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.
Both of the Tackett brothers have now withdrawn from ADCC 2024 and the promotion has announced that Andy Varela and Elder Cruz will be stepping in to replace them in the under 77kg and under 88kg divisions respectively. Although it’s not uncommon for athletes to get injured in training and have to pull out of any major tournament, that doesn’t actually appear to be the case here. Not only is ADCC 2024 still 3 months away, but both of the brothers are just days away from representing Team Kasai at the AIGA Champions League Brazil Qualifier and they don’t appear to have withdrawn from that event.
William Tackett and Andrew Tackett both had to fight tooth and nail to get their invites to ADCC 2024, as both men battled through massive divisions earlier this year in order to win the ADCC North American West Coast Trials. That’s another reason that their sudden withdrawal comes as a bit of a surprise, but there is one possible explanation behind the decision. The Craig Jones Invitational became official on the very same day that ADCC announced the news that the Tackett brothers had withdrawn, and it’s been announced that CJI will be taking place over the same weekend as ADCC 2024.
Fans have already started to propose this explanation in the comments and it didn’t take long for Craig Jones himself to respond when people started asking if the Tackett brothers had chosen to compete in his tournament instead:
Although that still doesn’t qualify as an official announcement, there aren’t any better sources for this than Jones and although he’s known for making jokes, he’s been taking this tournament very seriously. With a million dollar prize available for the winner of each division at CJI, it wouldn’t be surprising to see several elite grapplers choosing to compete there instead. This may be just the first of many changes to the lineup for ADCC 2024 and only time will tell if Jones is able to entice more of the biggest names in the sport with the huge amount of prize money.
Andy Varela will be joining ADCC 2024 at under 77kg and Elder Cruz will be entering under 88kg as they replace the Tackett brothers, and both men are actually the bronze medalists from the same edition of ADCC Trials that they won. Both men have a ton of experience too, as they both competed at ADCC 2022 in the very same divisions they will be returning in. They both went out on the first day back then as Varela lost in the opening round and Cruz went 1-1 on the day, but they will both be eager to improve on that performance this year.
ADCC announced the news that both Tackett brothers had withdrawn from ADCC 2024 to be replaced by Andy Varela and Elder Cruz in a series of posts to their official Instagram account:
