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 inaugural Craig Jones Invitational has been scheduled for August 15th and 16th, 2024 and tickets have now officially gone on sale for the event. Although this will be the very first time that Craig Jones has put together a professional grappling event, he’s managed to attract a ton of attention almost immediately. Of course a large part of that is down to the fact that he secured a million dollars in prize money for both of the divisions, but some of the actions he’s taken since then have really driven home just how special CJI is going to be.
The highest paying tournament in the history of professional grappling was always going to attract the best competitors on the planet, but Jones gave everyone an incredibly tough choice when he decided to stage the event on the same weekend as ADCC 2024. The idea behind this was to make a statement about the amount of prize money that was available for champions at ADCC 2024, and going head-to-head with the tournament is the best way to make that statement. Jones really went the extra mile by also taking inspiration from the ADCC championship prize money of $10,000, and giving $10,001 to every grappler competing at CJI.
The effect was almost immediate as multiple elite grapplers left ADCC to compete at CJI, creating an incredible lineup for both the under and over 80kg divisions in the process. Naturally fans all around the world have been eager to get their hands on tickets to watch the inaugural Craig Jones Invitational live, even if it means missing out on ADCC 2024 in order to do so. The time has now come and tickets are on sale, but fans will have to act incredibly fast if they want to secure seats at the highest paying professional grappling tournament in history.
The Craig Jones Invitational announced that the tickets have now gone on sale in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
