2025 has been a banner year for Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), as the sport rapidly grows and more opportunities are available for athletes in the professional grappling scene. We’re going over some of the best performances and top milestones of the year, as we unveil the winners of the 2025 BJJ Awards here at MMA Mania.
Following up on our Submission of the Year award, our second category tackles the best grappling events of 2025.
Honorable Mention: Polaris 34 and Squads Finals
The Polaris Squads events throughout the year were routinely were some of the most fun cards of 2025, and the UK-based BJJ promotion capped off this team tournament in November. The stacked Team Europe roster absolutely dominated the finals, with Jozef Chen and Eoghan O’Flanagan each getting three straight wins at Polaris 34.
That wasn’t even the best performance of the event though.
That distinction goes to Mateusz Szczecinski, who had a total of eight victories, including five straight wins to pretty much wipe out the entire Team Asia & Oceania squad by himself.
That Polaris 34 card also saw top pound-for-pound stars Helena Crevar and Ffion Davies win their respective title bouts. It was a really fun card overall, and definitely worth catching if you haven’t seen it yet.
3. WNO 27: Duarte vs. Rodriguez
Who’s Number One? (WNO) routinely puts on really good shows, but WNO 27 back in April was particularly great.
It had an incredibly stacked card that delivered with memorable submissions. Andrew Tackett heel hooked Fabyury Khrysthyan in his final bout before moving to the UFC BJJ and becoming their champion. Helena Crevar choked out (Submission of the Year winner) Elisabeth Clay to become the youngest WNO champ. Owen Jones choked out Julian Espinosa in a battle between highly entertaining grapplers. BJJ legend Xande Ribeiro returned to get a kimura finish, and even the prelims had B-Team’s Chris Wojcik adding another footlook to his resume.
And these don’t even include the top two contests.
The headliner was among the most highly anticipated match up of 2025, with CJI champ Nick Rodriguez beating ADCC double champ Kaynan Duarte. The co-main, on the other hand, had who would be the future WNO champ Luke Griffith taking a decision over Victor Hugo in one of the best back and forth match ups in the year.
WNO 27 has a good case for being the best card of the year in a vacuum, but there were two others events that had a larger impact in the sport as a whole.
2. UFC BJJ 1
The UFC had been hosting grappling events in the last couple of years through the UFC Fight Pass Invitational (UFC FPI), but UFC BJJ 1 marked a bigger investment and far more serious entry into the sport. The MMA world leader took some key ideas from CJI’s widely successful 2024 event, then launched a complete rebrand of their grappling promotion.
Their efforts to try and completely “take over” the professional jiu-jitsu scene kicked off in June, with UFC BJJ 1. This card capped off a TUF-style grappling reality show to crown three inaugural champions, and it also delivered with entertainment as it had seven submissions in eight bouts. More importantly, their first event thrusted both Mikey Musumeci and Andrew Tackett as UFC BJJ’s key stars and faces of the promotion.
UFC BJJ went on to produce four events in 2025, but the milestone card gets the second spot on this list.
1. Event of the Year: CJI 2
It may not have reached the heights of CJI 1, but their sophomore event was still a tier above all the other grappling events this year in several factors.
Craig Jones vs. Chael Sonnen was expectedly hilarious, but the rest of the matches produced some elite level grappling — and a lot of drama. The “highest ever paying women’s bracket” showed that teenagers like Helena Crevar and Sarah Galvao were no longer just “prospects” as they both beat reigning ADCC champions. Nick Rodriguez also continued his lucrative CJI streak, as his clutch performance led to B-Team winning $1 million over their bitter rivals and former teammates in New Wave.
CJI 2 had the most top level talent out of any pro event, and it also brought in a much wider audience and new eyeballs to watch jiu-jitsu. More importantly, they again paid the most money to the athletes. With its impact to the grapplers and the sport in general, CJI 2 easily wins the award for 2025 BJJ Event of the Year.
The finals from the two lucrative tournaments are below:
MMA Mania’s 2025 BJJ Awards:
- Best Submissions
- Best Events
