The Year in Nogi Grappling 2024 Pt.1

Not only the greatest match of the year, perhaps the greatest of all time.

2024 has come and gone, so let's take a look at what went down and some of the trends. This will be split into 2 parts with some of the stats here and the rest(The ones with successes and failures) in the next part. In this one I'll go over the finishes and the total submission stats as well as the action stats. 2024 was a big year for grappling with the expected ADCC 2024 tournament, but we also got the surprise CJI tournament. On top of those AIGA stepped things up and offered up a $1 million dollar price, while PGF put on 2 events with $100K prizes. Professional grappling seems to be turning a corner and more and more people are able to make a living doing this, which is great.

2024 was a great year for grappling and lets hope that continues into 2025. First things first, lets talk about the finishes from this year.

How People Won

This year I couldn't cover every single professional nogi match, but I covered 725 of them, so let's see how they went. 45.4% of matches this year ended in submission. Honestly this is a really good percentage and I think it shows that there has been a shift in athletes attitudes. Years ago it seemed like people were only concerned with winning, but now there are more and more people that want to put on a show and submit people. However other years have been better and it didn't reach the same percentage of finishes as last year, but a 45% submission percentage is still impressive. We can look at a comparison to other years here.

I'll get to trends down below, but I thought I'd show something here. I think some people want to know if leglocks are increasing or decreasing. For the most part they have stayed the same, percentage-wise. There has been an increase in the last 4 years, with a small dip this year. Chokes have stayed pretty much the same over this time period, while armlocks seem to have decreased and then stayed at a low level.

Action

Now let's get into the action from this year. I actually reworked things in the middle of the year and added a watchability stat to better compare event. I'll talk about how I come up with these numbers briefly before I move on. The "Action" score is all techniques/positions landed and attempted added together. Then I divide it into a 5 min interval, so all the different events can be compared. Basically it shows the average amount of action in a 5 min period. The "Watchability" is the same, but it gives a 150% bonus to matches ending in a submission and the score is also raised depending on the "Success/Attempt" ratio. Now that we have that out of the way, let's look at some of the events this year.

PGF7 came out on top with the action score and watchability score. Pit Submission series 8 was very close to it and EBI 22 wasn't far behind. Although those shows had good names on them, they didn't have the top athletes that some of the other shows did. However I'd argue that these events were more entertaining.

The average for the year was 10.14 for the Action Score and 16.45 for watchability. Generally the larger the gap between the action and the watchability means that there are more quick matches with finishes. Now if we look at the lowest rated events, we see surprisingly ADCC 2024 came out on top or actually bottom when it comes to action. IMO this is because of the long match times and the 5 min no point period, which many people use to stall. When it comes to watchability, Polaris 30 was the lowest. This event didn't have any finishes, which happens sometimes, but when you have only 6 matches for your main event something like this can happen.

Submissions

Let's take a look at the submissions for this year now. At the top we have the RNC, which seems to always come out at number 1. It was followed by the inside heelhook, which was also number 2 last year. I'll go over the attempts in the next article, but for now let's take a look at the top 10 most common subs in 2024.

RNC
Inside Heelhook
Armbar
Outside Heelhook
Ankle Lock
Guillotine
Kneebar
Triangle
Arm Triangle
Aoki Lock

Those are the top 10 for this year, but I'll go over the highest percentage subs in the next article. If you want to see the full list of submission, check out the picture below.

This has to be the sub of the year

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Trends

Over the last few years things have gradually changed in regards to the submissions used. We are seeing more and more variety in leglocks and although the inside heelhook is still king, there is a wider variety of lower body techniques being used. People seem to be finding the utility of the other submissions and adding them to their game instead of the laser focus on inside heelhooks we saw about 3-5 years ago.

The biggest example of this trend is the ankle lock. I remember that this used to be known as a garbage teir sub that was only a pain move for meatheads and nobody at the highest level would tap to it. People said when money was on the line, people would let their ankle break and they'd never tap to it. The ankle lock got 25 finishes this year. That is more than the guillotine, arm triangle, triangle, kimura, etc. If Matheus Diniz will tap to someone smaller than him in a tournament for $1 million, it must be a legit sub. It seems many pros feel the same way and we are seeing it slowly get more and more finishes. In 2022 it was the 7th most common submission. In 2023 & 2024 it was 5th. It looks like last year wasn't a fluke and the ankle lock is here to stay.

The ankle locks cousin, the Aoki lock made an appearance on the top 10 list this year, kicking off the darce and the kimura. The young phenom Jett Thomson has showed how devastating they can be while going on a spree in the PGF this year. Chris Wojcik has also used them to great effect and showed they can be as effective as heelhook, while sometimes being easier to setup. I think more people are getting on the Aoki lock train and I wouldn't be surprised to see an increase of them next year.

Pushing the pace seems to be a bit more popular, which I love. There are of course matches that are like watching paint dry :::cough:::: Izaak Mitchell vs Pedro Marinho. However there seem to be more people willing to actually put it all on the line in order the create an interesting match. The Ruotolos have been doing this for a few years, but Mica Galvao and the Tackett brothers are also doing this and creating great matches that you can enjoy, even with your friends. Years ago I remember event coordinators and fans complaining about athletes being too safe and ruining grappling as a sport with their conservative play style. I'm happy that many of the younger atheletes heard that and adjusted their games. I hope they'll be compensated monetarily for this because they really are pushing the sport forward by risking their records and legacy to make things more exciting for fan.

