Aggressive Hugs: Jiu Jitsu in 2023

Eric gives a brief summary of all the jiu jitsu grappling that happened in 2023.

The year has come and gone fairly quickly by my standards. There were some fairly interesting developments over the year, but also simultaneously it has felt that not all that much has changed within the realm of jiu jitsu both in terms of a sport to participate in and a sport to watch. The genuine excitement I had at the start of the year petered out sometime in late September and I’ve just not quite gotten that excitement or interest back. But 2023 still deserves a look back, as some notable events did happen in the past twelve months that are worth discussing.

ADCC on UFC Flo

ADCC 2022 was, in terms of the competition, a great event that had amazing matches and moments. There’s been a lot said about the poor video production quality that FloGrappling put on for what was supposedly the biggest event ever. That’s why when the sudden announcement that ADCC would be moving its events to UFC Fight Pass came in February it was genuinely exciting. UFC Fight Pass has been known to put on spectacular events even for small shows: The stream quality is good, it’s easy to track what fight is happening and when, and so on. That excitement lasted for about a month when it was just as suddenly decided that no, actually the ADCC event will stay on FloGrappling and, tough cookies, you will just have to deal with FloGrappling’s terrible to contend with website, streams, and on-air production.

It feels like ADCC took a tentative step forward, then two big steps back. There have been a good deal of ADCC Opens, which is great, but good luck trying to watch them. ADCC Trials have been happening, but trying to locate people I know who competed in them and accessing the videos has been a pain simply because Flo’s website is really cumbersome. I have been on record saying that ADCC is one of the best tournament competition rule sets to use, but I also have said that, simply put, FloGrappling’s history of crummy video production while charging $150 a year subscription to access the content, while hiding the monthly option only on FloGrappling’s site, is a big hindrance to not only willing audiences but also getting other people interested in watching the event.

The next ADCC World Championships will be once again held in Las Vegas, this time at the T-Mobile Arena, the largest venue in the competition’s history. But the amount of hoops that will need to be jumped through just to watch the event on Flo, and dealing with the technical issues they seem to face every single event, makes it unlikely that I’ll be watching it live.

Quintet is Back! (Sorta)

This year also saw probably the biggest announcement in the sport of jiu jitsu, in my opinion. Quintet, the team survival grappling competition, announced it was coming back after a 2 year absence. This was a good thing, as Quintet, as a format, was just far more exciting to watch than an individual tournament. Having a team vs team format was not only relatively unique for Quintet within the realm of jiu jitsu, but the stakes for the matches felt much more important. Winning meant you stayed on, but had to face a fresh opponent. A draw meant both teams lost a competitor, but that’s fine so long as your opponent had less members available to send out than you. A loss, well, that set your team back big.

Before Quintet 4 event started there was a bit of drama. As part of the initial lineup, John Danaher’s New Wave team were announced as competitors but then relatively not long after the announcement of teams, New Wave were suddenly out. There’s not been any confirmed reason, but the rumor mill stated that New Wave were playing hardball with provisions of their participation and when Quintet didn’t really accept those stipulations Danaher supposedly decided the whole team wouldn’t participate. That meant that Quintet needed a new team and they easily found one in the form of the B-Team Bulls (aka B-Team Jiu Jitsu). And it was an excellent choice.

The event overall was quite good. While there probably could’ve been more in the way of submissions, the fact a lot of draws occurred just made the stakes rise higher and higher. We did get to see some great scrambles, wild submission escapes, and probably one of the wildest toe hold submissions I think you can ever describe.

Quintet is, as I stated, my favorite format of competition in jiu jitsu. Having a team you can root for, even if the individuals on that events roster change, is something I think most people can get behind. A team is simply just a bit easier to cheer on than a single individual. Yes, jiu jitsu is an individual sport, but so are wrestling and judo and they too have team competitions, so why not jiu jitsu? Personally, I think that if jiu jitsu has any hope to be a bigger sport and have more opportunities for growth and a larger audience at a professional athlete level, going the route of Quintet, Polaris Squads, or even the more recent AIGA Champions League may be the way to go. There simply needs to be a league and structure that is consistent with regular events being held, though all of these seem to be non-existent in jiu jitsu as a whole.

Even if Quintet (the organization) doesn’t host further events, we’ve seen the likes of the UFC, Urijah Faber, Polaris, and others host similar team-oriented events that really should be more common. I genuinely hope they become much more present within the professional scene because personally I find this format far more exciting as a spectator to watch.

UFC Fight Pass Events

This year also saw the UFC start to enter their toes into the jiu jitsu event scene with their, and I can’t stress this enough, terribly named events: UFC Fight Pass Invitational. Just…that name. God, it is terrible.

Name aside, the events have been consistently good. In fact, they are what I think FloGrappling wishes the Who’s Number One events would be more like. The talent on display has been consistently impressive with some highlight moments, except the UFC hasn’t saddled the whole event series up to one individual competitor and have gotten an array of talented competitors to promote and get audiences interested in watching. On top of that the announcement that UFC Hall of Famer Georges St-Pierre would be grappling was also very exciting, though he had to pull out of the December 2023 card due to injury and was relegated to providing commentary.

Simply put, the UFC’s goal of supposedly hosting an event every other month is highly intriguing as it solves a major issue I see with grappling as a sport: There’s too much of a gap between events. Having more consistency is good, especially if you can use those events to provide a spotlight to more and more competitors filling out more interest in the sport. Flo’s strategy has been to hop onto the Gordon Ryan train; it’s smart and makes sense since he is a big draw. However, for longevity’s sake, it’s a terrible decision and once he is either no longer under contract with them or has to sit out of competition for most of a year (which he pretty much did this year), it means that gamble is more of a detriment.

