Kade Ruotolo Out of ONE 44 | No-Gi Weekly June 1-7, 2026

The first full week of June 2026 hit no-gi grappling with a one-two punch: a champion went down hurt, a squads superfight lit up Dublin, and the loudest off-mat fight in the sport — Craig Jones versus the ADCC front office — got a little uglier. Polaris 37 ran on Saturday, ONE Championship rebooked half of its June 26 card around a Kade Ruotolo injury, and the ADCC equal-pay storyline picked up new fuel after Jones publicly yanked his charity’s $48,000 pledge. Here’s the no-gi week that was — and the next two cards already on the radar.

Kade Ruotolo Pulls Out of June 26 Title Defense — Andrey Stays, Owen Jones Steps In

The biggest grappling headline of the week didn’t come from a podium — it came from a medical room. ONE Championship confirmed that lightweight submission grappling king Kade Ruotolo is out of his scheduled June 26 title defense after suffering an injury in his second-round TKO win over Hiroyuki Tetsuka at The Inner Circle earlier this month. The ONE Lightweight Submission Grappling World Title now stays on Ruotolo’s shoulder until he’s cleared.

Rather than scrap the matchup entirely, the promotion pivoted fast. Original challenger Fabricio “Hokage” Andrey stays on the card, but the matchup downshifts to a featherweight submission-grappling clash against newcomer Owen Jones at ONE Fight Night 44, broadcasting live from Bangkok’s Lumpinee Stadium on Friday, June 26 (per ONE’s official announcement).

For context on how big a swing this is: Andrey is 3-0 in ONE submission grappling and carries a 106-27 professional grappling record. He was the most credentialed test Ruotolo would have faced inside the circle — a former IBJJF World Champion with a flying-armbar-or-bust style that mirrors the youngest ADCC champion in history in pace, if not in finishing rate. The title-unification narrative is on ice until the second half of 2026, and ONE’s submission-grappling division loses its highest-profile main event of the summer.

What it means for the no-gi market: Ruotolo merchandise momentum stalls in June, but Andrey’s Q3 spotlight just got brighter. If he handles Owen Jones decisively, he’s the obvious next challenger for the lightweight strap whenever Ruotolo returns — and his “Hokage” branded kit becomes the gear narrative to watch heading into August/September shopping cycles.

Polaris 37 Squads: Polaris All Stars vs BJJ Stars Lights Up Dublin

Saturday June 6, 14:30 local at the National Basketball Arena in Tymon Lane, Dublin. Team Polaris All Stars ran their first full-card squads format against Brazil’s BJJ Stars — the biggest squads superfight Polaris has booked since the WNO crossover. Taylor Pearman, Eoghan O’Flanagan, Isaque Bahiense and Julio Martins anchored the marquee bouts, with depth across Mateusz Szczeciński, Lucas Kanard, Gabriel Sousa and Ruan Alvarenga rounding out the format that runs dozens of short bouts back-to-back over a single hour.

Squads is the format Polaris built to differentiate from the single-superfight model — and it’s the one that produces the most rashguard screen time per minute of broadcast. Each athlete gets multiple short matches against rotating opponents, meaning the kit shots stack instead of running once and disappearing. For brands trying to break into European no-gi visibility (a market Polaris owns outright), there is no harder-working hour on the FloGrappling calendar.

Half-time also delivered a Polaris Women’s Lightweight title match between Helena Crevar and Amanda Pamela Nicole — Crevar’s last booked appearance before her ONE Inner Circle return on July 17 (more on that below). The full Polaris 37 broadcast streamed exclusively on FloGrappling, with the prologue card available free as a lead-in to the main broadcast.

ONE Fight Night 44 — The Reshuffle

With the Ruotolo title fight gone, ONE Fight Night 44 reshapes around a muay thai and MMA-heavy card. Rungrawee Sitsongpeenong faces George Jarvis in a lightweight muay thai rematch main event, with Ok Rae Yoon vs Lucas Gabriel anchoring the MMA side. For no-gi fans, the relevant addition is the rebuilt featherweight grappling matchup: Andrey vs Owen Jones, the only submission grappling bout on the broadcast.

Owen Jones makes his ONE Championship debut against an opponent whose 106-27 record dwarfs almost any debut he could have asked for. Andrey is the heavy favorite, but the matchmaking creates an instant test for ONE’s developmental grappling pipeline. Jones — a featherweight submission specialist with a sub-heavy ledger — gets thrown into the deep end on Prime Video.

If Andrey looks the way he has against Joao Mendes (decision win at ONE Fight Night 40) and Diogo “Baby Shark” Reis, he’s a near-lock to keep his ONE submission-grappling record perfect heading into a Q3 lightweight title push. For Owen Jones, even a competitive loss is a win — it puts him in the rotation for ONE’s submission grappling roster expansion.

