ADCC 2026 Krakow Crisis Mounts Amid Invite Controversy | No-Gi Weekly May 4-10 2026
The road to ADCC 2026 in Krakow is supposed to be the biggest week-by-week story in no-gi. Instead, it has become a case study in unforced errors. Between an invite list pulled from public view, a stagnant ticket count, Gordon Ryan publicly torching the event, and Kade Ruotolo gearing up for the toughest MMA fight of his career, no-gi fans had plenty to chew on this week — and almost none of it has anything to do with putting bodies in seats inside the Tauron Arena. Here is everything that mattered for no-gi grapplers and rashguard nerds between May 4 and May 10, 2026.
1. ADCC 2026 Krakow Crisis Mounts: Invites Pulled, Tickets Crawling
The biggest no-gi story of the week is also the most uncomfortable one. ADCC 2026 is officially set for September 12-13 at the 15,030-seat Tauron Arena in Krakow, but the road there has hit a wall. According to a tracking report published by Polish outlet Kakutogi, between late March and early May only around 139 tickets moved in the active sections — roughly four seats per day across a 34-day window. With four months to go and more than 9,300 seats still open, that pace is genuinely alarming for a federation that has been telling the world this is the biggest grappling event ever staged in Europe.
Compounding the ticket problem is the invitation mess. BJJ Doc confirmed this week that Josh Saunders, Vagner Rocha, PJ Barch, Dan Manasoiu, and Ruslan Abdulaev have received invites — but only because the athletes posted screenshots themselves. ADCC pulled its public invite and qualified-participant list from the official site, leaving fans, opponents, and even some other invitees to piece the bracket together via Instagram. Then came the backlash over an invite extended to Izaak Michell despite an active warrant tied to serious allegations, which only intensified the transparency questions.
For no-gi fans buying flights, picking a hotel, or trying to plan whose rashguard to chase down on the merch floor, the silence is a problem. The Tauron Arena is a beautiful building, the bracket on paper is stacked, and the September dates were always going to deliver world-class grappling. But ADCC’s biggest weakness right now is its own communication. Until the federation reposts the official list and starts explaining the invite logic in public, every announcement is going to land into a fog of doubt.
2. Gordon Ryan Calls ADCC 2026 a Complete Waste of His Time
The seven-time ADCC champion threw fresh kerosene on the Krakow fire this week. After watching Kaynan Duarte’s recent showing at AIGA, Gordon Ryan posted that “showing up for ADCC 2026 is a complete waste of my time” — a public statement that effectively buries any remaining hope of the long-rumored Ryan vs. Duarte superfight headlining the weekend. As BJJEE documented this week, Ryan’s stance has hardened from “we’ll see” in February to flat-out dismissive in May.
The context matters. Ryan has been wrestling chronic gut issues for two-plus years, dropped close to 50 pounds during the worst of it, and announced retirement in February before flirting with a return three days later. Whether or not you take his retirement at face value — and Craig Jones famously said this week he doesn’t — the practical effect is the same: ADCC’s biggest pay-per-view name is openly calling the event beneath him, four months out from the show.
For Krakow that means rebuilding the marquee around the active stars: the Ruotolo brothers, Mica Galvão, Luke Griffith, Helena Crevar, and the new wave coming through the Trials. None of those names move tickets the way Ryan’s grudge match with Duarte would have. It is a brutal moment for the brand at exactly the wrong time.
3. Kade Ruotolo Faces Biggest MMA Test Yet at ONE: The Inner Circle
While ADCC scrambles, the reigning ONE Lightweight Submission Grappling World Champion is busy moving the needle in the cage. ONE Championship confirmed that Kade Ruotolo will face Japanese knockout artist Hiroyuki Tetsuka at The Inner Circle inside Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok on Friday, May 15. Ruotolo is 3-0 in MMA with three first-round submissions, but Tetsuka is comfortably the toughest puzzle yet — a 15-6 veteran with seven brutal finishes including a recent second-round TKO of former ONE Lightweight MMA champ Aoki at ONE 173.
For no-gi diehards, this is not just an MMA fight. It is the signal that the best young submission grappler in the world is fully committed to chasing both belts in 2026. Kade has openly said he and brother Tye are looking for ONE MMA gold next, and Tye has hinted that the brothers will figure out who challenges Christian Lee first. That is a new chapter for grappling-first athletes in a major MMA promotion, and it is the kind of crossover content that quietly pulls casual MMA fans onto the no-gi map.
Ruotolo also still has business to handle on the grappling side. His next submission grappling title defense is locked in for June 26 against Brazilian standout Fabricio “Hokage” Andrey at The Inner Circle — a textbook leglock-vs-leglock matchup that is going to be required viewing.
4. B-Team Pivots Fully to MMA After Craig Jones Departure
Austin’s most-watched no-gi gym is officially in transition. With Craig Jones out — he formally announced his split late last year and broke his silence on the reasoning in a long sit-down published this week by BJJEE — the remaining founders are repositioning B-Team as a full MMA academy with grappling, striking, and wrestling under one roof. The plan is a “family gym” that develops the next generation of athletes across every discipline rather than the elite-no-gi specialty room that put B-Team on the map.
Jones explained the split simply: “Running a gym sucks, you know?” Between CJI taking him around the world, the demands of being a full-time promoter, and his own admission that opening B-Team was never the original long-term plan, the math had stopped working. He framed his exit as just passing the torch.