I'll get into the other trends in the next article.

Story Of The Year

The defining moment of this year wasn't a battle on the mats, but instead a battle of philosophy and business acumen. This all started at the beginning of the year when ADCC announced they were going to move to a bigger better venue. At the time I remember that there wasn't too much fanfare about it in the community and even at that time some fans said they would be better of giving more money to the athletes instead of spending it on production. Craig Jones seemed to agree with this and due to the low prize money, dropped out of ADCC and ranted about it publicly. The promoter Mo Jassim countered that the production was more important for getting more viewers and growing the sport. At the time there was really no way of proving who was right. During all of this one of the organizers of ADCC basically said "If think you can do better, get $2 million and do it yourself". Jones seemed to take this as a challenge and did just that. Over the next few months ADCC folded on many of the things they initially refused to do such as increasing women's pay and paying show money. The big day came and you can watch my video to see my comparison of the events. Needless to say, CJI changed the grappling landscape and proved it is possible to do things another way.

Improving Future Events

I've been watching and doing stats for a few years now and I've noticed some things. At the end of the day the overall excitement is sometimes just luck. The best looking matches on paper sometimes don't pan out. However I think there are certain things that can be done to improve events going forward.

One thing we found is that this pit might be the best place to have a grappling match. After CJI, many people online were saying they couldn't watch grappling anymore without the pit. I certainly wouldn't go that far, but the pit completely solved the problem of going off the mat and helped to push the action in CJI and the Pit Submission Series. I believe Karate Combat owns the patent/trademark to the pit, so we might not see it as much as we'd like, but I hope Karate Combat licenses it out, so other pro events can use it as well.

Stalling calls need to be used more and the penalties need to be stiff enough that the athletes fear them. For a long time submission grappling has either had no stalling calls or very lax rules regarding them. This often makes for boring matches and hurts the watchability of the event. The PGF, AIGA and FPI seem to have a good ruleset for stalling that keeps the action moving. PGF 6 switched things in the beginning of their season after a bad day and there was a big improvement. I'd encourage, EBI, WNO, CJI, ADCC, IBJJF, PSS and Polaris(I think they might have already changed their rules) to look over their rules and make improvements that will promote more action.

Most events need to fix their rulesets. I'll go over each event individually here. EBI needs to use their "Mollywop" rule and skip the OT if one person was clearly losing during the regular period. EBI OT can be exciting in the finals, but the novelty wears off when it is used to determine every other match. Too many people try to stall their way into OT. WNO & Polaris need penalties that do something. Both events had matches that were terrible and could have been avoided with a proper stalling penalty system. FPI and ADCC need to shorten or get rid of their "no points period". Many people just stall during this time and even the people who are working will just stop during the last min, so they don't waste energy before points start. AIGA also has this problem, but they are doing a better job since takedowns still score during this time and the time is shorter. ADCC needs to get rid of their turtling rule too. Nobody wants to see matches go for 15min because one person keeps flipping to their stomach after a takedown. Just give the 2 points and move to the next match. PGF would be better spread over a longer time, but I guess that is just a logistics issue. CJI needs to be more clear on their guard pulling rule. At the start they stopped people from doing it and then later on it seemed to be allowed. The IBJJF needs to be stricter about their out of bounds rules. People sit near the edge and just go out whenever they're in danger. If someone's foot goes outside of the yellow area while avoiding a legit technique, give their opponent 2 points. They need to fix the rules around the body triangle as well.

Finally, to improve events, the rooster selection might be one of the most important decisions an event can make. The Ruotolos, the Tacketts, Mica Galvao, etc almost always deliver and improve your show. I won't name names, but there are some people who are the opposite. If you want to use someone who is a big name, like an MMA fighter, try to balance things out with someone you know will deliver a good performance. When you have too many people that are hot and cold when it comes to action, you're risking your event being disaster. More importantly, stop booking tons of heavy weight matches. The CJI under 80kgs division was great and I don't think there were any terrible matches. All the bad matches came from the over 80kgs division. I know people think they want to see a HW GP, but they'll regret it when they watch it. 1-2 matches max per card is enough.

Overall

2024 was not only great year for grappling, a great year for athletes. The prize money has gone up and there are more shows than ever. Ryan Aitkin was a name I was barely familiar with at the start of this year, but he's made enough to live off of this year just from pro grappling. Nicky Rod and Kade Ruotolo both became millionaires and Mikey Musumeci became the first grappler to be signed the Fight Pass Invitational. Over the last few years the athletes have worked to create better matches and now it seems there work is being noticed.

I'm hopeful that 2025 will be even better. CJI 2 is coming and it will be a team based event. FPI has announced 6 events for the year. On top of that AIGA will be crowning a winning team and giving away a $1 million prize. Things are looking bright in the world or grappling.

You can read part 2 here. Check previous years below.