John Danaher has started lifting the curtain on New Wave Jiu-Jitsu’s roster for the upcoming Craig Jones Invitational 2 (CJI 2).

With several months still to go until the tournament, most of the slots across all teams remain unfilled – but New Wave now joins Misfits Australasia as the only two squads with publicly confirmed lineups.

CJI 2 features five weight divisions that mirror the ADCC categories, meaning each team must select one athlete per division.
For New Wave, the heavyweight decisions were made easier by some unfortunate setbacks.

Here is what Danaher had to say in an interview with FloGrappling:

Gordon (Ryan) is very sick at this point, so I don’t believe he’ll be competing again.
Nicholas (Meregali) is very badly injured… His first shoulder surgery was not as successful as people were hoping for. So he had to do a second shoulder surgery, so he definitely won’t be ready in time.

So those two are simply just not there, so that kinda makes some of the decisions easier.

We only really have one remaining heavyweight, that’s big Dan (Manasoiu) so that’s an obvious choice.
Luke is our only 99kg fighter, so Luke Griffith will be an obvious choice.

With the under and over 99kg categories filled, Danaher had clear preferences for the next two divisions as well – under 88kg and under 66kg:

Giancarlo (Bodoni) of course would be a prime choice at middleweight.
I believe Dorian Olivarez would be an amazing addition at 66kg, I think his particular style of Jiu-Jitsu is extremely well-suited to the CJI event.

He’d be a natural pick.

That leaves one open slot at 77kg:

That leaves (77kg)… That would be the most difficult one because you have Oliver Taza, you have Davis Asare, you have Izaak Michell, and Jason Nolf, and also possibly a draft pick; the wildcard draft.

I guess I’m speculating here, but I guess we’d have to have an internal trial in the gym because all of them want to go.

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