What We Learned From the 2026 North American Trials

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The ADCC Trials are back with the final ADCC North American Trials. We are starting to get to the end of the trials period and most of the qualifiers are now done. This is one of the last ones and the North American trials are one of the biggest. 

Results


-66kgs Gianni Grippo def Dominic Meija via RNC


-77 kgs Michael Sainz def Max Hansen via points


-88kgs Nathan Haddad def Ryan Aitkin via points


-99kgs Elder Cruz def Stephen Banta via points


+99kgs Nick Hartman def Francis Pana via Ankle lock


-55kgs Sheliah Lindsey def Valerie Hamilton via points


-65kgs Sarah Galvao def Jadeya Reber via RNC


+65kgs Paige Borras Clymer def Elizabeth Mitrovic via dec


 


How People Won


Here we had 37.5% of the matches ending in submission. This isn't a bad number, but it wasn't great either. I don't think it is particularly bad though considering the fact that these are only the finals matches. I would have liked to have done the 3rd place matches as well, but I couldn't find the brackets for this event easily, which was a bit annoying.

There were 2 chokes and 1 leg lock. I was a bit surprised that there weren't any arm submissions, but that does happen sometimes. The majority of wins came from points and there were 2 decisions as well. This is somewhat expected as people are usually more conservative in the finals.  
 



Stats



Overall

It was good to see Gianni Grippo make his return to ADCC. He has been working nogi for a while now and it is good to see him get some recognition. An even better example of someone who has been working hard, but getting overlooked is Nathan Haddad. Nathan was an extreme underdog, but ended up coming out on top and punching his ticket to ADCC. Sarah Galvao just continued her winning streak and she'll be at ADCC as well and might be one of the favorites for her division. 

This was a decent event overall. The finals had some boring matches, but it also had some really good ones. I think the "no points" period is really starting to backfire as most competitors aren't doing anything in that time period, so it just ends up being 3-4 min of collar ties, pushing or fake kneeslices. I hope they do something to address this in the future, but I'm not too hopeful. Another thing I'm worried about is the names at ADCC. I'm hoping they invite more big names to the event. Many of the larger names didn't compete in the trials, so each division has a number of big names not invited. I'd hate to see ADCC become a normal tournament instead of the premier event with the best grapplers from around the world. 

It was nice to see some new names mixed with some vets here and I'm hoping they will start doing invites now that the dust has cleared from most of the trials. ADCC is coming soon and I'm looking forward to watching how people will prepare and especially how things will look with this new landscape. Many of the top teams from the last ADCC are gone, so what will happen. Let's watch together and find out. 

Year To Date











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