A meeting at the 2011 ADCC world event. Photo: GRACIEMAG Archive
The ADCC is a prestigious event that happens only every other year. The participants earn their place through various ways but nonetheless are chosen through processes that deem the best in their category.
The trials for the 2013 event which will take place October 19-20 in Beijing, China were spread out around the world. There were tournaments in Europe, North America, Brazil, Asia, and the Pacific that were all given travel packages and invites to hand out along with the gold medals.
The existing champion of each division earns an automatic invite for the next event and many invitations are sent out for those who the committee deems a top contender. But how do they decide? Does the support from the public help convince them of who should be invited? Does social media have any bearing on the choice of who goes to Beijing?
A member of the ADCC committee spoke to GRACIEMAG about their complicated review process and gave us a list of ways a competitor might find their way to an invitation.
The selection criteria of inviting the competitors is mostly focused on:
- Fighters that have chances to reach the finals (according to skills and experience).
- Fighters that have won a previous ADCC World event.
- Fighters that won other grappling and submission fighting world famous events and are on top of their game.
- Teammates that have already in the past fixed fights or have the potential of fixing fights [or creating gentlemen agreements] which in ADCC is forbidden and is punished with disqualification.
- Famous MMA fighters that can show an amazing skill in the ADCC World event.
- Fighters from different grappling sports like (Judo, Sambo, Wrestling etc.)
- Fighters from different nationalities to keep the wide variety of nations competing, which helps the developing of the sport around the globe.
Plus many other important reasons that ADCC highly considers to retain the quality of the event.
So now that you have a better understanding of what the selection committee is looking for, who do you think is missing from the roster so far?
