Fired? ADCC to replace head organizer, who then challenges Craig Jones to fist fight

Soon after the 2024 ADCC World Championships — and its public feud with the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) — the prestigious grappling promotion will now be replacing its head organizer. Indeed, Mo Jassim — who has been the promoter and public face of the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) these last several years — is no longer with the company.

ADCC to replace head organizer Mo Jassim

Jassim announced the surprising news on his private Instagram page, stating that he and ADCC have parted ways.

“l would like to announce that I have decided to step down as the head organizer of ADCC,” Jassim wrote. “I would to like thank Sheikh Tahnoon for giving me the opportunity to be the only person to organize 3 ADCC worlds. Thank you to Guy Neivens for allowing me to move up from wristband boy to head organizer. Thank you to Seth Daniels and Shawn Fowler, we gave every event we organized everything we had and I am very proud of the work we accomplished. Thank you to FloGrappling for supporting me and ADCC, they were great to deal with.

“Thank you to all of the athletes that I have worked with the past 20 years. Also thank you to all of the media who supported us and helped promote ADCC and the sport.

“The sport has never been in a better place to break through mainstream, which has always been the end goal. My loyalty will always be to ADCC but any organizer or event that will grow the sport has my full support if needed. I look forward to being just a fan again.”

ADCC was always highly regarded in the grappling scene, but Jassim truly deserves a lot of credit for significantly growing its events and helping the sport reach a much wider audience during his tenure.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) shows used to only appeal to fellow practitioners of the sport, but the professional grappling scene has since grown exponentially. ADCC’s biennial world championships was at the forefront of that, with Jassim playing a big role not just in keeping elite talent, but also in significantly improving production value to appeal to more casual audiences.

It’s after that growth was achieved, where concerns about lack of improvement in athlete pay were raised. This sparked the ADCC and CJI rivalry, with Jones eventually starting his own promotion to disrupt the sport and highlight these issues. He hosted CJI on the same city and same weekend as ADCC 2024, then poached several BJJ stars by offering show money that matched ADCC’s tournament prize, plus $1 million to its winners.

The situation was tense.

Nevertheless, the rivalry ended up helping many athletes get paid significantly better that weekend. CJI gave out record purses in BJJ, and because of the competition, ADCC also increased pay for women and offered show money for the first time to retain key stars.

Perhaps it is also in part due to these events that led to ADCC restructuring?

Fired? Craig Jones and Mo Jassim continue to trade barbs

Jassim recently stated he’d want to do things differently “if” he gets a chance to host another ADCC World Championships, so perhaps the writing was already on the wall.

As expected, though, Jones continued to jab at Jassim online, stating it wasn’t his choice to “step down” from ADCC.

“You can’t fire me, I quit,” Jones wrote on Instagram.

After seeing this, Jassim decided to challenge Jones to a fist fight as he responded in the comments section.

Jones went on to write a comment and film a whole skit in response, taking another jab at ADCC athlete pay and making people compete for exposure and “prestige.”

There’s still no word on Jassim’s replacement, but Jones didn’t stop his trolling there. The CJI promoter says he’s willing to take over Jassim’s role himself.

“I’ve decided to take over ADCC and restore it to its former glory,” Jones wrote in a series of jokes and jabs at Jassim. “I will even allow Mo Jassim (to) be the wristband boy again. I don’t hold a grudge.”

ADCC’s next world championships is targeted for 2026. Trials and qualifications will happen the year before that though, so it might not take very long for their backers in Abu Dhabi to make a decision on their next head organizer. It’ll also be very interesting to see if there will be major changes to how the promotion is run under different leadership.

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