The final team in the CJI 2 lineup has now been announced, as ATOS have revealed their final 3 competitors. There must have been some discussion and debate behind the scenes, because it’s taken quite some time for the ATOS lineup to be confirmed. The team will obviously be led by their founder and head coach, Andre Galvao, and they were always going to be one of the favorites. Galvao has multiple world champions under a range of different rulesets training under him, and his team actually had an incredible performance last year that saw them win 6 gold medals at ADCC 2024 and one of the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational titles.
The first man confirmed for the ATOS team was Felipe Pena, who also happens to be one of their reigning champions. Although Pena hasn’t always been a member of the team officially, he has conducted key training camps there. For that reason, he was considered a full member of the team for the Craig Jones Invitational rather than a Gracie Barra representative. Pena was an excellent choice for the over 99kg division and because of his prior affiliation with the team, that meant they still had their wildcard pick available. They used that in their second announcement, bringing in Diego ‘Pato’ Oliveira from Art of Jiu-Jitsu for the under 66kg division.
Many people speculated that this might mean that Kade Ruotolo and Tye Ruotolo would be taking up the under 77kg and 88kg divisions respectively, but neither man will be returning to CJI this year. Instead, Ronaldo Junior will be making his promotional debut at under 77kg and Lucas ‘Hulk’ Barbosa is returning to compete at under 88kg for ATOS. Their final competitor at under 99kg is also going to be one of their strongest, as Kaynan Duarte is taking that spot. Duarte has been an elite competitor for a while but he had the best performance of his life last year when he became ADCC double champion, and his victory in the absolute division there shows how useful he will be at CJI 2.
The Craig Jones Invitational announced the full ATOS team lineup for CJI 2 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
