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.
Jason Nolf is one of a handful of three-time NCAA Division I wrestling champions and now he will be continuing his BJJ career by entering the under 80kg division of the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational. Although Nolf doesn’t have any experience competing in professional Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, he has had more high-level grappling matches throughout his career as a wrestler than most BJJ competitors will ever have. That amount of experience combined with his incredible athleticism and his clear standing advantage over everyone else will make him a serious threat in what is already looking like a stacked under 80kg division.
Not only has Nolf not had any tournament experience in no gi grappling, he’s actually only ever had a single Jiu-Jitsu match in his life. Just last week he submitted fellow wrestler and B-Team Jiu-Jitsu blue belt Andrew Simmons in the main event of Paradigm Open 3. It was an intriguing proposition from the start, as wrestlers have enjoyed wildly varying degrees of success when making the transition to Jiu-Jitsu. Nolf’s wrestling was clearly impressive right from the start but what really stood out was his slick guard-passing, his awareness of leg entanglements, and his submission skills from the top.
Although that came as a bit of a surprise given that it was his first professional Jiu-Jitsu match, Nolf has had some incredibly skilled training partners to help him prepare for it. Jason Nolf will obviously face a huge step up in competition at the Craig Jones Invitational, but he has a million dollars on the line to motivate him to succeed. There will certainly be a lot of attention on him once he does step onto the mats again; as it’ll be very interesting to see how he copes with the highest level of competition the sport can offer, and how they cope with him.
The Craig Jones Invitational announced the news that Jason Nolf was going to compete in the under 80kg division in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
