This article is part of our Craig Jones Invitational 2024 coverage. To get live results, play by play, and commentary, we’ll have a live updates article running all weekend.
The Craig Jones Invitational has gone from a crazy idea to the direct competitor for ADCC 2024 in what feels like the blink of an eye, but it appears as though key domain names don’t reflect that. According to WhoIs records, both craigjonesinvitational.com and cjiofficial.com were purchased on May 24th, 2024, the same day that the promotion shared their first post under the Instagram account of cjiofficial to officially launch the project. These two domain names would be vital for the promotion as they are the exact full name that they use and the exact social media handle representing them, ensuring that fans could find their website with ease.
Those two domain names have not yet been used to build a website for the Craig Jones Invitational however, as they both redirect to the official ADCC website at the time of writing. It’s not unusual for several domain names to redirect to one central website, but this is generally only done when the domain names are all related to the same business or event. It is unusual however, for specific domain names relating to one business to redirect to a direct competitor instead of to a website for the business that those domain names relate to.
It becomes even more unusual in this specific instance, because ADCC and the Craig Jones Invitational are actually taking place on the same weekend and in the same city. They aren’t just competing with one another in the same way that many major promotions compete all around the world, athletes are actually having to choose which one they will compete at and some of them have withdrawn from ADCC 2024 to compete at CJI. Fans will have a similar dilemma too, as the final day of CJI will coincide with the opening day of ADCC 2024 and depending on the exact timing they might have to choose which one to watch.
Things have moved incredibly quickly and Craig Jones has really built something from the ground up that has sent shockwaves through the sport, so major news is breaking on the matter pretty much every day. As such; Jits Magazine have reached out to ADCC and Craig Jones to see if the parties involved are willing to comment on the fact that these two domain names are redirected. Jones responded to say the following:
“Honestly that’s pretty funny. I’m pretty sure someone did that for us with New Wave initially and it would redirect to our page. So maybe that’s a funny fan, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.”
We have not yet had a response from ADCC, but this article will be updated with any comments that they choose to give as and when we receive them.
