CJI 3 Is Dead | No-Gi Weekly June 22-28, 2026
It was the kind of week that reminds you the professional no-gi landscape never sits still for long. The sport’s most disruptive promoter walked away from his own creation, the road to Kraków got a lot more concrete, and Bangkok delivered another leg-lock war on a Friday night. Here is everything that mattered in no-gi grappling from June 22 through June 28, 2026.
Craig Jones Pulls the Plug on CJI 3: “Decided to Keep the Money”
The biggest story in grappling this week was not a submission. It was a Reddit reply. Asked point-blank what had happened to the long-teased third edition of the Craig Jones Invitational, Jones answered with the bluntness that built his brand: “cancelled. Decided to keep the money.”
For a man who spent two years positioning the CJI as the renegade counterweight to ADCC, dangling million-dollar purses and turning fight week into a circus, the admission landed hard. The math behind it is brutal. By Jones’ own accounting, CJI 2 broke even. He poured time, brand equity, operational labor, and cash into a show that returned exactly zero profit, and the appetite to do it again at a larger scale simply evaporated.
The deeper cause is the elephant that has been crowding the mats all year: UFC BJJ. As the promotion has expanded, it has started locking elite grapplers into exclusivity deals, draining the free-agent pool that independent events like the CJI depended on. Jones even floated the idea of a partnership, but framed it as a non-starter on his terms. “We could have made a deal, me and the UFC. I could have taken over promoting. But I would have to sell my soul, underpriced,” he said, adding that he now has “a show in the works to hopefully sell. That’s way more fulfilling for me right now.”
Whatever you think of the man, the CJI forced everyone to pay athletes better. Its exit leaves a real hole in the calendar and hands the professional no-gi market more firmly to the corporate players.
ADCC 2026 Invite List Locked as Kraków Comes Into Focus
With the drama swirling around independent promotions, ADCC quietly did what ADCC does best: it tightened the screws on the most prestigious bracket in submission grappling. The promotion updated its officially invited athletes list on June 21, firming up the field for the September 12-13 World Championship at the TAURON Arena in Kraków, Poland.
This is a milestone event on several fronts. It is the first ADCC Worlds held in Poland, it will seat more than 15,000 spectators in the largest arena the championship has ever used, and it carries a record prize purse of roughly $362,000. For a no-gi competition that started as a niche invitational backed by an Abu Dhabi sheikh, the scale now rivals mainstream combat sports.
The locked invite list also ends months of speculation about who is in and who has to grind through the trials. With the marquee names confirmed, attention shifts to seeding, super-fight rumors, and which qualifiers can play spoiler against the established order. If you want a refresher on the gear these athletes will actually compete in, our function-first guide to choosing no-gi gear breaks down what matters under the lights.
Trials Season Pays Off: Galvao and Grippo Punch Their Tickets
The flip side of the locked invite list is the trials circuit, where unseeded competitors fight their way into the bracket the hard way. Two performances stood out from the West Coast Trials field that fed into this cycle, and both are worth tracking into September.
Nineteen-year-old phenom Sarah Galvao bulldozed the 65kg bracket, winning five matches with three submissions and surrendering zero points along the way. It earns her a first-ever trip to the ADCC World Championship, and at her age she could be one of the faces of the women’s division for the next decade.
On the men’s side, 34-year-old Gianni Grippo authored a veteran’s masterclass. The three-time IBJJF no-gi world champion went 7-0 without conceding a single point to claim gold at 66kg and, remarkably, his first ADCC invite in 11 years. The contrast between Galvao’s youth and Grippo’s longevity is exactly the kind of storyline that makes the trials grind compelling.
ONE Fight Night 44: Owen Jones Avenges a Three-Year-Old Loss
Bangkok’s Lumpinee Stadium hosted ONE Fight Night 44 on June 26, and the lone submission grappling bout delivered the kind of leg-lock chess match the format was built for. Twenty-one-year-old Brit Owen Jones defeated decorated BJJ world champion Fabricio “Hokage” Andrey by split decision, handing the Brazilian his first promotional defeat and avenging a loss from three years earlier.
The two featherweights turned the opening half of the 10-minute bout into a war of attrition, scrambling across the canvas and trading dangerous entries without either man finishing the job. Jones found his break in the second half, securing a leg lock that drew a referee’s catch and tilted the scorecards in his favor. If the heel-hook exchanges had you wincing, our breakdown of heel hook setups and safety rules explains exactly why those positions are so dangerous.
Jones was not the only one celebrating. The broader card saw Lucas Gabriel, Karen Ghazaryan, and Paul Elliott all emerge victorious, capping a strong night for the promotion’s grappling and MMA roster and a particularly dominant showing from its British contingent.
Catch the full highlight reel from the event below:
IBJJF Goes No-Gi: Brazilian Nationals Stream Live
The IBJJF-run CBJJ Brazilian No-Gi Championship ran June 27-28 and notched a first for the event: a live international broadcast on FloGrappling. For a tournament that has historically lived in the shadow of the bigger Worlds and Pans, getting eyes on the action outside Brazil is a meaningful step.
The entry list carried real weight, with established names like Elisabeth Clay, Tarik Hopstock, and Pawel Jaworski testing themselves on home-federation mats. As with most IBJJF no-gi brackets, expect the full division-by-division results to firm up over the coming days, but the live stream alone signals how seriously the federation is now treating the no-gi side of its calendar.
Women’s No-Gi Keeps Climbing: Helena Crevar Leads the Charge
Underneath the headline events, the steady story of 2026 has been the deepening of the women’s no-gi ranks. Helena Crevar, ranked the number one pound-for-pound women’s no-gi grappler in the world, continues to set the standard, and the emergence of teenagers like the aforementioned Sarah Galvao suggests the talent pipeline is healthier than ever.
That depth matters. A division with genuine star power and competitive matchups draws promotional investment, and promotional investment draws sponsors and broadcast slots. The women’s brackets are no longer an afterthought tacked onto a card; they are increasingly the matches fans circle in advance.
Gear Drop: Hyperfly’s World Cup Rashguard Collection
On the gear front, Hyperfly leaned into the global sporting calendar with a World Cup 2026 rashguard collection, letting grapplers roll in nation-themed designs inspired by soccer kits. The line covers a long roster of countries, from the USA and Brazil to Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines.
Beyond the novelty, the construction is solid no-gi spec: an 80% polyester, 20% spandex blend with four-way stretch, flatlock seams to cut down on chafing during live rolling, and UV protection. If you are curious how those fabric percentages actually translate to performance on the mat, our deep dive on what your no-gi rashguard is actually made of is the perfect companion read before you buy.
Looking Ahead
The back half of the summer now points squarely at Kraków. With the ADCC invite list locked and trials season wrapping up, the next several weeks will be about training camps, super-fight announcements, and the inevitable seeding debates that precede every World Championship. Watch for UFC BJJ to keep flexing its roster muscle in the vacuum left by the CJI, and keep an eye on whether the IBJJF builds on its FloGrappling no-gi broadcast experiment with more live coverage.
We will be back next week with the latest from the mats. Until then, train smart, protect your knees, and keep your rashguard dry.
Sources: BJJEE, ONE Championship, FloGrappling.
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