Over the weekend, a ragtag bunch of misfits descended on Krakow to wrench each other’s knee ligaments in a gruelling tournament for a relatively small cash prize and bragging rights. But those bragging rights are everything because, while it is still the Wild West, Abu Dhabi Combat Club is the most prestigious submission grappling tournament in the world.

Expectations were low because of several big name absences due to injuries and UFC BJJ contracts, and it being the first ADCC since the retirement of Gordon Ryan. It is no secret that the top grapplers in the world resent having to win ADCC Trials, for no pay, and then compete against the best grapplers in the world at the ADCC World Championship, again for free. I have seen it said that ADCC is where you make your name, and then it is on to superfights and seminars. But this year’s breakout stars seem as talented as those in any previous crop.

With five men’s divisions, three women’s divisions, the absolute tournament, and a super fight (that no one watches anyway), there is obviously too much to cover here. Rather than a comprehensive assessment, I want to focus on a few of the big storylines and—from a technical perspective—the stuff that I intend to steal.

Schuardt’s Run

The grappling world is strange because you can see a humble Youtube short creator turn up to the biggest tournament in the world and become the big story. I only knew Daniel Schuardt as “Precision MMA”, and had spotted him in some of Lachlan Giles’ rolling footage, so I was knocked sideways by his run in the -99Kg division. Schuardt submitted the highly regarded Michael Pixley and Eoghan O’Flannagan back-to-back, lost in the final seconds against tournament favourite Kaynan Duarte, and took the bronze by leg locking the seemingly un-leg-lockable Achilles Rocha.

The Mussolini lock

The move that stole the show was Schuardt’s Mussolini lock. So-called because the grip that Schuardt uses involves crossing his arms in a style similar to the theatrical, pouty pose that the Italian fascist made his trademark. The Mussolini lock takes a place alongside the recently popularized Woj lock as an attack from the 50/50 leg entanglement that isn’t a heel hook. The Woj lock—made famous by Chris Wojik—involves overwrapping the leg and then slipping the opponent’s heel free in the style of an Aoki lock. Schuardt’s Mussolini lock keeps the foot deeper in the armpit, which likely means less of a clean attack on the ankle and a bit more horsepower is needed, but it also means that the attack is much more accessible without the work of slipping that heel out.

Schuardt’s entry against Pixley was an unusual look. Using a low knee shield with the feet crossed—sometimes called a hip clamp—Schuardt turned away from Pixley and got to his hands, before walking backwards and knocking Pixley over. Alex Ecklin popularized this as the G-roll, but Caio Terra had success with the same technique in competition and used it to roll through his own legs on back takes.

The meme move stole all the attention for Schuardt’s performances were brilliant all around shows of grappling and they give us a chance to discuss a couple of other facets of modern no gi. For about two weeks, while everyone in your gym is trying it, the Mussolini lock will see unbeatable, and then people will adjust, escapes will become better known, and it will fall into place as just another technique. The last one was the Woj lock, and a little before that it was the Z-lock.

The Z lock involves reaping one of the opponent’s legs with your legs, in the style of an outside heel hook, while collecting their other leg with your arms, and then pushing the reaped leg up behind them until they tap or their knee ligaments snap.

The Z-lock seemed like such a dead to rights submission because both of the opponent’s legs are controlled and his movement options are limited. Schuardt demonstrated how fast the grappling world adjusts to new ideas by nullifying and escaping the Z-lock against Eoghan O’Flannagan. Keeping the hip of the reaped leg on the mat, he denied O’Flannagan the Z-lock finish, and even though O’Flannagan was controlling both legs, he had no meaningful attacks on the leg that was only being controlled with his arms.

Schuardt slipped his leg free and began scrambling through to end up on top.

To stay with leg spaghetti, Schuardt’s onslaught against Achilles Rocha’s leg was beautiful as he repeatedly raised his hips to line up a kneebar on the standing Rocha, before spinning through to attempt the heel hook again. The way he finally got Rocha was with a lateral kneebar from the saddle.

