If you haven’t heard, there is a tournament circuit that is growing faster than any of the others on the market today: Grappling Industries. Run by David Aguzzi, Grappling Industries is now on two continents and three countries, and is about to undergo a major expansion.
For anyone who hasn’t participated in one of these tournaments before, the format for the points tournaments is a bit different from what you may be used to: it is a round robin tournament that places greater weight on submission wins than points wins. For example: if you have five people in your bracket, you will face the four other competitors even if you lose your first match. If you submit all of your opponents and the next best competitor doesn’t, you win the bracket. It’s a way to give people more opportunities to do what they are paid money to do: compete.
I had an opportunity to chat with tournament promoter and owner David Aguzzi to get a better look at some of these upcoming expansions and improvements.
Major cities are being added, such as Atlanta, Dallas, Boston Miami, DC, Vegas and five others that desperately need a boost such as the states of Tennessee, Colorado, and Ohio. This will help us be considered almost fully nationalized in the U.S minus Cali and a few minor states missing that will be added in the future once this batch has been made to make sense for us. We are in talks with all nine cities in trying to staff them and book venues for the dates we have sought in each.
As the tournament expands, the rule sets will continue to be revitalized to meet the market demands. A big part of what makes Grappling Industries special is its constant desire to give competitors better rule sets to compete under.
Certain tournaments will start to use a modified length of match EBI format in sub only format events of ours however even in changing rules at times, we will never move away from our round robin format that has made us so popular. We are also adding new rules in 2017 such as reaping and heel hooks in the gi for brown and black belts, or knee bars for purple belts. Many exciting things.
In case you missed it, Grappling Industries has been adding some amazing super fights to recent events. I was curious to see if David plans on continuing this trend.
G.I will continue to produce super fights but I was hired and given equity by investors to work on a massive show outside of G.I aimed at spectacle PPV events for BJJ. Can’t discuss more there than I have. G.I though will continue to put on as it has been lately the occasional blockbuster super fights that have been capturing the world’s attention.
As Grappling Industries continues to grow and improve, the one factor that seems to remain constant is David’s continued involvement in its development. I wanted to learn a bit more about the background and inner workings of the tournament: what makes it tick so efficiently.
It is very very very important for me to give praise to Marcos Flores of Florida who has now been named the USA Director of Tournaments for Grappling Industries and has been the general/sheriff of this nationalization expansion project. Great guy, one of the best in the entire business, and will help bring G.I and BJJ to a new level, hopefully to compete with NAGA and IBJJF straight up in 2017. Also, praise to Benjamin Hodgkinson who has assisted me in building G.I Australia into the biggest platform down under, something few could have ever imagined us doing together; he’s one of the best organizers and grinders of promoting tournaments I have seen in a while. And last but not least, Maura Ferreira who creates and consults on the registrations, schedules, and brackets and does a brilliant job at making all our jobs so easy on the day of the event, when I took over GI’s control at the top, she was the first person I brought on and I have never thought otherwise. Just want to praise this team will be taking this company to the promise land over the next 3 years!
To stay up to date on news about Grappling Industries check out their website at http://grapplingindustries.com/ or their facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GrapplingIndustries
