Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Is This The End Of CJI?
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Are you headed to Vegas? JT and producer man Jack will have boots on the ground to witness the 2nd (and maybe final?) Craig Jones Invitational. It should be one for the history books as there are stacked teams fighting each other quintet style and a revolutionary girls tournament. Drop a comment below on who you think will win this years CJI!
A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point, the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready. Cji 2 predictions overview breakdown. Let's let you know what we think will happen and then the truth will be revealed. When's it coming up? It's coming up literally less than two weeks. By the you guys get it, it'll be the week of and I will be there. Wow, you're fucking going again. I'm going, I am going.
Speaker 1:I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to joe, and then I had a conversation with closest source to craig, sources close to craig, the source on craig, close the source to cra. I have to tell you that, um, wait, do I need to say this? We'll save it to the end. Yeah, the big reveal. I say JT is great with cigarettes, right, I just, but let's talk about it. They said, brother, you need to be there, I need to be there. I told that's what they told him. And so I was like fucking hell, all right, I guess I'm going. And so I messaged Jack and I said, jack, you want to go see Jay? He's like, fuck, yeah. And I was like all right, we're going because I need you to film this shit and obviously Joey's got to be responsible and run a business and have a family and shit, so he can't do it, so we'll just fucking do it and I am excited.
Speaker 1:So many matchups here, the, the potential for matchups is crazy fucking smorgasbord. Because team event right, it's team event, but the, the element, the, the royal rumble element, is coach goes. All right, owen jones, you know like you're gonna go against kyle and duarte or whatever, like all right, so you don't, you can't necessarily know and I don't know who picks first. The matchups need to be made before they start, right as in. You you say like this is my number one to five in terms of order. I don't actually know that piece of the detail, so maybe this is something other folks know. I've been scrolling through like trying to get the breakdown of how it all works. Yeah, but I think the thing that is drawing the crowd, or the reason why everyone is excited for cji 2, is the team's event means there's so many more grapplers.
Speaker 1:You've got these eight major teams and each team has like five guys, it's not just one guy, so it's so much bigger If you've got a favorite grappler like, say, it's PJ Bartsch. You're like, yeah, 10th Planet, yeah, I like 10th Planet, I'm backing them. Cool there like, yeah, 10th planet, yeah, I like 10th planet, I'm backing them. Cool, let's the 10th planet team. Yeah, and they are the never heard of them.
Speaker 1:The funny thing is, I think them and daisy fresh are the only two teams that are doing the homegrown thing. So they're not doing. They're not bringing in any wild. Oh, wow, they haven't imported any. No fucking love as a source of price. This is is our fucking team, this is our team, these are our boys.
Speaker 1:I actually I do really respect that, because it is always odd. I mean, it's an odd facet of sports, yeah, whereby you and particularly a small sport like jiu-jitsu, where it's like, oh, we've got the new wave team plus Micah Galvan, but, but I think the hardest thing is that guys get injured or they don't, yeah, and it's not like everyone's got an army of athletes ready to pick. I think maybe 10 or 15 years ago, if you'd had a similar setup, maybe you could have had rosters like Alliance would have had a full roster at least. But here we are right. So let's go through the teams and then let's talk about exciting potential matchups, different people. So American Gorillas is kind of like the American Misfits team coached by Greg Souders oh, wow. And so you've got the oh wow, yeah, eco, fucking put the flag in the ground.
Speaker 1:Corbe brothers are in there Right on, you know like there's two of them, is there? Yeah, so you've got DeAndre. His brother's name escapes me. I'm an idiot, I apologize. You were hanging out with DeAndre in Kazakhstan, right, I was. Yeah, he's a phenom. The guy is just Is he better than me? He might be, I don't know. I haven't seen you two roll. Yeah, yeah, it would be hard to say, hard to say yeah, and he obviously gives up like 20 kilos to you, but he also has, like you know, beaten a lot of folks, but yeah. So American Gorillas is a great team in terms of it being like. You know, you've got a lot of different people there and we'll go through the people. American Gorillas, yes, okay, yeah, go on Right.
