Who Won The Weekend: CJI Or ADCC 2024?

August 16th to 18th, 2024 was the biggest weekend in the history of professional grappling, as the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) took on ADCC 2024 head-to-head. It was the moment that fans all around the world had been waiting for, as they would finally see whether Craig Jones would be able to take down the most prestigious no gi grappling tournament in the world. It all started when he had issues with the low competitor pay and after securing the funding to create his own event, he immediately set out on a mission to literally beat them at their own game. Would the gamble pay off, or would ADCC hold on to the crown they’d had for over two decades now?

Click here to see our full play-by-play of the Craig Jones Invitational 2024.

Click here to see our full play-by-play of ADCC 2024.

Did CJI Or ADCC 2024 Win The Weekend?

ADCC obviously plans their events over the course of almost two years and they build up to it slowly, whereas the Craig Jones Invitational had just a few months to put together a rival show. One look at Jones’ social media shows that it required a ton of work at an incredible pace, as he traveled all around the world making deals and doing an extensive media tour. Jones and his crew were naturally up against it from the start but they poured their heart and soul into creating a version of CJI that could rival ADCC 2024, betting it all on just one weekend.

The Action

This was always going to be the toughest battle for CJI to win over the weekend of ADCC 2024, because they only staged a total of 33 matches. ADCC on the other hand had ten different divisions and two Gordon Ryan superfights, for a total of 138 matches if everything went to plan. With significantly more matches, there was a good chance that some of the biggest highlights were going to take place at ADCC 2024. That was partially true in fairness, as Nicholas Meregali being submitted by Michael Pixley was probably the biggest upset in recent memory.

While there was plenty to talk about at both events, CJI really knocked it out of the park with one semi-final match in particular. Andrew Tackett and Kade Ruotolo went the distance across three five-minute rounds in one of the most exciting matches in the history of the sport. That’s not exaggeration either, both men pushed the pace and delivered more action in each five-minute segment than most competitors will in an entire tournament. They left it all on the mat and although Ruotolo got the decision, the fans watching were the biggest winners.

ADCC 2024 had other great moments too, as Mica Galvao became the second man to win the super grand slam and Kaynan Duarte had a legendary run that saw him take double gold by submitting 7 out of 8 elite opponents. Adele Fornarino also made history in the women’s divisions by becoming the first Australian champion and also winning double gold despite being the lightest woman in the absolute division. Plenty of incredible moments happened at both ADCC 2024 and CJI over the weekend, so this aspect of the battle was pretty close.

What ADCC had to it’s advantage initially also led to it’s downfall. With so many matches taking place, there were a lot slow and grinding wars over both days. In contrast, almost every single match was non-stop action and the ruleset that CJI used really helped to force that outcome. The unique alley area that CJI used ended up making the biggest impact though, as it forced engagement and meant that there was only one reset in the entire event. ADCC on the other hand had matches going out of bounds constantly, and the frequent resets broke up the action in even the most exciting matches.

The Production

One of the biggest points that Craig Jones made when staging CJI on the same weekend as ADCC 2024 was that money spent on production is better spent on the athletes. With that in mind, many fans were expecting CJI to look and feel more low-budget than ADCC 2024. That would have been an obvious loss for the new promotion but somehow, the exact opposite was true. The jumbotron in the background was fantastic ADCC and it clearly cost a lot of money, as did the light displays and pyrotechnics used for the final matches.

FloGrappling and the announcers really dropped the ball though, and the way that the live stream unfolded went completely at odds with the increased production budget. Multiple competitors had the wrong names announced and the wrong names brought up on screen, making the whole thing appear amateurish. Even the commentators sometimes felt a little lost as to what was going on, as they started talking about matches that weren’t going to happen on their mats and had graphics brought up for the wrong brackets.

Because CJI used a single matted space over the weekend, they were able to create a much tighter production than ADCC 2024. Other than one mistake with the wrong graphic early on, everything went off without a hitch. Everyone knew what was going on and although they didn’t have the expensive trappings that ADCC did, they absolutely maximised what they did have. The budget was clearly smaller, but the camerawork and organizers behind the scenes did such a better job that they more than made up for it.

The Atmosphere

The Craig Jones Invitational was, in a word, fun. Watching the event unfold live almost seemed like a fever-dream, with several great moments like the appearance of Renato Laranja and some of Jones’ antics during his match with Gabi Garcia. This married up perfectly with the build-up to the event too, where a guerrilla marketing campaign saw Jones dominate social media with a steady stream of jokes and trolling at ADCC’s expense.

