Craig Jones has just announced that New Wave Jiu-Jitsu can now be officially confirmed as one of the teams competing at CJI 2. Although this is only the second time that Jones has staged his own event, he did an incredible job with the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational and he actually has much more time to plan this time around. He announced the intention to return for a second event during the live broadcast of the first and it wasn’t long at all before the first details emerged. Jones didn’t even wait until the year was over before he revealed that CJI 2 would be a team grappling tournament featuring the biggest academies in the world.
Obviously New Wave Jiu-Jitsu is one of the most successful teams in the world, but their presence at CJI 2 looked doubtful at the start. Jones was always confident that they would compete, but they were noticeably absent from his debut event and the relationship between them and Jones’ B-Team Jiu-Jitsu was never great. It was pretty up in the air whether John Danaher and his students would be stepping into the pit, but it looks as though Jones has put in some effort to make this happen. He recently shared a cryptic message about a meeting with Danaher and now it seems as though the main topic of conversation might have been CJI 2.
Danaher was positive in his public statements about the inaugural CJI in fairness, and the million-dollar prize money is undoubtedly an attractive prospect. Now that Jones has agreed terms with Danaher’s team, there are still several other spots up for grabs. 10th Planet have already put forward a team and B-Team are surely guaranteed a place, so that leaves just 5 teams remaining. Although the focus was on getting established teams, Jones previously said that he wanted to have a ‘Team Misfits’ on the roster for elite grapplers from smaller teams. Jones also revealed after the New Wave announcement that there will be European, North American, and Australasian Misfits teams; leaving only two more teams unaccounted for.
Craig Jones announced the news that New Wave Jiu-Jitsu were officially confirmed for CJI 2 in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