Speaker 1:Tenth Planet, and so I think their symbol is like an alien, like the alien's alien, yep. And you know, I'm a huge PJ Bartsch fan and obviously you've got I'm also a PJ Bartsch fan. Boogie, and you know oh, martinez, yeah, which one? Both, both, both Martinez brothers are in there. Wow, yeah, I mean, they're fucking hard cunts. They've been in it a long time. They refuse to die. Yeah, I remember watching the older one, richie, richie Martinez, boogie. Yeah, I remember watching him against Craig when Craig got that fucking you know slick little toehold on him at Quintet. Yeah, they've got a bit of a history, they do, but I are, these guys got Well. I mean, they're still doing really well. So it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I think it's also like Kyle Bowen. He's quite a big fella, he's their heavyweight. Yeah, we saw him at ADCC, the first ADCC we went to. Eh, we did. He was the only guy in the pool at the after party. He was. He was Just this big jacked dude, just like Soaking in the pools, like sick party Having a good time. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1:And so let me have a look here. So I'm just going off the faces on the map because, yeah, and so when we look at the next team, we've got the Aussie Devils. So the Aussie Devils is, I feel, a dark horse team, even though Australians, we all know what's going to happen. It's going to be a bunch of leg locks going on. I believe that they will perform better across the board against as many opponents as possible.
Speaker 1:Now, unfortunately, levi had to pull out. Fuck, what happened? He's injured. Fuck, yeah, sorry to hear that, levi. Yeah, they got Kenta in. Wow, my other favorite Australian. He's still a great, such a good Australian.
Speaker 1:You know, the wild unknown quantity is Kenta, and so you've got. You know, bilal Kenta. Who else have we got? We've got Lucas Canard. We have Fabrizio Andre. We have Declan Moody Like it's a very good team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whatever you say, bilal's the guy. Declan Moody. Like it's a it's a very good team. Yeah, whatever, whatever you say, bilal's the guy that ripped it up at the trials Giles trials, right, um, he did well. Uh, declan did the the most damage at trials. Yeah, um, I think Bilal is an unknown quantity and he's like he's a big guy and if he gets your leg he will absolutely rip it off. Wow. And he is, in my opinion, the new Lucas Canard in terms of. He will be underestimated, but he's the guy who's going to heel hook Kynan or he'll hook Luke Griffiths. Like this guy, he can pretty much leg lock anyone, wow. So I think that in that way, the Aussie Devils are going to create some upsets. They're going to be bringing some hell.
Speaker 1:You could say, oh the devils, I love it. Now, new wave Dang. Now here's something, a new disturbance in the atmosphere. Team John Donahue, big jiu-jitsu giant, dan Minassoia, is out. He has Lyme's disease. Oh fuck, he got bitten by a tick, I believe. Oh, poor cunt, yeah, and he's. That's such a shit way to have no good. Yeah, wow, his health is bad, okay. So they still really sorry to hear that he's a great competitor.
Speaker 1:So, even though they've already brought in micka gulf home as their wild card, craig needs to keep team new wave in there, because everyone was like, well, with that kind of a team. You know, you've got badoni, you've got luke Griffiths, you've got Oliveres oh yeah, oliveres, oliveres, sorry man. And Micah yeah, fucking hell. So they need a massive dude, they need a big dude, and everyone's like who could they get? I haven't seen any missed calls, but I'll keep an eye out. Lock in, joe, free your schedule. Start eating some muffins, I guess. And then we've got the Atos Knights.
Speaker 1:Wait, who the fuck are they going to get to replace Dan Manasoyo? That's a good question. He's a huge cunt. No one is as big as Big Dan. He's the biggest. Maybe they're going to dig Gordon up out of the grave.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing From what I understand I've talked to a few folks who are at Kingsway, I don't. From what I understand, I've talked to a few folks who are at King's Way Gordon's not training, he's coaching Like he's not. He's not in in kind of fighting condition. Yeah right, I don't. And also just because of his relationship with Craig, I don't think he would ever do it. He doesn't want to be on Craig's event. That's right. There's too much bad blood there, wow.
Speaker 1:So yeah, this is a big unknown which could either be incredible or could weaken their team significantly. Maybe they need to get Baby Shark on the team and then jab everyone super hard on the Gordon Supplementation, bump them up a weight category, so Dorian Alivarez jumps in at 77. That would be fucking. That's the fucking most effective strategy. That's the move. That's the fucking play guys. You got to hit it first. We're going fucking play guys you heard it here first we're going to see Luke Griffiths at Super Heavyweight. They're like brother. We've already jabbed the fuck out of everyone to the max. They're at limit. There's no more jabbing brother. No, the Captain America stack has been maxed, going fucking MCU level.
