The Craig Jones Invitational 2 will be a BJJ co-promotion with Kazushi Sakuraba’s Quintet. Here are more details on CJI 2.
More details from the highly anticipated follow up to the Craig Jones Invitational (CJI) have been revealed. CJI 2 will not only switch to a team grappling format, but the event will actually be in partnership with the organization that popularized it.
As Craig Jones recently announced, CJI 2 will be a co-promotion with Kazushi Sakuraba’s Quintet organization. This would technically mark Quintet’s third event in the US, and first since 2019.
More details have also been revealed, with their second event again being held over two days and on the same venue as their inaugural show. CJI 2 will be on August 30-31, 2025, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
CJI 2 will host a team tournament, with Craig Jones earlier confirming that four of the eight teams have already been signed and finalized for the show. Team 10th Planet’s roster has already been reportedly decided, and the B-Team line up will likely go on without Nicky Ryan, but not much details on the other teams and Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) competitors have been revealed just yet.
Jones, who will again compete in his own event, also teased that CJI 2 will have “maybe the biggest super-fight in the history of the sport.”
There’s also a random easter egg on the poster, for those who know a bit of Japanese:
CJI 2 is announced as a co-promotion with Kazushi Sakuraba’s Quintet, and the random Japanese text in the poster is pretty hilarious.
It says “(Craig Jones) wa jigoku ni iku” or “Craig Jones is going to hell.” pic.twitter.com/33GwNVRVd5
— Anton Tabuena (@antontabuena) February 8, 2025
It’s interesting to note that the 2025 IBJJF World Master Championship will be held right before this event, on August 28-30. It will make for a big week of BJJ action, and likely help CJI 2 ticket sales too, as there will be a pretty massive contingent of jiu-jitsu competitors and practitioners gathered in Las Vegas that week.
Apart from details on CJI 2, Craig Jones also stated that he now owns the patent for the pit (or alley) they use. That fighting surface was originally created and patented by Karate Combat. The original patent includes a sports surface with walls angled at 15 degrees or more.
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