Felipe Pena has made his position clear on competition formats: every grappling event should adopt CJI‘s innovative pit arena. Speaking on the FloGrappling Show ahead of his Who’s Number One heavyweight title match against Luke Griffith, Pena didn’t mince words about what he believes is the future of competitive grappling.
“I think every event should have a wall, something like that, because that makes (for) more entertainment, you know. It doesn’t give a space for fighters to run away—they cannot run away,”
Pena explained. His experience competing at Craig Jones Invitational gave him firsthand insight into how the pit fundamentally changes the dynamics of a match, eliminating the constant stoppages that plague traditional competition formats.
The pit’s impact extends beyond just keeping competitors engaged. Pena noted that the wall creates an entirely new strategic dimension:
“When you have the pit, this is more—there is more chance for this to happen because if one athlete is walking back, he’s getting close to the pit, you know, and he knows when he gets close to the pit it is bad for him.”
This environmental pressure naturally encourages forward movement and aggressive grappling exactly what spectators want to see.
For Pena, the pit solved one of grappling’s most persistent problems—athletes using boundaries to their advantage.
“A lot of times, the athletes, they use that to stop the match or to escape from the submission. But when you have the pit, it’s kind of the opposite,”
he said. Instead of matches being interrupted by out-of-bounds resets, the action continues seamlessly, with the wall becoming just another element of the match rather than an escape route.
The three-time ADCC champion has even brought the concept to his own gym in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Tatami, the grappling equipment company, installed a removable wall system at his academy specifically for his CJI training camp.
“It’s really fun, man, training there, you know, because this creates a whole new game when you are on this—on this wall,”
Pena shared, emphasizing how the pit has become an integral part of his preparation.
Pena’s advocacy for the pit comes from someone who has competed at the highest levels across every major format. With world championships, ADCC gold medals, and numerous superfight victories under his belt, his perspective carries significant weight in the grappling community. He praised CJI’s overall impact, saying Craig Jones and his team
“really step up jiujitsu”
and are
“doing great for the sport, for jiujitsu, for the athletes, for everyone.”
While Pena had some reservations about CJI’s team-format ruleset, he was unequivocal about the pit itself. He even suggested that Who’s Number One, which he considers to have
“the best ruleset”
with its 15-minute submission-only format, could be perfected by adding a wall.
“The only thing that I would change is the wall,”
he noted, believing it would make an already excellent format even better.
