Nicky Ryan just shared some insight into the B-Team Jiu-Jitsu roster for CJI 2, including the very first competitor too. News is almost constantly breaking about the various teams that will be taking part in the tournament and although the full competitor list is still unknown, there are several elite grapplers already confirmed. Despite being the team with the strongest links to the promotion, things have been relatively quiet on that front for B-Team so far. The only guarantee is that Craig Jones is taking on Gable Steveson in a superfight and will not be a member of the team tournament as a result.
The topic of conversation turned to CJI 2 during Ryan’s recent appearance on the FloGrappling show and he shared the first news about how B-Team will be picking their five representatives:
“As far as I know right now, I believe we’re gonna be having… And this isn’t set in stone, it could possibly change but I think we’ll be having kinda like an in-house tournament.”
It makes sense to host an in-house tournament for a team as big as B-Team, as they have multiple elite competitors in a single weight class. Ryan also shared who would be competing for the under 66kg and under 77kg spots:
“Not for every weight class but I believe that if I was still in it, it would be me against (Jozef) Chen for the 77 and then Ethan (Crelinsten) vs Owen (Jones).”
The only issue with that plan is that Nicky Ryan has recently undergone an ACL reconstruction and will not be able to compete at CJI 2. With that being the case, choosing the competitor at 77kg just became easy for B-Team now:
“I believe yeah, Jozef Chen has the 77 spot.”
Ryan also shared some insight into how the team would be picking their heaviest competitors too, and it appears as though they might be making use of their ‘wildcard’ to bring in one of the best heavyweights in the world:
“I think right now we’ve been thinking about actually Victor Hugo as like a draft pick…”
Ryan did caution fans not to get too excited though, as his surgery and subsequent recovery has kept him away from the team and changes might have been made:
“Nothing set in stone and I could be wrong about this, I’m completely out of the loop. I have barely been in the gym because of the surgery and everything, so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt but this is what I think so far.”
FloGrappling uploaded the full interview with Nicky Ryan where he names the first B-Team competitor for CJI 2 to their official YouTube channel:
