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.
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?
Jones did a number on them I guess.
Man… this forum is filled with incredibly intelligent people
Please let me help a little here
The ADCC finals traditionally moves from one city to another; in fact due to how successful Moe ran the first Las Vegas ADCC it was NEVER went back to back in the same city.
The finals gets moved globally and the lead person heading it up also tends to change with every event.
Due to Moe’s unprecedented success it was accepted that he could keep the head spot as long as he had wanted to.
It is NOT normal for a person to take the lead at the finals more than one year
To counter
Moe is still the Chief operating officer for ADCC Americas
- this means that any ADCC tournament on this continent will be handled by him.
If you want to laugh at a troll, by all means please do
Just understand where they are coming from
Jesus! Give up on this shit. It ain’t gonna happen. It’s a niche sport like ultimate frisbee. This isn’t an insult, just the truth.
And lol @ having Seth Daniels involved. Ya, he’s a dude you want to bring on board to go mainstream. lol
This , I Noticed
It was interesting to hear Craig Jones on a few podcasts when ADCC money got brought up, and then the interviewer would ask questions about potential misappropriation of funds.
Jones would always be clear he doesn’t believe that and that he views it as unnecessary overspending on the event itself instead of balancing event spend vs athlete pay.
I don’t know enough to know how far off the mark he was there, anyone?
Theres enough people to choke and snap in the world.
The feud will be ending at fuck fest 25.
Rules to follow
