The rules for ADCC Open tournaments will now be changing, as the promotion has decided that slams and the infamous kani basami takedown will be banned moving forward. The decision to ban slams will affect all experience and age brackets at every ADCC Open in North and South America, while kani basami will be banned for everywhere outside of adult advanced divisions. It’s a pair of changes that competitors will likely welcome, as both techniques are highly controversial. They have resulted in a number of injuries over the years at different events and kani basami in particular is considered one of the most dangerous techniques in the sport.
Both techniques are still available for use at ADCC Trials events and the ADCC world championship, as these are considered the highest level of Jiu-Jitsu. At that point, competitors are generally expected to be able to protect themselves at all times and to be able to do dangerous techniques without putting undue risk on their opponents. That’s generally why there aren’t many kani basami takedowns seen at the highest level of the sport and even when they are, they’re almost always done without injury to the opponent. Slams are a little more common at ADCC Trials and ADCC itself, but they’re also much less likely to result in catastrophic injury too.
Slams are generally banned in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments but ADCC has always permitted them as long as they are done in order to escape a submission. This gives competitors another way to get out of a submission but it also results in their opponents taking a huge impact. This risk is increased quite significantly because another one of the unique ADCC rules, which is their approach to matches going out of bounds. Most promotions will stop a match pretty quickly to reset competitors in the centre of the mats, but ADCC openly allow them to keep working as long as they are not in a static position. These rules combined can lead to competitors being slammed on the hard floor of the mats, so it’s good that this risk has been removed from smaller events.
ADCC announced that slams and kani basami are now banned at ADCC Opens in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
