ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 Results: 8 Champions Crowned
The ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 wrapped up on April 19 at the Fairplex Expo Hall in Pomona, California, and eight no-gi grapplers walked away with golden tickets to the ADCC 2026 World Championship in Poland. Over 700 athletes registered across the two-day meat grinder, and only one name from each weight class survived the bracket to claim a slot on the most coveted submission grappling stage on the planet.
Sarah Galvao, Gianni Grippo, and Nathan Haddad headlined the day-two finals, but every single division produced a story worth telling. Below is the full breakdown of the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 results, the routes each champion took, and what their wins say about the September showdown in Poland.
ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 Results: All 8 Champions at a Glance
The ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 awarded eight ADCC 2026 World Championship invites — five in the men’s brackets and three in the women’s brackets. Here is the complete list of division winners after the dust settled in Pomona:
- Women’s -55 kg: Sheliah Lindsey
- Women’s -65 kg: Sarah Galvao (Atos Jiu-Jitsu)
- Women’s +65 kg: Paige Ivette
- Men’s -66 kg: Gianni Grippo (Marcelo Garcia / Alliance)
- Men’s -77 kg: Michael Sainz
- Men’s -88 kg: Nathan Haddad (Helio Soneca lineage)
- Men’s -99 kg: Elder Cruz
- Men’s +99 kg: Nick Hartman
The -77 kg bracket was the largest of the entire event, with Michael Sainz cutting through 190 entries to take gold. The 88 kg field was loaded with proven veterans including PGF champion Ryan Aitken, ADCC trials winner Jacob Couch, and UFC grappler Andy Varela — and Nathan Haddad still ran the table.
Day one alone produced 50 submission finishes — the kind of carnage that has become signature for the ADCC West Coast Trials.
Gianni Grippo: A 7-0 Run Ends an 11-Year ADCC Drought
The story of the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 for veteran fans was Gianni Grippo’s quiet, surgical return to relevance. The 34-year-old Marcelo Garcia black belt won every match in the 66 kg bracket without giving up a single point. The final podium read 1) Gianni Grippo, 2) Dominic Mejia, 3) Tristan Sainz — and Grippo never looked rushed in any of those seven matches.
Grippo last competed at the ADCC World Championship in 2015, where he placed fifth at -66 kg. Eleven years and three IBJJF No-Gi World titles later, he is back. His route through the bracket was a clinic in conservative scoring jiu-jitsu — score early, stay heavy, never put a leg in the wrong place. Younger lightweights like Mejia and Sainz brought the pace, and Grippo brought the system.
Gianni Grippo turned in a 7-0 run with zero points conceded to clinch his first ADCC invite in 11 years.
For lightweight grapplers studying the result, the takeaway is that the modern berimbolo school still has a black belt at its head. Grippo’s leg drag and reverse de la Riva game has aged into a methodical positional approach that is harder to outscore than to outsubmit. Expect him to be a problem at -66 kg in Poland.
Sarah Galvao: The 19-Year-Old Who Picked the Hard Road
Sarah Galvao did not need to be in Pomona. The 19-year-old Atos prodigy is currently considered the top pound-for-pound grappler in the gi after a 2026 IBJJF Pan Championship run that included a stunning upset of double Grand Slam champion Gabi Pessanha at the absolute final. ADCC organizers were almost certainly going to extend her a direct invite — but Galvao filed her registration anyway.
What followed was 5-0 with three submissions and zero points conceded across the women’s -65 kg bracket. Galvao’s signature mix of clean takedowns, immediate guard passing, and tight back-take pressure broke a deep regional field that included multiple former trials medalists.
Sarah Galvao chose to compete for her ADCC slot rather than wait for a direct invite — and answered with five wins and three submissions.
The optics matter. By earning her seat through the trials instead of accepting an invite, Galvao gave herself a competitive tune-up against fresh styles, and gave the women’s -65 kg division at the 2026 Worlds a clear early favorite. If you are picking a women’s pound-for-pound to watch in Poland, she is the name.
Nathan Haddad: From the UFC BJJ Show to His First ADCC Trials Title
Nathan Haddad’s road through the 88 kg bracket was the bloodiest of the weekend. Haddad logged seven wins with three submissions across two days, then beat Ryan Aitken in the final to lock in his first ADCC Trials title. The 88 kg division at the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 was a murderers row by any measure: Aitken is a former PGF champion, Jacob Couch already owns a trials title, and Andy Varela has competed inside the UFC.
Nathan Haddad’s match with Placido Santos was one of the most-watched bouts of the weekend.
Haddad has been on the radar of hardcore grappling fans since his run on the UFC BJJ reality show, where he submitted Jason Nolf with a rear naked choke. He is a Helio “Soneca” Moreira black belt, has been training since 2002, and runs out of Core Combat Sports in Louisville, Kentucky. Until Pomona, he had never put it together at the trials. He has now, and the 88 kg pool in Poland just added a finisher with a deep submission catalog.
