CJI 3 Cancelled | No-Gi Weekly May 25–31

The week that was supposed to belong to ADCC trials chatter ended up belonging to Craig Jones — and to an X-ray of Kade Ruotolo’s ribs. Between May 25 and May 31, no-gi grappling lost a $10-million tournament, gained a clearer picture of who is fighting in Krakow this September, and watched its biggest pay-per-view name pull out of a Bangkok title defense most fans had circled in red. Here is what actually moved the needle, what to ignore, and what to bookmark for the weeks ahead.

Craig Jones Pulls The Plug On CJI 3

The biggest story of the week is the one nobody saw coming a month ago. On May 26, Craig Jones confirmed on Reddit that the third Craig Jones Invitational, the same event that had been teased with a $10 million prize pool and a Dillon Danis main event, has been cancelled. His exact words: “cancelled. Decided to keep the money.”

It is delivered with the usual dry humor, but the math underneath is real. Jones has previously described CJI 2 as a break-even production, and breaking even on a tournament that cost north of seven figures to stage was never going to fund a follow-up that promised more. Add the layered cancellations and rebookings around the planned Danis main event, and you can see why the boss decided the most disruptive thing he could do this year is not stage a card at all.

What replaces it? In Jones’ own framing, a “show in the works” he is trying to sell, plus a continued role as the loudest critic of how the UFC is structuring its own BJJ league. The promotion that detonated the 2024 and 2025 ADCC weekends is, for now, a one-man Twitter account and a seminar tour. For everyone who built a 2026 calendar around CJI 3, that is a structural change worth taking seriously.

ADCC 2026: Krakow Is Locked, And So Is The Field

The other side of the CJI vacuum is that ADCC Worlds in Krakow is now, unambiguously, the no-gi event of 2026. Dates are locked for September 12 and 13 at TAURON Arena Krakow, with the third ADCC Amateur Worlds running September 11 in the same building. Capacity is roughly 12,000 seats, broadcast goes through FloGrappling, and single-day tickets currently range from around $54 in the upper bowl to mat-side seats deep into four figures.

The competitor list keeps growing, but the bones are set. Confirmed invitees now include Diogo “Baby Shark” Reis, Mica Galvão, Giancarlo Bodoni, Kaynan Duarte, Felipe Pena, Gabi Garcia, Mayssa Bastos, Adele Fornarino, Rafaela Guedes, and Polish hometown picks Adam Wardzinski and Mateusz Szczecinski. Five men’s brackets of 16 and three women’s brackets of eight mean roughly half the names are locked through invitations, with the other half coming through the trials grinder.

The Trials Champions Who Punched Their Tickets

Two trials weekends carry the most weight heading into the summer. At the ADCC West Coast Trials in Pomona on April 18 and 19, Sarah Galvao went on a five-match tear at -65 kg, finishing three opponents and never giving up a point. Gianni Grippo, 34, ran the -66 kg table 7-0 without conceding a point, an absurd return to ADCC for a three-time IBJJF no-gi world champion making his first trip back to the Worlds since 2015. And at -88 kg, Nathan Haddad won seven matches, scored three submissions, and famously dug out of a 6-0 hole against Jayden Groner with a semifinal armbar that has lived in the FloGrappling highlights ever since.

If you missed his run, this is the clip the rest of the bracket is dreading rematches with.

South of the border, the South American Trials in Indaiatuba in March handed Mayssa Bastos her second trials title without surrendering a point, with Kaua Gabriel winning a stacked -66 kg bracket on the men’s side. Combined with the East Coast and Europe results, more than half the invitee gaps for Krakow are now closed. For deeper analysis of Haddad’s bracket-by-bracket path, see our breakdown of his ADCC -88kg Trials run.

Kade Ruotolo Pulls Out Of June 26 Title Defense

The single biggest schedule change of the week landed inside ONE Championship. Kade Ruotolo, the ONE lightweight submission grappling king, is officially out of his June 26 title defense against Fabricio “Hokage” Andrey at The Inner Circle in Bangkok. The injury traces back to his second-round TKO win over Hiroyuki Tetsuka at the May 15 Inner Circle card, where Ruotolo notched his fourth straight MMA win but visibly favored his lower body afterwards.

The ripple effect matters. The Inner Circle on June 26 was supposed to be Ruotolo vs Andrey, full stop, the marquee no-gi grappling title fight of Q2 in Bangkok. Without that bout, ONE has shuffled Andrey into a featherweight submission grappling match the very next night at ONE Fight Night 44 on June 27. The title stays parked, Andrey gets a payday, and the calendar slides — but anyone who built their week of viewing around Lumpinee on the 26th is now watching a different card.

