UFC BJJ has spent the better part of two years building its identity around no-gi grappling. Every professional card, every title fight, every athlete signed to the promotion has competed in submission grappling without a kimono in sight.
So when registration closed for the promotion’s first Open, set for August 22-23 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the results caught almost everyone off guard: 71 percent of the competition will be contested in the gi.
The numbers come straight from the event’s registration export, a 465-page document where gi divisions fill the first 338 pages. No-gi competition doesn’t even begin until the file is two-thirds finished.
UFC BJJ had projected somewhere between 750 and 1,000 competitors for its first attempt at an open tournament under a brand-new format. When registration closed on August 12, the final tally came in well past that ceiling: 1,344 unique athletes registered, generating 1,938 total approved entries across all divisions. Of those athletes, 594 signed up for both gi and no-gi.
That last figure is worth sitting with. It means 44 percent of the field is competing in both formats over the same weekend, which complicates any simple reading of the numbers. This isn’t a field made up entirely of gi purists who skipped no-gi altogether — a large chunk of the athletes clearly train and compete in both. But even accounting for that overlap, gi divisions pulled in roughly two and a half times the entries that no-gi did, leaving the gi-only majority substantial on its own.
The disconnect is notable given how UFC BJJ has positioned itself. The promotion’s professional roster competes exclusively in no-gi. Its ruleset is built to reward finishes. Its entire brand identity leans into being the version of jiu-jitsu furthest removed from a traditional tournament setting. Then the promotion opened its doors to the general competitive public, and the public showed up wanting to compete in a gi.
That gap suggests something about the difference between what UFC BJJ has been marketing and what grassroots competitors are actually looking for. The people who signed up weren’t, for the most part, elite no-gi specialists chasing a path to the professional roster. They were everyday competitors who train in the gi and wanted a chance to do it under the UFC name.
Format split aside, the more striking detail in the registration data is who’s actually competing. Scrolling through the export, the first thing that stands out is how many of the entrants are children. The document opens with Peewee boys’ gi divisions, followed by page after page of Youth 1, Youth 2, and Youth 3 brackets, most holding somewhere between five and ten competitors each. Adult divisions don’t appear until well into the file. Based on how the brackets are structured, youth competitors make up well over half of the total field.
That changes what this event really is. Rather than a proving ground for adults testing out a new professional ruleset, the first UFC BJJ Open looks more like a major youth tournament that happens to carry UFC branding. That distinction may end up mattering more than the headline registration numbers. By putting its logo in front of such a large population of young competitors and their families, UFC BJJ is reaching kids at the exact age when they form their sense of what competitive jiu-jitsu looks like. IBJJF has held that territory largely uncontested for three decades. This is the first real sign of competition for it.
A freelance journalist with more than seven years of experience covering a wide range of topics, with a focus on delivering accurate, engaging, and well-researched reporting. He studied at the University of Birmingham, where he developed a strong foundation in journalism and communications. Martin is a 10th Planet BJJ brown belt and has been training for approximately 10 years and a keen follower of submission grappling.
