No Gi Grappling's Newest Ruleset

UFC FPI 5 Overview

Do you know what professional no gi grappling is? I'm a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and I don't. Sure we can describe it, but can we actually point people to a specific organization and set of rules that defines professional grappling like the IBJJF does for gi Brazilian jiu-jitsu?

We know no gi grappling’s biggest stage. It's the hybrid submission wrestling tournament, ADCC World Championships.

We've seen where the closest thing to pure no gi jiu jitsu happens. That occurs in FloGrappling’s Who’s Number One and the Eddie Bravo Invitational.

As of this Sunday, another major professional no gi promotion has introduced a new set of rules and the results were interesting.

The UFC’s fifth Fight Pass Invitational (FPI) took place this Sunday. Generally, it's been a mix of former MMA stars, active professional grapplers, and a hodgepodge of rules. In addition to standard tournaments, FPI has tried Quintet-like tournaments, matches that use EBI rules, and even hybrid grappling matches conducted over a few rounds. The lack of continuity was confusing at best.

FPI 5 introduced a new rule set that actually seems to incentivize action until time runs out. The matches have a 10-minute submission only period followed by a 5-minute ADCC scoring overtime if no one is submitted in regulation. Even though athletes can’t score in regulation, they can accrue negative points during regulation and carry those points into overtime. That means that you can start overtime down several negative points with a need to act fast. That’s exactly what happened with the two major rematches we saw on UFC FPI 5.

Big Dan Manasoiu vs Victor Hugo II

Towards the end of the night, 6 Blades Heavyweight Star, Victor Hugo, rematched rising New Wave competitor “Big” Dan Manasoiu. Their first meeting took place in the first round of the ADCC world championships with the deciding score coming at the end of the action.

The rematch was won with a sequence that looked eerily similar.

In the rematch Manasoiu made Hugo work for it more, but both matches showed Hugo using a body lock to control the action as he wrestled up. Manasoiu and a few other New Wave competitors give the body lock up when wrestling to counter with uchi matas and other throws. As no-gi grappling’s wrestling improves, we can expect this counter to work less and less.

Single legs are among the most common techniques we see in wrestling. This begs the question, then, why don’t wrestlers get hit with as many uchi matas and similar counter throws like Brazilian jiu-jitsu players do?

Jiu-jitsu athletes chase body locks as an to single legs and wrestling up because of how dominant back mount is in the sport. This can leave people over extended with their hips far out, making them easier to counter with throws. So, as the wrestling in no-gi grappling improves and athletes get fully developed single-leg games that aren’t over-reliant on chasing the body lock, these counters could become less frequent.

Or maybe we'll just get giants launching people across the mats forever. Both sound interesting and I'm here for either outcome.

The headliner gave us another giant rematch between Nicholas Meregali and Felipe Pena.

Nicholas Meregali vs Felipe Pena II

Nicholas Meregali and Felipe Pena last squared off five years ago in the Absolute Division at the IBJJF World Championships. Meregali took Pena out with an arm-in Ezekiel choke and would go on to make it to the podium in his weight class and the absolute division that year. Pena wound up taking first in his weight division.

Like Victor Hugo and Dan Manasoiu’s rematch, Meregali and Pena’s no-gi rematch had another finish that you could consider relatively familiar.

Training with New Wave has been impactful on Meregali’s game to say the least. Not only has the no gi focus pushed him to the podium of the ADCC World Championships, but he’s attacking the back like the rest of their team does. During this match you could literally hear Gordon Ryan call out straight jacket instructions before Meregali executed them perfectly.

Fight Pass Invitational 5’s ending leaves us with a few questions, and what looks like some obvious match-ups in the making.

Fight Pass Invitational’s Future

After Victor Hugo won his match, he said he wanted to go through all of New Wave and rematch Gordon Ryan. A rematch with Nicholas Meregali makes sense for both of them.

Meregali and Hugo have squared off in the gi five times with Meregali taking four of them. However, they've never competed no-gi, and all of the matches have been tight. Neither has been submitted, and the total points spread across all of the matches is only four and two advantages in favor of Meregali. That's as tight of a rivalry as you'll get.

Hugo is also creating an interesting subplot in the professional grappling world by using his platform to endorse competing without taking performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). This stands in stark contrast to Meregali’s stablemates’ stance on PEDs. The match-up and subplot could sell a potential next event well.

As for FPI overall, the ruleset was a bit confusing for some of the competitors, but it makes them a legitimately novel and interesting event. Now they need to settle on something and run with it.

Leading up to FPI 5, Fight Pass Invitational didn’t even have a website, let alone a dedicated media package, content, or anything other than some scattered social posts given to the athletes so they could sell the event. That’s not going to lead to a stable product that generates revenue. This leaves us with one giant question from the event. Are you in the business of promoting professional grappling or not?

FPI’s parent company certainly has the budget and presence to make major waves in the sport, but they need to settle on an overall strategy for the brand they’re building, let alone the rules.

The bright side is, it’s never been a better time to be a professional grappler. FPI joins Polaris, EBI, WNO, ADCC, and other promotions that are regularly putting real money into grapplers’ pockets.

I don’t know how long Fight Pass will continue to experiment with grappling events. We’ll have the match-ups covered for as long as they continue to make them though.