ADCC 2026 Payouts — and the Craig Jones Withdrawal

The ADCC 2026 prize-money story refused to die this week. Quick recap of the figures: total ADCC 2026 Worlds purse is $362,000, with men’s division winners taking $20,000 (up from $10,000), second $10,000, third $3,000, fourth $1,000. Women’s division payouts stayed flat at $10,000 / $5,000 / $2,000 / $1,000 — meaning the men’s purse doubled while women’s stayed where it sat in 2024.

Across the three women’s weight divisions, that math shakes out to a $16,000 gap per division — exactly $48,000 in total. Craig Jones publicly identified that number and pledged to cover it through the Fair Fight Foundation, framing it as an embarrassment campaign as much as a charity gesture. ADCC’s response was effectively silence, then a back-and-forth that has continued for most of Q2.

The new twist that re-circulated this week: Jones rescinded the $48,000 pledge after the Izaak Michell situation — a competitor on ADCC’s 2026 roster with an active arrest warrant for sexual assault who, per Jones, remained on the invite list despite ADCC being made aware. Jones’s position: he won’t subsidize a bracket that platforms that athlete, but he’s promised the $48,000 will still find its way to women in the sport through another channel.

Gordon Ryan publicly questioned the withdrawal. The wider community has split. From a market standpoint, the women’s no-gi audience is more engaged in this conversation than in any prior ADCC cycle — and brands paying attention to where that audience moves between now and September are going to see a clearer picture of which athlete-sponsorships actually translate to gear sales (analysis via MMA Mania).

Helena Crevar Returns July 17 vs Paige Ivette Clymer

ONE Championship locked in a July 17 women’s submission grappling main attraction this week: Helena Crevar vs Paige Ivette Clymer, 10-minute openweight rules, at The Inner Circle from Lumpinee Stadium. The booking ran through the same Inner Circle livestream channel that lost the Ruotolo headline, and women’s no-gi gets a real moment of its own as a result.

Crevar, 19, is the youngest podium-placer in ADCC history and trains at Kingsway under John Danaher in Austin. Her ONE debut at Fight Night 39 in January took 100 seconds — a clean Estima Lock on Teshya Noelani Alo. Clymer, 26, just won the 2026 ADCC West Coast Trials and trains under Keenan Cornelius at Legion American Jiu Jitsu in San Diego. Both are headed to Krakow in September; this is the warm-up where styles get exposed early.

For a sense of what makes Crevar’s grappling so effective at openweight, our breakdowns on the arm triangle no-gi setups and the no-gi triangle finishes both show up regularly in her highlight reel.

Fight 2 Win 316 São Paulo: The Promotion Finally Left North America

Recapping a story that landed late but is still working the no-gi news cycle: Fight 2 Win 316 ran May 23 in São Paulo — the first event in the promotion’s 11-year, 316-show history to land outside North America. Willson Bueno caught Otavio Nalati with a kneebar in the main event. Kaua Gabriel heel-hooked Mayram Maquine in the co-main. Decision wins for Matheus Onda, Alexia Arantes and Yuri Silva rounded out the elite-card slots (full results via Jits Magazine).

What makes this matter beyond a single card recap: F2W’s Brazil debut is the first real test of whether the U.S. show format ports cleanly to South American audiences. If the numbers came in, expect Brazil-region cards to slot into the 2026 second-half F2W calendar — and a parallel rashguard-shopping market open up for U.S.-brand expansion into Brazilian no-gi.

Looking Ahead — June 13 to June 26

Three things on the no-gi calendar between now and the end of June, all worth blocking out:

• Elevate Submission Series 25 — Friday June 13. The mid-tier FloGrappling card returns with another rotation of under-the-radar talent. Elevate is where roster-expansion talent gets vetted before the bigger promotions come calling, and the bracket structure rewards the kind of fast-paced no-gi that hits well on highlight reels.
• 2nd ADCC Asia & Oceania Trials — Saturday June 20. Carrara Stadium, Gold Coast, Queensland. The final qualifying event on the 2026 ADCC calendar. Pro-class winners across the men’s weight classes (-66kg, -77kg, -88kg, -99kg, +99kg) and women’s (-55kg, -65kg, +65kg) lock the last open slots for Krakow.
• ONE Fight Night 44 — Friday June 26. Andrey vs Owen Jones is the only grappling bout on a muay-thai-heavy card. Lumpinee Stadium. Live on Prime Video in U.S. primetime.

Past that, the next major no-gi milestone is the September 12-13 ADCC World Championship in Krakow at TAURON Arena — three months out, with one final trials qualifier still in front of us. The invite list is mostly locked, the bracket math is mostly set, and the off-mat fight over prize money has more cycles to run before opening night. For competitors heading to Poland, gear prep season is officially open.

For more on the techniques that keep showing up across ONE, Polaris and ADCC broadcasts this season, our darce choke no-gi guide is the cleanest jumping-off point for the upper-body submission game that’s defining 2026 finishes.

See you next Sunday.