The invites to ADCC 2024 are starting to fly out now and three veterans of previous editions of the tournament have been given the ability to return for the latest edition. The first one of them to be announced was young contender Nicky Ryan, who will be making his fourth appearance at ADCC and this will be his second attempt to win the 77kg division after his first two appearances were at 66kg. Ryan currently holds a 2-2 record on the ADCC world championship mats and recently won a silver medal at the ADCC North American East Coast Trials, so even though he hasn’t reached the semi-finals before he will still be a tough opponent.
The second of this recent batch of invites to ADCC 2024 went out to Victor Hugo, who will be competing at the world’s most prestigious no gi grappling tournament for the third time. He will be competing in the over 99kg division after going 1-1 there in both of his last attempts, and registering a 1-1 run in the absolute division at ADCC 2022. Much like Ryan, Hugo has only ever lost ADCC matches on points and he has always given a great account of himself on the mats so it’s no surprise to see him being given one of the invites to his division.
The final ADCC veteran who was given one of the recent batch of invites to compete in 2024 is Mason Fowler, who will be making his first appearance in the under 99kg division. Fowler has competed at ADCC twice before and both times have been due to winning ADCC Trials, most recently the North American East Coast Trials in 2021. Both of his previous appearances have been in the under 88kg division and he went 1-1 in his first attempt in 2019, before going 1-1 again at ADCC 2022. It’s hard to predict what effect moving up in weight will have, so it’ll be interesting to see the impact Fowler makes against bigger opponents than he’s faced previously.
ADCC announced that veterans Nicky Ryan, VIctor Hugo, and Mason Fowler would be returning at ADCC 2024 in recent posts to their official Instagram account: