THE ADCC FOUNDING AND THE RISE OF THE NO-GI CIRCUIT

The ADCC was conceived in 1998 by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates and a serious grappling student who had trained extensively with members of the Gracie family. The Sheikh's specific goal was to create an open-format world championship for no-gi submission grappling that would attract elite competitors from BJJ, wrestling, judo, sambo, and any other grappling discipline. The tournament's ruleset, designed to encourage submissions while preventing stalemate, included a unique three-minute opening period with no points awarded, followed by a points period with positional rewards, followed by a sudden-death-style overtime if necessary.

The first ADCC was held in Abu Dhabi in 1998 and was won by Mark Kerr — a wrestling-derived heavyweight rather than a traditional BJJ practitioner — confirming the tournament's aspiration to be an open-format event rather than a BJJ-exclusive showcase. By the mid-2000s the tournament had become a biennial event with weight classes and an absolute (open-weight) division, and the competitive roster had stabilized around BJJ-trained competitors who specialized in no-gi grappling. Royler Gracie won four featherweight titles between 1999 and 2003; Marcelo Garcia won four titles across two weight classes between 2003 and 2011; the Mendes brothers, André Galvão, and the modern competitive generation followed.

The ADCC's institutional consequences extend beyond its immediate competitive prestige. The tournament demonstrated that no-gi submission grappling could be a discipline distinct from gi BJJ — with its own techniques (more wrestling-influenced takedowns, more leg locks at higher belts), its own pedagogy (less collar-grip-dependent, more positional-control-focused), and its own competitive scene. This demonstration enabled the parallel growth of EBI (Eddie Bravo Invitational), Polaris, the Who's Number One series, the Craig Jones Invitational, and the broader no-gi submission-only ecosystem that defines the contemporary commercial grappling landscape.

The ADCC has also been the primary institutional venue through which the modern leg-lock revolution displayed itself. The 2015–2024 period of leg-lock dominance, culminating in Gordon Ryan's four absolute titles and the broader Danaher Death Squad / New Wave era, was substantially defined by ADCC competitive performances. The 2022 and 2024 ADCC tournaments produced the most consequential matches in the team rivalry between New Wave and Atos, and the competitive narrative of the modern sport is in large part the narrative of the ADCC absolute division across the last two decades.

As of 2026 the ADCC remains the most prestigious no-gi title in the world, with the 2024 event having confirmed Gordon Ryan's continued dominance and produced the most-watched submission grappling broadcast in the sport's history. The interaction between the IBJJF gi system and the ADCC no-gi system is the structural axis around which the modern sport organizes itself, with elite competitors increasingly forced to specialize in one or the other rather than chasing both formats at full intensity.