Former ADCC Head Organizer Mo Jassim has just announced that he’s working on a gi event for the promotion. It’s a pretty big move for what is currently the world’s most prestigious no gi grappling tournament, and would bring them in to direct competition with the IBJJF. Up until now, ADCC has comfortably benefitted a lot from being the first in the area and it’s a big part of what has maintained it’s prestige. Although the IBJJF No Gi World Championship was created almost a decade later, it has never truly managed to equal ADCC in terms of viewership and the IBJJF has had it’s biggest win in the gi instead.
It doesn’t have many rivals at all in that area and although the Abu Dhabi World Pro is another major gi event at the end of the year, the IBJJF have remained on top. With the kind of promotional power and financial backing that ADCC has, they may very well be able to create something even more popular than the IBJJF World Championship. Assuming they use a similar ruleset to the one that ADCC already has, it would also create a clear stylistic difference between the two tournaments. It would be interesting to see if they decide to keep heel hooks as a legal technique, because that would be something almost unique in the gi competition world.
Mo Jassim announced the news in a recent post to his official Instagram account, although exact details on his plans are still thin on the ground:
“I think it’s time. I am working on doing an ADCC gi event.”
There aren’t many people better-positioned to make this a success than Jassim either, as he successfully ran three editions of ADCC already. He only left the position after ADCC 2024 and with that burden off his shoulders, he’ll also have a lot more free time on his hands now too. There’s a lot of questions circling around what was a pretty vague initial announcement, but there will likely be more concrete news on the event soon enough.