The whole thing felt like you were transported back to the late 1990s during the peak of the Monday Night War when WWE (then WWF) and WCW went head-to-head every week. CJI tapped into something special by creating this vibe and it stood in stark contrast to more serious atmosphere over the weekend at ADCC 2024. You could feel that every single competitor had fun being there and the event almost took on a life of it’s own as it picked up momentum over both days.

At ADCC 2024, multiple mats going on at the same time pulled everyone’s attention in different directions and an earlier start time made the event feel a little less intense. There was plenty of great moments of course, but it was impossible for everyone in the crowd to see all of them and that stifled the reaction to each match individually. That came across on the live broadcast too and although several champions were clearly emotional, the post-match interviews were far more downbeat. Generally they thanked their coaches and family, explained why the title meant so much to them, and then got back on with their evening.

At CJI, several grapplers clearly fed off the atmosphere and cut promos that were straight out of professional wrestling, particularly Kade Ruotolo; ‘Levi’s got an amazing guard, I look forward to passing it’ and Pat Downey; ‘Some people just like losing I guess’. That combined with the electrifying matches meant that the crowd got more into it than anyone has ever been for a Jiu-Jitsu event. They were chanting obscenities at Gordon Ryan and screaming for one more round to the Ruotolo vs Tackett match, further adding to the craziness of the experience.

The competitors loved CJI, the crowd loved CJI, and that was very clear on the live broadcast. This went double for Nicky Rodriguez in his final interview, as he took the briefcase full of cash he had just won and used it to issue an insane challenge to Ryan for a million-dollar bet match. The whole event was one long reminder that, above all else, Jiu-Jitsu is fun. Jones tapped in to his own habit of never taking himself seriously and fed it through to the entire event, capturing the essence of what so many people love about the sport.

Where the atmosphere at CJI built up to a peak, the culmination of the weekend at ADCC 2024 fell a little flat instead. Gordon Ryan defended his superfight title against Yuri Simoes and although it was a dominant performance, it wasn’t exactly an exciting match. Then when giving the post-match interview, Ryan ignored the challenge from Rodriguez and didn’t have any bold statements prepared himself. It was a lacklustre finish to the weekend for ADCC 2024 and that only highlighted the massive difference between it and CJI.

The Viewership

This aspect of the weekend is very tricky to measure because only CJI has publicly available viewership figures, and ADCC 2024 is locked behind the FloGrappling paywall. FloGrappling did decide to stream the opening rounds for free on YouTube though, and the live viewership there was at a little over 10,000 before they went behind the paywall. CJI was broadcast live the entire time and from the start to the very end, they never pulled less than 100,000 concurrent viewers. For an event that lasted for almost 10 hours on the first day and around 4 hours on the second, that’s an incredible achievement.

In the end both the first and the second day of CJI pulled in over well in excess of a million views, currently sitting at 1.8 million and 1.2 million at the time of writing. The opening round of ADCC 2024 however sits at just over 200,000 views at the same time. Obviously the finals matches would have pulled in far more viewers than this, but they were all exclusive to FloGrappling subscribers. Thanks to a Sports Business Journal report on FloSports, we know that the total subscribers for every branch under the FloSports banner sat at just under 1 million as of 2023.

That means that if every single person who owned a FloSports subscription of any kind last year decided to tune into ADCC 2024 over the weekend, they could still only reach around two-thirds of the numbers that CJI pulled. Given that FloSports owns branches that operate in much more popular spaces like Baseball, Basketball, and Football; and their fans probably wouldn’t even know that ADCC existed, it’s all but guaranteed that CJI dominated the viewership battle.

The Results Of The Weekend, CJI Or ADCC 2024?

It was an amazing weekend for grappling fans, particularly those who were willingly to sacrifice all their free time to watch both CJI and ADCC 2024. There can be only one winner though of course, and it’s hard to argue that it didn’t go CJI’s way. There was a greater proportion of exciting matches and the atmosphere was absolutely amazing in the arena. This worked in tandem with the top-tier production to create a flawless experience for the viewers at home, and the free stream meant that significantly more people tuned in.

ADCC 2024 wasn’t a failure by any stretch of the imagination, it was a great event and on any other year everyone would be talking about it for weeks to come. It just so happens that ADCC had direct competition for the very first time, and that competition was fierce. CJI ultimately won the battle by taking risks and simply focusing on what matters the most, delivering an entertaining product to as many people as possible. It was a resounding success and it’ll be very interesting to see what they can do in 2025 when ADCC takes it’s regular break.

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