Speaker 1:And then, oh, and that's the thing I forgot about the team gorillas. We've got Elijah Dorsey, who's amazing, who I met, who's a lovely guy, yeah, tli. And then we've got TLI, tim Lloyd-Irvin, oh yeah. And then is it Perlman Pierman from Euros is the wild card for that? Oh, yeah, yeah, for the gorillas? Yep, so he's a fucking weapon for leg locks. He's training out of Los Banditos, he is, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then they've got old mate Pat Downey as their super the wild man. And he's been doing jits, hasn't he, bro? He is a crazy guy, yeah. So that's Pat Downey. With 12 months of jiu-jitsu under his belt, that's a problem for anyone. Oh, guy, um. And then wait. And so what team are they on? That's, that's the gorillas team, right, okay.
Speaker 1:So now when we go to the knights, team atos, yeah, I don't think. Do they have a wild card in there? No, because I was thinking, oh no, they've got um penna, uh, philippe penna, as their super nice. And then they've got hulk. They've got uh, ronaldo, uh, kynan. And then they got pato.
Speaker 1:That's an all-star car, it's like who's ronaldo? Uh, ronaldo is one of their guys. Uh, ronaldo, like he's crazy in the gi. World champion in the gi. Maybe silver in no gi.
Speaker 1:He's lost a fair bit to mika galvan, like, okay, no, not Mika Tynan, oh right, so you know they used to be teammates. And then now you know Tynan is on AOJ and he's, you know, trained a fair bit over in the UAE. But he's an at-all sky, through and through and just crazy mover. Yeah, right, like human highlight reel type guy. Wow, so very unpredictable. And obviously Pato great on the leg locks. Pato has been unstoppable for the last couple of years. Right, he's finishing a lot of people. Yeah, like he won. He's still two division champion. Is it Polaris or who's number one? Maybe, but he's also ADCC champ. Yeah, he's fucking, he's great. Yeah, he footlocked your boy, dante Dante, he's great. Yeah, he footlocked um, uh, your boy, uh, dante. But he also owen from um. You know we're gonna go to team euro. Oh, wow, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, owen jones.
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Speaker 1:So we go to the Europe team and fucking Hulk. I mean, I feel like Hulk was reborn after CJI. When he finished he got the submission. Joseph Chen right, that was. I don't think any. I think everyone would have put the favorite on joseph chen. Everyone was like a hulk's an adcc guy, like not a finisher, you know, rule set player, yes. And then he came out and fucking pulled that calf slice and you're like, oh, calf crush, motherfucker, it was great, it was really good. Yeah, I was excited to see that and so.
Speaker 1:So when we go to Team Europe, we're looking at Owen Jones. We also have Pavel in there from Poland, who's like the guy that designed our T-shirts. No, you're wearing it right now. No, not that one. Different Pavel, different Pavel.
Speaker 1:There's a few Pavels out there, but you know he's a young guy. He's a few Puvvles out there, but you know he's a young guy, he's a lovely guy actually To chat to. He's a very nice, friendly guy, but he will fucking. He leg locks everyone. Yeah right, just rip your fucking leg off. These leg lock guys are always nice, they come off as nice, but I guess it's like an assassin. You just chat to him, he's like oh, seems like just pulled guard, no problem, oh, I'll just put my leg here, knee explodes.
Speaker 1:Charles Nigramonte oh wow, yeah, did we see him? He wasn't at last CJ. How was he Nigramonte? No, he did ADCC. He did ADCC and, yeah, he leg locked. He got someone in the dying moments, didn't he? Oh, no, it was like a pretty even match. Australian blondie shaved head, isaac, isaac, michelle, that's right. He knee-barred Isaac on a very tough, like a tough match. So that was unexpected.
Speaker 1:I think the guy's name is Padilla. He's also like a. I think he's a lawyer. He's like a full-time professional lawyer. But he is an amazing grappler and he won the trials at the Los Benditos when they had that. Oh wow, and so he's a killer. And there's another gentleman, whose name escapes me right now, who's a complete monster at their heavyweight category. He's very unpredictable.
Speaker 1:So the Euro team. The thing is this the Team Euro, team Euro is not there's no weak teams here. No, like the thing is this the Team Euro, team Euro is not. There's no weak teams here. No, like the thing is. You look across it Like now we go to B team. Have they got? Is it Farris or is he the coach? Farris is the coach? Farris is the coach right? Yeah, which he's a big dude. Yeah, I mean he could just sub in, you know, if someone gets, yeah, but B team is, I think, very interesting and I think in in some ways, could be looked at as being not favorite. But I mean, with big Dan out and we're looking at all these teams, I believe B team has one of the most dangerous rosters. They got Nikki Rod, they got Joseph Chen, ethan Krelenstein, they got Chris Wojcik and then they've got Victor Hugo. That's a problem, bro. That's a problem.