The downstream effect on no-gi is real. B-Team’s Quintet teams in the OG red shorts (pictured below) defined a specific era of submission-only team grappling. Whether the rebrand can hold that competitive identity while pivoting to MMA fundamentals is the open question. Watch which competition rashguards the gym sponsors and whose names show up in the coach corners at WNO and ADCC Opens this summer for the real signal.
5. Craig Jones Floats $10 Million Prize for the Next CJI
Speaking of Craig: he is not slowing down. As MMA Mania reported this week, Jones is openly talking about a CJI 2.5 format built around “eight people, one night, ten million dollars.” That is a tenfold jump from the $1 million team-based prize that B-Team won at CJI 2 in Las Vegas last August, and it would dwarf any individual purse in submission grappling history.
Jones has also confirmed there will be no scheduling clash with ADCC in 2026 — “we can coexist” — which positions CJI 2.5 to land in 2027 with eye-watering numbers and zero overlap. The previous CJI cycle already added a $100,000 women’s openweight tournament featuring stars like Ffion Davies, and Jones has signaled the women’s prize pool will only grow.
For no-gi athletes, the implications are massive. A genuinely $10M night would force a re-rank of the sport’s entire athlete-economic ladder. For rashguard brands, expect the sponsorship arms race to reset alongside it. The companies that sit on a Kade Ruotolo or a Mica Galvão deal at the right moment in 2027 are going to be the ones whose retail traffic explodes.
6. ADCC Open Trial Circuit Truly Globalizes
The most underrated story of the week is what is happening below the headline event. The ADCC Open trial circuit is now genuinely international. Confirmed events on the calendar include the Sweden Open on May 23, the China Open on May 17, and the Dublin Open on May 16 — followed by additional regional Opens through the summer. Combined with the West Coast Trials in April that produced eight new ADCC qualifiers including Sarah Galvão, Gianni Grippo, and Nathan Haddad, the bracket-building map for Krakow is the broadest it has ever been.
What this means in practice: the next wave of ADCC qualifiers no longer has to come up through American or Brazilian super-camps. A grappler from Stockholm, Shanghai, or Dublin now has a credible week-by-week path to Poland. For the no-gi gear market that is a real shift too — brands that historically only stocked through North American and Brazilian distributors are about to see European and Asian athletes show up on the ADCC stage in their kits.
Below is the official ADCC trials footage from the West Coast event that produced this year’s first batch of qualifiers, including Gianni Grippo’s headline -66kg run after years away from the mats.
7. WNO 31 Aftermath Still Driving the Hold-Past-Tap Debate
The fallout from WNO 31 has not gone away. Luke Griffith captured the WNO heavyweight title and the #1 ranking with a vicious rear-naked choke on Felipe Pena, but the controversy was the hold-past-tap moment that nearly triggered a brawl at the cage. FloGrappling’s grappling bulletin spent another week unpacking what referees, coaches, and athletes should be doing in that exact spot — and the conversation is still active in coach circles heading into ADCC qualifying season.
For competitive no-gi grapplers, this is more than soap opera. The hold-past-tap question hits directly on rashguard durability (yes, really — sustained finishing pressure on a worn-out collar zone is how rashguards get destroyed mid-match), referee training, and the integrity of submission-only rulesets. Expect this to come up again the moment a similar moment happens in Krakow.
8. Rashguard Market Check: XMartial 80/20 Still Topping 2026 Lists
On the gear side, the May review wave is in. BJJ Equipment’s 2026 update again has XMartial topping the affordable mid-tier slot, citing the brand’s 80/20 polyester-spandex blend, sublimated print durability, and pro-tested compression as the reasons it keeps beating more expensive options on fit and feel. Kingz, Phalanx, Gold BJJ, and Nation Athletic continue to dominate the premium tier, while surf-crossover brands like Patagonia R0 and Florence Marine X are increasingly showing up on serious BJJ lists thanks to UPF 50+ outdoor performance that doubles for beach drilling and warm-water rolling.
If you are shopping right now, three things to watch this month: limited drops timed to the run-up to ADCC 2026 (expect athlete-collab capsule rashguards through August), surf-line crossover stock that is traditionally underpriced in May, and IBJJF ranked-rashguard restocks ahead of the summer no-gi season. Our deep-dive picks live in our 2026 Best Rashguards for BJJ and Grappling guide, and the women’s-specific fit, layering, and coverage breakdown is in our Best Rashguards for Women roundup.
Looking Ahead
Next week the no-gi calendar gets loud. Kade Ruotolo’s biggest MMA test goes down at ONE: The Inner Circle on May 15, the Dublin Open kicks off the European trial leg on May 16, the China Open opens the Asia leg on May 17, and Fight to Win 315 hits the mats May 16-17 with another stacked card. The Sweden Open on May 23 then starts the back half of the Open circuit, and the IBJJF Geneva International Open No-Gi Championship rounds out the European push.
Behind all of it, the bigger question still hovers: does ADCC re-publish its invite list and start fixing the ticket-sale story before the summer, or does the federation enter the August stretch with the same crisis still mounting? Four months out is plenty of runway to fix this, but the window is closing fast. We will be tracking it every Sunday — and watching which rashguard brands manage to get on the bodies that matter when the cameras finally roll in Krakow.
Catch up on last week’s news in our No-Gi Weekly April 28-May 4 2026 roundup, and check the ADCC West Coast Trials 2026 Results breakdown for the full list of athletes who already punched their tickets to Poland.