I would say the UFC FPIs have been great, because they have been. We saw some big moments throughout the year and that can hopefully continue into 2024 when they add more events and more competitors from different divisions to their lineups.

The Year of Nicky Rod

Although the year started off with a loss to Felipe Pena, I would argue that in 2023, Nicky Rod cemented himself as the best grappler of the year. The loss to Pena was under the WNO rule set (which seemingly changes each match and I can’t recall the specifics of it off hand) via a decision. OK, that’s not great, but it’s not a terrible loss. Next at UFC FPI 4 he went on to beat Roberto Jimenez and Vagner Rocha to claim the tournament championship. Those two are pretty tough competitors in their own right, with Vagner being a recent medalist at 2022 ADCC World Championships & 2022 IBJJF No-Gi Worlds event, though he also is technically on a suspension from IBJJF for failing to appear for a drug test so there’s also that. Nicky Rod then went on to beat Dan Mannasoiu, a member of New Wave with Gordon Ryan and John Danaher, who is also considered quite talented.

With the win at UFC FPI 4, Nicky Rod then called out Gordon Ryan for a rematch of their UFC FPI 3 meeting stating the case that he not only couldn’t get submitted by Gordon but actually did more damage (breaking Gordon’s ankle with a toehold) than Gordon could. Gordon declined.

Later in September, Nicky Rod went to Japan to compete in Quintet 4 with the rest of the B-Team and outwrestled and pressured both Owen Livesy and PJ Barch in two matches, eliminating them and helping B-Team take the Quintet 4 trophy home.

Then to close out 2023 he stepped in to face Yuri Simoes at UFC FPI 5 and dominated the match. Given that Yuri is due to face Gordon Ryan at the 2024 ADCC World Championships in the Super Fight match, it’s another big win for Nicky Rod who again called out his former teammate but this time put an offer where both he and Gordon put $50,000 each in a winner takes-all $100,000 match. Gordon again declined it, and instead his other teammate Nicholas Meregali decided to now call out Nicky Rod for a match as well as Craig Jones (who Meregali lost to at the 2022 ADCC World Championships).

Nicky Rod has over the course of 2023 established himself not only as a must watch competitor, but someone who can definitely promote and sell a match when need be. And he’s doing it without egregious trash talk like we’ve seen be the common trope in MMA and boxing, just genuine confidence and a likable personality.

Some Comments About Jiu Jitsu the Sport

As I said, I was really excited at the end of 2022 for the sport of jiu jitsu. I thought this year would see a lot more growth and development for the professional sport aspect of things. To say I am disappointed at the end of this year with very little headway being made in that direction is an understatement.

Quintet coming back was probably my favorite thing in jiu jitsu this year. I can go on for hours about why I like it but I think you get the gist. One of the biggest problems I personally see with jiu jitsu as a professional sport is the total lack of organization or overarching body that the likes of judo, wrestling, kickboxing, and MMA seem to have plenty of. When you watch any of those sports, there’s a degree of…professionalism? Consistency? I’m not quite sure what word I’m looking for, but there’s a noticeable difference in how those sports’ leagues operate compared to jiu jitsu.

I think things like FloGrappling having so much sway and control over the professional scene is hugely problematic for a variety of reasons, one of them being they don’t seem to want to build a league whatsoever. Organizations like ONE and UFC coming in from MMA and providing a sort of more defined structure (in their respective ways) helps push things towards a more clearly defined and organized system that a professional sport can develop from. And, realistically, it should have already happened given how poorly Flo has performed, but no real competition has come in. Hopefully that changes.

What’s In Store for 2024?

Next year seems to be holding more of the same for jiu jitsu. A host of WNO events on FloGrappling that will be more or less the same as any other event (in that I can’t even name any previous events or what happened of note), UFC will be hosting more Fight Pass Invitationals, and the ADCC Trials will start to pick up a bit more.

Come August we’ll see a lot of focus on the 2024 ADCC World Championships in Las Vegas, which should be good. From the list of qualified athletes both through trials and likely to be invited, it’s going to be a really strong competition. Gordon Ryan should be returning, though he’s been in and out of competition throughout 2023 with only one match (that I can recall) this year alone. So if he does attend ADCC, what sort of condition he’ll be in is questionable.

As I stated above, one thing I really hope is more common in 2024 are the Quintet style events. I just love those more than any other form of jiu jitsu competition at the moment, and I want more. I think the winner-stays-on format works really well, I truly believe the team component just makes it easy for people to get behind a known group (ideally using their gym/organization name like B-Team did), and we can see some sort of attempt at forming a proper professional league or competitor to whatever the hell FloGrappling is doing. To be blunt, Flo’s stranglehold on the sport is a big issue for me and I think it needs to be challenged or forced to go away for good.

In terms of content I’ll be providing for Fight Island, I’ll be honest: I’m not sure. I stopped being interested in the MMA stuff as essentially the UFC stopped seeming like a product I really wanted to keep watching due to the matchmaking decisions, and promotional malpractice which both Carl & Neal have highlighted several times during the rankings updates. For my grappling content, I tried to do monthly write ups but by the time August came around I was feeling a bit burnt out in general and wanted a break. For 2024, my plan is to continue write ups, albeit shorter and more focused on events worth watching.

I may still put out a long think piece about education but that’ll be less of a focus month-to-month for the sake of my own sanity and to prevent being burnt and stressed out over providing these sort of write ups consistently.