Speaker 1:These matchups. Now for you out there, if you're not familiar with who these people are, you need to get your google on. There's so many good guys here. Like it's unbelievable. The reason why I'm so excited for this event is you're gonna see guys go up against each other who would never normally go up against each other in comp, because this will be winner stays on right, like quintet. Do you know? I do not know, because I do love that as the quintet format If you win, you stay in, and so you get these guys that are a little bit gassed, but they're on a high from just fucking dominating, and so you end up with a little guy and a big guy.
Speaker 1:It's explosive because it's like, fucking, I'm throwing it all in on this one. I think there is a huge element of strategy here, because you could put someone a bit smaller, right? So, fabrizio Andre, right, he's on the Australia team, but he's beaten Bordogna before, so he has right. So you're like, maybe that's a better matchup. So then, who does the next biggest person go against? You know what I mean, and so I think this is where, even though it sounds chaotic, even though it sounds like fuck, how's that gonna work?
Speaker 1:If the coach is very strategic and they're like switched on to the matchups, they could really put the spanner in the works for another team who hasn't considered like a, yeah, a bit of a different um, like we've seen. Like olivarez, like he beat luke griffiths, right, yeah, now they're on the same team now, but you could see him going in and beating like a bunch of guns, someone, yeah, you get some little dude that will just so determined and so fast down and, yeah, depends on how far into the tournament it is. So I mean, I would imagine, I mean, I would imagine the fear for the bigger guys is these little motherfuckers, someone like that, yeah, and it's just like the, the fucking hype beast energy of some of these smaller grapplers and that you can't. It's really like like the diego patos, fabrizio, andre, fucking olivares, like, even if you're a hundred kilo plus, yeah, you're like, fuck these guys, yeah, they, they could leg lock you, but they could also. Just, if you're a 100-kilo plus, yeah, you're like, fuck these guys, yeah, they could leg lock you, but they could also just hit you with a huge Uchimata. You didn't expect. And you're like, now I'm on the bottom and this guy's all over me. Yeah, right, and I mean we saw it when Tackett beat Big Dan. Right, maybe Big Dan didn't respect Tackett enough On the fucking TV show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, who's next? We saw Fabrizio Andre beat Victor Hugo. Oh, no, he just gave Victor Hugo a hard time, a real hard time In the absolute ADCC, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So here's the exciting things, friends, and this is what I, I I'm going to say you can look at these teams and just go. Um, I mean sorry, so let's talk about daisy fresh, because that's another team which is a great team. Dude, dante leon, max hansen, um, jacob crouch, um, who's the guy who fucking smashed your boy, big handsome, with his shoulder last adcc? Uh, michael pixley. Pixley's in there, fuck yeah, yeah, he's everyone's favorite champ after what he did to maringali. Yeah, I was like I want to see that can't dominate again. Yeah, and I mean he's, he's such a tough guy, you know, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1:And then, um, they've got um brandon reed, mr three times, who was a very successful wrestler, who's now in bjj, okay, and so brandon reed is a big problem. Like I don't know how many of the bigs will out wrestle him. Is he a big dude? Yeah, he's a big dude. And also, I mean, he's been in the adcc, but he's the funny thing is he'll sit down to guard and wrestle up and then he's just on. You like, the guy is amazing in terms of he's also like a pretty chill, funny guy.
Speaker 1:I met him randomly. He actually trained under um chewy jujitsu. Oh yeah, nice. So yeah, but he's, but he's a weapon. So he's been training at Daisy Fresh and, like the wrestling pedigree on him is unmatched. Fuck, dante is so fucking good. He is so good.
Speaker 1:I think he's still energized from that time. I couldn't recognize him as well Still remembers this day. I think he's going to be bringing that energy this time. He's just hating time. I still feel terrible about that, and so what will be interesting is to see who does New Wave get to replace Big Dan. That could change the game. That could even really elevate them massively, or maybe it weakens them, who knows? Right? Adele Fornerino 100K on the line CJI2.
Speaker 1:Man, we got to talk about this because this is the most amount of money that's ever been awarded to a women's division and there's only four women in there. Now let me just let's spell it out for folks if you're not aware. So it's a women's tournament in this CGI. Yeah, yeah, fuck, yeah, yeah. And so you know, obviously they did have Fionn last time.
