ADCC’s Grassroots Boom Hits Vancouver and New Jersey | No-Gi Weekly Oct 19–25, 2026

The no-gi calendar never slows down, and this week it was the grassroots side of the sport that stole headlines instead of the usual superfight drama. Two separate ADCC-branded opens packed mats on opposite coasts of North America, a Polish heel-hook specialist locked in his next target in Rome, a Japanese debutant made a loud first impression in Tokyo, and the B-Team gave fans a blunt lesson in gym etiquette. Here’s everything worth knowing from the no-gi world for October 19–25, 2026.

ADCC’s Amateur Circuit Keeps Expanding: Vancouver and New Jersey Crown Champions

While the pro no-gi world keeps chasing superfight bookings, the ADCC brand’s amateur open series is quietly becoming one of the biggest growth stories in grappling. The ADCC Canada Vancouver Open ran October 24 at the Richmond Olympic Oval, drawing 221 competitors from 74 academies across 35 divisions — a healthy turnout for a regional stop that didn’t exist a few years ago. British Columbia’s grappling scene has grown fast behind the ADCC license, and Smoothcomp’s registration numbers show the Vancouver field skewed heavily toward adult no-gi divisions rather than the kids/teens brackets that dominate most regional opens.

That came just a week after the ADCC New Jersey Open filled Jackson Township with 545 competitors from 99 academies, including 55 youth divisions alongside adult, masters, and absolute brackets. Team honors came down to the wire: Alpha Miami Grappling and Tiger Schulmann’s Jiu Jitsu both finished with nine golds, with Tiger Schulmann’s taking the overall title on total medal count, 17 to 15 — a reminder that the Northeast’s academy density still produces some of the deepest team battles on the amateur circuit.

Neither event will make a highlight reel next to the World Championship, but that’s the point. The ADCC open circuit has become the on-ramp for the next generation of no-gi talent, and the fact that two regional opens on two different coasts both cracked 200+ competitors in the same week says the no-gi boom isn’t slowing down outside the spotlight either. Worth noting for gear-conscious readers: both opens enforced the standard ADCC no-stripes, no-logo-abuse rashguard ruleset, and mat-side photos from both venues showed the usual mix of compression rashguards and grappling spats rather than any gi tops — no-gi only, as the ADCC name promises.

These opens matter beyond bragging rights, too. ADCC has leaned harder every year on its regional circuit — the Vancouver, New Jersey, and upcoming Caracas stops all feed into the same pipeline that eventually produces trial invites for the next World Championship cycle. A breakout performance at a 545-competitor New Jersey Open or a 221-competitor Vancouver Open is exactly the kind of result that gets a name onto a regional trials list two years out, which is part of why academies increasingly treat these opens as more than just a local tune-up. For a refresher on how the World Championship side of the ADCC ecosystem works, our ADCC 2026 Fight Card breakdown is a good primer.

Pawel Jaworski Locks In Rome as the IBJJF No-Gi Euro Field Closes

Registration officially closed this week for the 2026 IBJJF European No-Gi Championship, running October 28–November 1 in Rome, and the medium-heavy bracket just got a lot scarier. Fresh off becoming the first Polish ADCC World Champion in history, Pawel Jaworski is entered and will be the heavy favorite coming off a leg-lock-heavy run through Krakow that saw him submit Felipe Costa and Gabriel Brod with inside heel hooks before closing out Marlon Tajik in the final to win gold.

He won’t have it easy. The men’s medium-heavy field also includes David Garmo and Ellis Younger, while the rest of the bracket spread runs deep: rooster through ultra-heavy divisions are stacked with names like Shay Montague, Sam McNally, Richard-Raul Bukovcsan, Kieran Kichuk, Faris Benlamkadem, and Alexander Sak. On the women’s side, Jessie Crane, Amanda Bruse, Rosary Walsh, and Martyna Kapuscinska headline a deep entry list that should make for one of the stronger European no-gi fields in recent memory. Watch Jaworski’s title-clinching ADCC run below for a preview of what Rome is dealing with:

Jaworski has built his entire 2026 campaign around the inside heel hook, and he’s rarely needed a second option — three of his four ADCC finishes came from the same entry. For more on the submission that’s carried him through the year, our breakdown of the heel hook in no-gi covers the setups he’s been living off of.

Takeura Heel Hooks His Way to a Statement ONE Debut in Tokyo

ONE Samurai 4 went down October 17 at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, and while the card’s marquee matchups were striking bouts, the lone submission grappling match stole the show for the no-gi crowd. Masaki Takeura, a 31-year-old JTT product making his ONE debut, worked from inside guard, threatened a rear-naked choke that drew a referee catch, then scrambled straight into a heel hook to finish Yoshinari “Garittochu” Fukushima at 5:13 of round one in an all-Japanese lightweight clash.

It’s a small but telling data point: ONE Championship keeps slotting standalone no-gi matches into its Japan-focused cards, and all-Japanese grappling matchups are starting to produce finishers, not just decisions on the scorecards. Takeura’s debut is the kind of tape that gets a grappler noticed well outside Japan, and it adds another name to the growing list of regional talent ONE has pulled into the no-gi conversation over the past year.

Fukushima, for his part, came in with a scrappy guard game of his own and wasn’t an easy out — he survived the initial choke pressure and scrambled hard before the leg got isolated, which is part of why the finish played so well with the crowd at Ariake Arena. Submission grappling undercards like this one rarely get marquee billing on a striking-heavy promotion, but they’re exactly the kind of match that keeps hardcore no-gi fans tuning into ONE’s Japan cards even when the main event is a kickboxing title fight.

B-Team’s Owen Jones Isn’t Afraid to Cut a Bad Training Partner Loose

Away from the competition mats, B-Team’s Owen Jones gave the no-gi community a blunt gym-etiquette lesson this week. Speaking on a podcast, Jones recounted telling a training partner he wouldn’t roll with him again after a dangerous session: “You’re so spazzy. You kicked me like four times. You almost spinning elbowed me. I’ve got nothing productive from this session.”

Jones also touched on the cultural gap between UK and US gyms — American rooms, in his telling, treat jiu-jitsu more seriously as a professional pursuit, while UK gyms keep the vibe looser without sacrificing intensity once the rounds actually start. Coming from a competitor with a resume that includes multiple WNO and Polaris appearances against some of the toughest no-gi names in the sport, the comments carry weight — this isn’t a hobbyist complaining about a bad roll, it’s one of B-Team’s most active competitors drawing a hard line on training safety.

For a B-Team athlete who rolls at a genuinely elite level, the comments landed as a reminder that at every level of no-gi, from weekend amateur opens to high-level pro-team practice, training partner selection is as much a skill as any sweep or submission — and that even top competitors reserve the right to say no. Full comments via BJJ Eastern Europe.

Merab Dvalishvili Says No Thanks to a Musumeci Grappling Callout

Mikey Musumeci’s full-time pivot toward MMA continues to generate ripples through the no-gi world, even in the smaller moments. This week, UFC bantamweight contender Merab Dvalishvili confirmed he turned down a jiu-jitsu session with Musumeci, explaining that Musumeci’s leg-lock-heavy no-gi game made a pure grappling round an unappealing proposition for a striker trying to protect his knees heading into a title run.

The decline makes plenty of sense from Dvalishvili’s side of things. He’s built his UFC run on a gas-tank-first, wrestling-heavy style that depends entirely on healthy knees and hips holding up over five-round pressure fights — exactly the joints a no-gi specialist with Musumeci’s heel hook and kneebar instincts would be hunting from the first exchange. No live rounds, no risk, no reason to hand a four-time IBJJF world champion a free look at live leg entanglements months before a title fight.

It’s a small anecdote, but it underlines just how much respect — and caution — Musumeci’s leg lock reputation commands outside the grappling world now that he’s chasing an MMA career on the strength of that exact skill set. For the full context on his move out of competitive no-gi and the vacant bantamweight title it created, see our UFC BJJ 13 preview and last week’s roundup on his AI-assisted recovery claims making the rounds alongside Gordon Ryan.

Looking Ahead

Next week is stacked. The 2026 IBJJF European No-Gi Championship runs October 28–November 1 in Rome with Jaworski headlining the medium-heavy field against a loaded international bracket, and the ADCC amateur circuit rolls straight on with the ADCC Caracas Open streaming October 31–November 1 out of Venezuela. Expect gold medal breakdowns from Rome and another look at how deep the ADCC grassroots pipeline has gotten by the time we’re back with next week’s roundup. Check our Pan No-Gi 2026 champions list for a sense of who else could show up on the Rome podium, and keep it here for every result as it happens.