Ruotolo’s grappling pedigree is unchanged. He is still two-time ADCC champion, still owns wins over Tommy Langaker, Magomed Magomedov, Uali Kurzhev, and most recently Blake Cooper, and is now 4-0 in MMA. The injury timeline is what will decide whether his next title defense lands in 2026 at all. We have a separate piece tracking the Bangkok night live for those who want a deeper look at Andrey vs Owen Jones at ONE Fight Night 44.

Fabricio Andrey vs Owen Jones: The Replacement Headliner

Andrey’s record, for the record, is not a soft landing for any debutant. He sits at 106-27 in pro grappling, three ADCC bronze medals deep, and has looked like a different category of athlete since joining ONE last year. Owen Jones is the British promotional newcomer being asked to absorb that energy on June 27 at Lumpinee Stadium, in a featherweight submission grappling rules match streaming live on the ONE app.

The narrative the promotion is selling is “called shot meets long shot.” Andrey called Ruotolo out in March, was given the title fight, and now has to keep the lights on against a fresh face after the headliner walked. Jones, for his part, can use a high-profile loss without much downside, and a high-profile win turns him into one of the most marketable no-gi names in Europe overnight. There is no scenario in which this match is boring for fans of leg entanglements, kimuras, and back exposure that nobody escapes from.

Mikey Musumeci Status, Eighteen Months Later

With Ruotolo on the shelf, every conversation about ONE no-gi keeps circling back to the same question: where is Mikey Musumeci? The short answer has not changed since November 2024, when Musumeci formally walked away from ONE Championship after the failed Denver weight cut left him hospitalized. He has spent the eighteen months since coaching, running seminars, taking the occasional super match, and openly criticizing how the promotion treated him on the way out.

What is new this week is the context. Without CJI 3, without Ruotolo on the next card, and with ADCC still three and a half months away, ONE’s no-gi roster looks thinner than it did at the start of 2026. The promotion that owned the headlines twelve months ago is now being asked who its second grappling star is, and the answers — Andrey, Bodoni in 2026, the returning Diogo Reis — are real but unproven at the box office. Musumeci’s absence is, by accident, becoming the loudest thing in the room.

The Gear Story: What Trials Champions Actually Wore

One of the cleaner side-stories of the trials season is the kit. Gianni Grippo competed in a Marcelo Garcia Academy compression top and team shorts cut for sprawl-heavy guard play. Nathan Haddad wore an unbranded black rash guard and Sanabul-style mid-thigh shorts, the same uniform he has used in every training clip on his Instagram since January. Sarah Galvao went with the same understated Atos academy two-piece her teammates Tainan Dalpra and Mica Galvão both use.

The pattern under all of that is that compression matters more than brand. Hayabusa’s Fusion rash guard, refreshed for 2026, leans into that lane with a color-shift stretch panel and gusseted underarm — the same construction logic Tatami’s Essential lineup uses at half the price, and the same problem Shoyoroll’s small-batch drops solve with a heavier panel that survives heel hook entanglements. For a deeper comparison of the four brands trials athletes actually rotate through, see our breakdown of the best no-gi shorts ADCC pros are wearing in 2026.

The piece nobody talks about enough is the cuff. Trials matches are won in the back-take and the leg ride, and a cuff that rolls up under a forearm grip costs you points the camera will not always catch. Look at the wrist hem of any black-belt finalist this spring and you will see either a silicone-printed gripper or a folded-double seam. That is the actual difference between a $35 rash guard and a $95 one.

Looking Ahead

The next four weeks are loaded. ONE Fight Night 44 on June 27 in Bangkok now carries the Andrey vs Owen Jones headliner and a packed Asia card around it. The ADCC Asia and Oceania Trials run June 21 on the Gold Coast in Queensland, the last realistic shot for the region’s grapplers to crack the Krakow field. FESP Finals streaming through May 30 and 31 will trickle out highlight reels through the weekend, and the IBJJF No-Gi Pan in October is already drawing pre-registration spikes from anyone who came up short at trials.

Three things to watch. First, whether ONE announces a new headliner for the June 26 Inner Circle slot, or quietly absorbs it into Fight Night 44. Second, whether anyone other than Craig Jones makes a credible play at filling the CJI promotional vacuum in the second half of 2026 — UFC BJJ is the obvious answer, but the contract terms Jones has publicly trashed are still a real obstacle. Third, who else gets confirmed to Krakow before the June trials weekend, because every athlete added now is one fewer slot up for grabs at the door.

It was a week where the biggest news was about the events that are not happening, and the second-biggest was about the fight that is not happening on its original date. That is the no-gi market in 2026: more reshuffling than ever, and somehow, more clarity on the September road than at any point this year. Back next week with whatever shakes loose from the Asia trials draw.