Speaker 1:Fionn and Mackenzie and Mackenzie. And look, super Fight, fionn. Last time, fionn and McKenzie and McKenzie. And look, super fight, yeah, super fight. And I mean, look, it was cool, fionn in her full powers, right, like that's tough, but you got to say you do have some of the hardest women right here, because you've got Adele Fornerino, sarah Galvao, helena Craver, who's kind of the girl of the moment at the moment. Girl of the moment at the moment, she's a fucking monster, unstoppable.
Speaker 1:And then Anna Vieira, baby, who's um, uh, adolfo Vieira's younger sister. Does she train at Atos? Yeah, is she with Adele? Like they're crew? Well, adele beat her in the absolute Okay, at the ADCC. She went to the heel hook and got it pretty quick I think, hurt her knee in the essence of the takedown, but, yes, I mean, that's the thing, like adele does train with these girls. But they, they are champions in their own right.
Speaker 1:And we haven't seen the matchup between adele and helena and I think this is the. That's. For me, that's an exciting match. Helena's a real fucking boogie woman. She is. She undoes a lot of people, yeah.
Speaker 1:And she, I feel like, is she in her 20s yet? Maybe not, she might be 19. Like the amount of in her 20s yet Maybe not, she might be 19. Like the amount of winning she's done is pretty incredible at her age. And she's also just it's strange because it comes off almost like arrogance just how like blase she is about everyone because she just fucking beats and she has taken a loss.
Speaker 1:She took a loss at Polaris in the women's event, which was kind of like maybe she didn't take her opponent as serious enough, but I think that don't get me wrong. I believe Adele can win by submission, like, if you guys may, you probably remember the match between her and Fionn. It was a very close match, but basically Adele retired Fionn Fionn's like I love jujitsu more than anything, but I'm just going to take a break from competition right now is that she broke her foot? Yeah, right, like she had to do rehab on her ankle, yeah, so clearly, you know, adele impacted her very strongly there. Yeah, I mean adele, it's funny, right, because because helena has it's funny some kind of hype around her. But adele is like fucking goading it at the moment. Yeah, like she is crushing everybody and she also has the hype yes, I don't know what it is, maybe because Helena carries the Danaher mystique, yeah, and it's like, oh shit, she's the female Gordon Ryan, you know. Yeah, there's that essence to her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she's pretty big frame. She's a lot heavier than Adele. But then Ana Vieira is a big lady, big, strong lady, and so this is an is it more or less an open weight tournament, or is it? These are the four women they've put together for this. Have they got weight categories for it? No, no, no. So Adele is the lightest and I think it goes. Sarah Helena and then, um, ana Vieira in terms of weight categories.
Speaker 1:Is Adele on that fucking bulk or what? She's eating a lot. You know she's lifting. She's got all to her biceps and lateral delts. Her arms are ridiculous. She's got the best shoulders, bro, fucking gun show. Even when she's relaxed you're just like, wow, just fucking pipes. Arms are jacked. So, no, she's been lifting very consistently and so much to her credit.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be there and see it, and I think the good thing about it and this is where you've got to give respect to Craig Jones by putting this 100K on women's jiu-jitsu, that elevates the expectation and therefore the women are like, well, we want more money, and then this is subsequently going to have knock-on effects to the payment and the athlete culture for women's jujitsu worldwide, or we would hope so, and so I think that is going to be a real highlight of CJI too, and I fully expect that Adele will win, even though you know Helena is. She's there. So it's a fucking huge matchup, and I think that that actually will serve to really not only elevate women's jujitsu but really add excitement to the CJI too. It's fucking. It's going to be so good, bro, but the thing we're going to see and the thing I'll be reporting on to you live is these matchups. So even if you're watching Flow Grappling or you're on YouTube, jack will be cutting together matchups. So even if you're watching flow grappling or you're on YouTube, jack will be cutting together the footage. So literally the day of it'll be going out. So if you don't stay across it, you will get the behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:I tell you, what's going to clinch it for a lot of these cats is fucking big JT up in the stands, either cheering for them or cheering against them. That's right. Just some cunt just ragging the whole time. You're like this guy shut the fuck up, I'm distracted. Oh no, no, I got past it. Yeah, well, I'm actually going to be sitting a lot closer this time, nice. So, yeah, we'll be. I'm's going to be a huge event and I think that we may never see another event of this kind, with with what's going to go down. Brother, I'm excited for your reports. It's going to be good. Definitely tune in and stay tuned for the vlog.
