The July 17th Metamoris card is changing every day for the past few weeks.

Latest METAMORIS 7 UPDATE: Tim Spriggs is injured, Garry Tonon is now signed to face Ralek Gracie on July 17th at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles, CA.

This comes as a surprise as Tonon has often publicly criticised Metamoris and Ralek Gracie calling them a ‘Ponzie scheme’. Last year word got out that the people behind Metamoris were trying to have the monopoly of the PPV grappling events by asking grappling athletes to sign exclusive contracts. The athletes would only be allowed to compete in Metamoris but not with rival invitational such as Polaris, Copa Podio, or EBI. The exception would be for IBJJF and ADCC events.

Eddie Bravo Invitational (EBI) and Polaris Pro Invitational are two other major invite only elite tournaments, and they have (according to sources close to their events) had their athletes approached by Metamoris in efforts to sign them to exclusive contracts. Garry Tonon was asked to sign an exclusive contract with Metamoris, which he refused.

Ralek Gracie has a serious grappling pedigree. He is a 1rst degree BJJ black belt. As the son of Rorion Gracie, he is a member of the Gracie family, and the nephew of Legends of MMA Hall of Famer Rickson Gracie and UFC Hall of Famer Royce Gracie. He was awarded his black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu by his grandfather Hélio Gracie. He is also the founder of Metamoris.

Ralek made his MMA debut at the age of 21 at K-1 Hero’s – Middleweight Tournament Opening Round on July 16, 2007 against Katsuyori Shibata whom he defeated by armbar-submission after 3:05 of the first round. His next fight was at Dream 4 – Middleweight Grand Prix 2008 Quarter finalswhere he faced Alavutdin Gadzhiyev after Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipović had to pull out of the originally scheduled match with Ralek due to injury. Ralek defeated Gadzhiyev by armbar after 3:02 of round 1. On May 29, 2010, Ralek defeated Kazushi Sakuraba by unanimous decision at Dream 14.

Rakek Gracie will come into this match much heavier at around 19o-200lbs whilst Tonon walks around 175 lbs.

Past Metamoris changes:

The planned Metamoris 7 card is in peril. The headliner is no more.

After Marcus Buchecha and Roger Gracie decided to pull out of the rematch of their Metamoris 1 superfight, which was the headliner of Metamoris 7, news has emerged that Yuri Simoes is also calling quits.

Simoes was supposed to face Matheus Diniz, but decided to pull out in order to focus on another grappling superfight with Dean Lister in the upcoming Fight To Win 8.

Simoes told FloGrappling:

I will not be competing at Metamoris. I want to apologize to my opponent Matheus Diniz, and wish him good luck next week at Worlds.

Last week, retired MMA fighter and BJJ black belt Renato ‘Babalu’ Sobral told MMA Fighting that he hasn’t been paid yet for his Metamoris 6 bout vs Chael Sonnen, more than one year later. He joins the rising number of Metamoris competitors to have publicly criticised the organisation due to non payment: AJ Agazarm, Joe Lauzon, Marcel Goncalves…

Aj Agazarm shared his thoughts on social media on the demise of the Metamoris organisation following the recent fiasco as well as their past problems.

The professional grappling promotion, Metamoris, and most notably its founder Ralek Gracie has been under fire for the past few months for various reasons.

Main ones:

-Scheduling events on the same weekend as EBI and the same day as Copa Podio
-Disrespecting Female Competitors
-Untrustworthy Online Site and Automatic Renewals
-Not paying Metamoris Challenger/Underground Competitors, and staff (Including Agazarm who is owed 2,000$ since August 2015).

It is now unsure if the event is still set for July 17th at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles. Metamoris was hoping for the event  to be able to repay its debts and keep the company affloat.

Remaining full Card:

RALEK vs GARRY TONON
GABRIEL GONZAGA vs. SATOSHI ISHI (Olympic Gold Medalist in Judo).
DILON DANNIS vs. GILBERT “DURINHO” BURNS
SECRET MATCH.