The problem with the saddle and the inside heel hook is that the opponent can turn their toes in, put their knee on the mat, and begin turning their whole body away to perform a number of different variations of a running man escape. By grabbing the foot on the inside of the base of the big toe and pulling it to his chest, the man hunting the submission can kill the spin. Schuardt hipped in and you can see that Rocha’s knee goes one way and his foot turns the other, creating some horrible damage.

Schuardt’s story was interrupted by Kaynan Duarte, the returning champion and a man who submitted seven opponents at the last ADCC. ADCC has a lot of rules, many of which are only occasionally enforced—Vagner Rocha and his now giant son have made careers from betting on the referees doing nothing. The one rule that does make ADCC unique is that going to the turtle fast enough nullifies any points scored on you. The opponent has to take you down and keep you down, or pass your guard and keep you flat, there are no half-measures. Each time Duarte passed Schuardt’s formidable guard, Schuardt went berserk to get to his knees. Eventually, as the final minute ran down, Schuardt managed to grapevine Duarte’s trailing leg and began reaching inside Duarte’s far leg to create a half guard sweep without having the underhook.

With seconds left in the bout, Duarte recognised that by stepping over Duarte’s leg, Schuardt had block his own hip and he could not turn with the cross face. Duarte grabbed a neck crank and Schuardt had no way to spin with it, forcing the tap. It should be noted that neck cranks are another element that make ADCC unique, as they are forbidden in most other high profile competitions.  

Chen’s Passing

For a break from leg spaghetti, let us consider Jozef Chen’s ADCC run. There are a lot of guard players in ADCC, and a lot of top players, but not an awful lot of effective guard passers. Chen’s career has been one of re-evaluating techniques that have fallen out of favour or been deemed ineffective without the gi, most notably the high tripod pass—a Roger Gracie favourite in the gi—and the over under pass. Both of those were on display in Chen’s matches, but one look that struck me was Chen’s use of the cross grip pass. This is quite common in the gi, but it never found much purchase on the no gi scene. In fact, seeing Chen do it immediately conjured the image of Leo Vieira attempting to use this against Rafa Mendes to zero success back in 2009.

Chen would get a slight outside angle on the opponent in one of many ways, then pass it off to his cross hand and work himself up their body, almost facing backwards. Often, as they were attempting to high leg back to guard, he would be able to punch his other arm through their leg and run around to the other side with what is called a cross underpass. The cross underpass is a wonderfully powerful technique, but it almost always has to be viewed as a secondary attack, a follow up off an original pass attempt that draws the high leg from the opponent.

This brings us to one of the major themes from ADCC 2026: leg dexterity. Being a big, strong, durable athlete is great, but leg dexterity seems to be separating the men from the boys. I use “dexterity” and not “flexibility” because control in the extreme range of motion is the crucial aspect. Pawel Jaworski won the -88Kg tournament entirely from his guard, and he did so with his brilliant false reap. The false reap involves wrapping the opponent’s leg with your arm, but getting your own leg over the top of it. Here’s a quick example:

To a normal person the false reap is a powerful technique but horribly telegraphed and it has to be entered under specific circumstances. Here is Cole Abate grabbing the opponent’s leg and then pulling his own heel up past his shoulder to throw the leg over the top.

Pavel Jaworski can bring the inside of his ankle up to his collar bone, under his own control, any time he wants. That makes an enormous difference in just how accessible the false reap set up is. The extreme example of this was the combination he was using of K-guard to false reap. Jaworski himself says he got the inspiration from Craig Jones’ use of this combination against Nicholas Meregali in 2022, but Jones was reacting to Meragali dropping his knee in the middle to prevent the K-guard attack.

Jaworski begins attacking the K-guard, releases his grip on the leg, and grips under his back, on the inside of the opponent’s other leg.

Pawel’s Run

-          K guard to False Reap

-          Classico False Reap

Tajik vs Headquarters