Craig Jones Invitational

[billyhoyle]

What's the deal with calling this thing the Craig Jones invitational? Is Craig Jones an active BJer or is he being honored in some way?

[JSmath]

18 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

What's the deal with calling this thing the Craig Jones invitational? Is Craig Jones an active BJer or is he being honored in some way?

He’s a world champion BJJ guy out of Australia. Co-owner of B-Team in Austin. El Segundo podcast host. etc.

He’s basically the (funnier, more likable) Jake Paul of BJJ if Jake Paul was a world champion boxer before he found YouTube. He’s doing as much as he can to push submission grappling into mainstream (mainly so he can make more money) and fight the “system” of the sport that wants to keep it niche.

Wrestling should pay attention to what he’s doing with the CJI. There are a lot of grappling people who doubted it or were flat against it, who are now saying Craig might’ve just changed the whole sport with how he ran CJI and the rule set he implemented for it (all submission grappling tournaments make up their own rule set that you learn from the ref in a seminar before it starts)... And he put this together in about two months.

Other than for the first day being 10 hours straight (he only wanted one match at a time), the tournament was extremely viewer friendly, even for those who’ve never trained BJJ/ grappling. The rules made a lot of sense, even with the judges sort of trying to figure it out as they went (everyone, including the commentators thought along the lines of what’s been said here - if you pull guard, it should be on you to improve, not the top guy).