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 is scheduled for August 16th and 17th, 2024 and the promotion has just released the official brackets for both the under and over 80kg tournaments. Craig Jones himself actually did the draw live on YouTube, a move that will go a long towards establishing transparency and fairness in the sport. With a million dollars on the line for the winners and several B-Team Jiu-Jitsu competitors involved, the need for a certain level of transparency is huge. He revealed that the top four competitors in both divisions will be seeded and place in the four opposing corners of the bracket, but the other twelve positions were to be done by completely random draw.
Both the under and over 80kg divisions at the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational had amazing lineups full of elite competitors so whichever way the brackets were drawn, there were never going to be any easy matches for anyone. Seeding the top four makes a lot of sense, as most major tournaments do this to avoid having the most likely winners meeting each other in the earlier rounds. Drawing the rest of the bracket by random chance is a nice touch by Jones though, as it added a ton of excitement and intrigue around the eventual reveal.
Craig Jones Invitational Brackets
Under 80kg Division
The competitor seeded first was Tye Ruotolo and his brother Kade Ruotolo was the second seed for the under 80kg division. They will be facing off against elite wrestler Jason Nolf and Matheus Diniz respectively in the first round. The winner of Tye vs Nolf will then be facing whoever wins out of Roberto Jimenez and Levi Jones-Leary, while either Renato Canuto or Tommy Langaker will be waiting for the winner of Kade vs Diniz.
The third seed was Jozef Chen and he will be facing Andy Varela in a rematch in the first round of the tournament, while Nicky Ryan was the fourth seed and has been matched up with Andrew Tackett. The next round sees either Lucas ‘Hulk’ Barbosa or Kenta Iwamoto facing off with the winner of the Chen vs Varela rematch, and the winner of Ryan vs Tackett will be standing across from either Magid Hage or Eoghan O’Flanagan.
Under 80kg Division
The first seed in the over 80kg division was Nicky Rodriguez and he faces Max Gimenis, while the second seed was Victor Hugo and his opening round match will be against Lucas Kanard. Whoever wins out of Rodriguez and Gimenis will then have a quarter-final match against either Owen Livesey or Mahamed Aly. Then Inacio Santos and Pedro Alex will meet to determine who gets to face the winner of Hugo and Kanard on that side of the bracket.
The third seed in this bracket was former UFC champion Luke Rockhold and he drew fellow MMA veteran Pat Downey in the first round. The fourth and final seed here was William Tackett and his opening round match will be against Joao Gabriel Rocha. A great match between Adam Bradley and Kyle Boehm will determine who faces the winner of Rockhold and Downey in the second round, while Fellipe Andrew faces Daniel Greg Kerkvliet for the right to face either Tackett or Rocha.
Craig Jones performed the draw for the official brackets of the Craig Jones Invitational in a recent live video on the official YouTube channel of B-Team Jiu-Jitsu:
