Craig Jones On Why He Switched Formats For CJI 2
CJI 2 is a little over a month away, and the grappling world is stoked to see the action. Craig Jones was recently on Ariel Helwani’s show and was asked why he switched to the new format.
Craig knew that the first installment would be replicated in some way by other organizations, so he wanted to mix it up.
“For me, it was about growing the sport, and I’d always planned, knowing full well that it was going to be mimicked in some capacity by other people in the industry. To the extent that it has been, that was surprising. I think that’s a testament to the success of the first event, but I always wanted to do something different for the second event.”- Craig Jones.
Quintet’s Wild & Unexpected Format
The reason why Craig chose to go with a team tournament is the unexpected excitement of the Quintet format. As we saw with Sakuraba’s original team tournament, we get wild absolute matches pitting the best grapplers against each other.
“So we hooked the best athletes with one million for the first one, now I really want to double down and show the fans that this is the most exciting format from a spectator’s perspective. Quintet, for someone that doesn’t train, will have the most appeal. It’s the chaos, it could be a small guy against a big guy and that’s really the goal for this event.”- Craig Jones.
CJI 2 goes down August 30th & 31st, where the world’s best Jiu-Jitsu team will be crowned and will win $1 million. You can watch Craig’s full interview with Ariel Helwani below.
Bobby is martial artist for almost 20 years with a BJJ black belt under Professor Sergio Miranda. He is also a karate black and former combat sports athlete, who loves all things grappling.