Haddad has competed at the highest level of pro grappling — PGF, EBI, and UFC BJJ — but the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 gold is the first trials title of his career.
Elder Cruz, Michael Sainz and Nick Hartman: The Heavyweight Stories
The men’s upper weights produced three different kinds of finals. Elder Cruz won -99 kg gold to qualify for his third ADCC Worlds appearance — a steady, repeat-offender performance from a competitor who clearly knows how to peak for an invite. Michael Sainz had to grind through the largest bracket of the event at -77 kg, where 190 athletes were chasing one slot. And Nick Hartman closed out the +99 kg division to round out the men’s invite list.
What jumps off the page is the depth at -77 kg. Two hundred grapplers in one weight class is not a tournament, it is a survival run. Michael Sainz had to fight through a multi-mat marathon and still arrive fresh enough to win a final. The volume of talent in that division is the strongest endorsement of the regional trials system as a meaningful filter for the world stage.
Sheliah Lindsey and Paige Ivette: Women’s Champions Without the Headlines
The women’s -55 kg and +65 kg brackets did not get the press that Galvao did, but the winners earned their slots the same way. Sheliah Lindsey took gold at -55 kg, and Paige Ivette won the +65 kg division with a decision over Elizabeth Mitrovic in the final. Both are now confirmed for the ADCC 2026 Worlds in September.
Day two of the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 produced 21 more submission finishes on top of the 50 from day one.
The structural quirk to remember: women’s brackets at the regional ADCC Trials have historically been smaller than the men’s, which has changed how the federation hands out invites. In some past regional events, women’s winners have had to repeat at a second leg of the trials cycle to lock in a slot. For the West Coast Trials 2026, the three women’s gold medals all converted directly to invites — a positive sign for the growth of the women’s no-gi field.
Why the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 Result List Matters for September
The ADCC 2026 World Championship will run September 12-13 in Poland. Heading into Pomona, the qualifier picture was a moving target — invites had already been awarded to past champions, gold medalists from earlier regional trials, and a handful of direct invitees, but the West Coast Trials was the largest North American filter left. With these eight names locked in, the bracket math at -66 kg, -77 kg, and -88 kg in particular got significantly more interesting.
Eight new invites means the ADCC 2026 Worlds bracket math just shifted in every weight class.
Three patterns are worth tracking. First, the older veterans (Grippo at 34, Cruz on his third invite) are still finding ways through fields stocked with younger athletes — system-based jiu-jitsu still beats raw athleticism on a long bracket day. Second, the youth wave is real: Galvao at 19 and the rapid promotion of teen prodigies through the ADCC pipeline confirms the trend we covered when the 2026 ADCC trials field first started taking shape. Third, the wrestling-heavy entries to leg locks that have defined modern no-gi at -88 kg and -99 kg are still evolving — the Haddad-style sub-hunter and the Cruz-style positional grinder both find ways to cash in.
How the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 Compared to the Preview
If you read our ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 preview, a few of the bigger names did exactly what was expected — Grippo and Galvao were favored — but the 88 kg and 99 kg outcomes were anything but a chalk run. Aitken was the consensus pick at 88, and Haddad spoiled it. The +99 kg bracket had no clear favorite, and Hartman emerged. That kind of volatility is why the trials format works: there is no shortcut into ADCC, even for established names.
The total count: 50 day-one submissions plus 21 day-two submissions made the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 one of the most finishing-heavy regional events in recent memory.
What’s Next After the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026
One regional trials event remains to close out the 2026 qualification cycle, with the final bloc of invites still in play. After that, the ADCC 2026 invite list will be locked, brackets will be set, and the focus shifts to camp prep through the summer. Expect the headline athletes from Pomona — Galvao, Grippo, Haddad — to be dialed in by the time we cover the ADCC 2026 World Championship in Poland.
If you are training for your own no-gi competitions this summer, the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 footage should be on your watch list. Three trends worth pulling drills from: Grippo’s reverse de la Riva to leg drag chain at -66, the wrestle-up to back-take sequence Galvao kept hitting at -65, and Haddad’s body-lock-to-arm-drag attack series at -88. Footage from FloGrappling will be the cleanest source for full-match study.
Sources
- Jits Magazine — ADCC North American West Coast Trials 2026 Full Results and Highlights — Division-by-division final results and notable performances.
- MMA Mania — Sarah Galvao, Gianni Grippo Among 8 BJJ Champs to Win ADCC 2026 Invites — Detailed Galvao and Grippo recap.
- ADCC Official — 2026 Trials Page — Official trials calendar and invite tracking.
- FloGrappling — 2026 ADCC West Coast Trials Live Coverage — Full event replay and submission compilations.
- Wikipedia — ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship — Background on the ADCC qualification system and history.
