like that, because that makes more entertainment, you know. It doesn’t give a space for fighters to run away, they cannot run away.”
This is one of the most common talking-points around the pit, and it’s generally agreed that it forces a more constant stream of action. Without competitors going out of bounds, there’s significantly less resets and less breaks in the action. The angled walls don’t just prevent competitors from going out of bounds though, they also create a clear negative consequence of getting too close to the end of the mat. Pena alluded to this himself:
“When you have the pit… there is more chance for this to happen because if one athlete is walking back, he’s getting close to the pit, you know, and he knows when he gets close to the pit it is bad for him.”
When competitions use the traditional open matted area, they also introduce the problem of dealing with athletes going out of bounds when under threat of submission. ADCC addresses this by simply allowing the action to continue and the IBJJF resets the action with points awarded to the attacker. Neither one is ideal really and as Pena explains, they open up the possibility of competitors gaming the rules:
“A lot of times, the athletes, they use that to stop the match or to escape from the submission. But when you have the pit, it’s kind of the opposite.”
The full interview with Felipe Pena where he explains why he’s such a fan of the pit used in CJI was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of FloGrappling:
