What’s your pick for the most exciting grappling event?
IBJJF gi or no-gi tournaments? ADCC? NAGA? Or something else?

Well, for Craig Jones the most exciting grappling event is – the Quintet.
A team tournament-style event.

He revealed why in a recent “El Segundo” podcast episode:

I think, personally, the most exciting grappling events that have ever been put together were Quintet, because they found a way to make stalling exciting.

The worst part of our sport is when nothing’s happening, right? But Quintet would always be a 4-team tournament, and each team would consist of 5 people under 940lbs or something.
So you obviously could structure that however you want.

You could get a couple of fu*king giants and a couple of midgets in there, you could have 5 even level guys.

Jones explained how stalling is made exciting in Quintet:

What would make it exciting would be that stalling could be strategic, you know what I mean?

Like, if your team’s not as good as the other team and you’re facing someone who’s really, really good; you know, maybe an elite-level guy on the other team…
And you’re just, like: “Sh*t, if I survive then this guy’s out of the event”, because it’s last man standing.

So really, stalling becomes exciting now, because there’s a skill discrepancy.
It becomes fun to watch this really good guy try to beat a guy who’s shelling up.

There are additional reasons why Craig Jones believes that Quintet is the most exciting grappling event:

The teams environment makes it so stressful because it’s like, you can’t really warm up, you don’t know when you’re gonna go.

Once you elect your 5-man lineup, you can’t change it until round 2 of the event.