Updated CJI Competitor List and Event Summary

Introduction

Craig Jones isn’t playing around when it comes to the Craig Jones Invitational. We wrote a separate article covering EVERYTHING CJI related, which can be found here (also linked at the end of this article).

In summary, he’s made drastic improvements to athlete pay compared to ADCC. Considered the Olympics of grappling and jiu jitsu, ADCC offers $10,000 to winners of their respective divisions. 

It may seem a bit petty, but it’s definitely on brand for all of the trolling of ADCC Craig Jones has been doing: the CJI is offering $10,001 for competitors to show up and compete. So the winner of the most elite Jiu Jitsu tournament will get $10,000, while CJI competitors will make a minimum of $10,001. 

Oh, and there’s two $1,000,000 tournaments that CJI will host. Weight classes are -80kg and +80kg. The winners in the tournament will each take home a million dollars

Official CJI Competitors

Here are the Jiu Jitsu athletes competing at the Craig Jones Invitational, organized by the event they will be competing in:

-80kg Tournament

Tommy Langaker 

Jason Nolf

Lucas “Hulk” Barbosa 

Eoghan O’Flanagan

Matheus Diniz

Renato Canuto 

Roberto Jiménez

Levi-Jones Leary

Jozef Chen 

Nicky Ryan 

Kade Ruotolo

Tye Ruotolo

Andy Varela 

Andrew Tackett 

Kenta Iwamoto

Magid Hage

+80kg Tournament

Nicky Rodriguez

João Gabriel Rocha 

Victor Hugo

Mason Fowler

Fellipe Andrew 

Owen Livesey 

Inacio Santos 

Adam Bradley 

Max Gimenis 

Luke Rockhold

William Tackett 

Pat Downey 

Kyle Bohehm

Pedro Alex 

Mahamed Aly

Daniel Kerkvliet

Superfights

Ffion Davies vs Mackenzie Dern

Craig Jones vs Gabby Garcia 

Mikey Musumeci vs TBA (CANCELLED)

If you’ve seen the instagram of Craig Jones or the Craig Jones Invitational, you’ll notice that there has been quite a bit of trolling done by the 2x ADCC Silver Medalist. He has acquired Gordon Ryan’s Miata.

Yes, you read that correctly. Gordon Ryan’s Miata has joined the CJI and will be given away: 

“Donate $50 or more to the fair fight foundation or simply buy a ticket to the @cjiofficial to go into the drawer to win Gordon Ryan’s Miata. Yes the exact Miata he gave away in 2022 at ADCC.

Proceeds of @cjiofficial going directly to charity.” (via CJI instagram)

He tracked down the winner of Gordon Ryan's giveaway, the man who actually won the car and purchased the vehicle from him. We need a BJJ Fanatics instructional of Craig's trolling game, pretty high level stuff...

Thank you for reading - we hope this was a good summary of the CJI and its latest news!

A Complete Guide to the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI)