CJI Rules

Overview

CJI has run two different tournament formats under one ruleset document. CJI 1 (2024) and the CJI women's tournament are individual single-elimination brackets judged with a 10-point-must system borrowed from MMA. CJI 2 (2025) switched the men's team event to a Quintet-style format, where five-a-side teams duel bout by bout until one team is eliminated. Both formats share the same walled "Pit" arena and most of the same legal/illegal technique list.

Individual brackets and superfights

Match format

Regular matches (non-finals, and superfights) run 3 rounds of 5 minutes each, with a 1-minute rest between rounds. Finals extend to 5 rounds of 5 minutes, plus a 5-minute overtime round if the scorecards are level after round 5 — overtime repeats until one athlete leads on points.

Scoring: the 10-point-must system

Three judges score each round. The round winner is awarded 10 points and the loser 9 or fewer:

• 10-9 — the athlete won the round by a close margin.
• 10-8 — the athlete was overwhelmingly dominant throughout the round.
• 10-7 — the athlete totally dominated the round and nearly finished the submission.

A submission at any point ends the match immediately, regardless of the scorecards. In the women's tournament, a draw after regulation is broken by whoever won the third round; if the final round itself is a draw, the match goes to overtime rounds until one athlete is ahead.

Judging criteria, in priority order

1. Initiating action — attempting takedowns, guard passes, sweeps, and submissions is rewarded above everything else.
2. Close submissions and dynamic action — takedowns, sweeps, passes, and submission attempts that don't finish.
3. Positional control — the last factor judges weigh, behind pace and initiative.

A weight-advantage cap applies when the two athletes are separated by a full weight category or more: if there's no submission, the heavier athlete's round score is capped at 10-9 no matter how dominant the round looked.

Legal and illegal techniques

Legal: all chokes except closing the windpipe with the hand, arm/shoulder/wrist locks, leg/ankle/hip locks, can openers, twisters, and the full nelson. Slamming is allowed only once a submission is locked in, and must stop the moment the opponent releases it.

Illegal: spiking an opponent on their head, any strike, eye gouging or fish hooking, grabbing the ears, hair pulling, holding fewer than four fingers or toes, thumbing, scratching, pinching, biting, squeezing or pressuring the groin, knees or elbows to the face, grabbing rashguards or shorts, and slippery substances on the body or clothing.

Stalling and fouls

CJI uses a three-strike system per athlete: the first stalling call is a warning with no prior notice needed, the second is an immediate point deduction for that round, and the third disqualifies the athlete on the spot. Stalling is called when an athlete's back touches the mat for more than 3 seconds without engagement, when open-guard passing avoids grips entirely, when a fighter flees or runs from a guard pull, or when a fighter in closed guard makes no attempt to open it and advance.

Quintet team duels (CJI 2)

Team structure

Eight teams of five face off, one athlete per weight class: -66kg, -77kg, -88kg, -99kg, and +99kg, with a 1kg allowance per competitor (none in the women's tournament). Teams may field up to two wildcard athletes from outside their own gym, and each team competes in its official kit — no outside apparel in the Pit or during walkouts. A head coach plus up to three assistants are allowed per team, with only the head coach and one assistant in the coaching area during a bout; exceeding that costs the team a point.

Match format

Each bout runs 8 minutes with a 90-second break before the next one. There are no rounds and no judges' scorecards mid-bout — the only ways out are submission or the clock.

Winning a bout, and a duel

A submission eliminates the loser and the winner stays on to face the next athlete on the opposing team — the standard Quintet "winner stays on" shape. If neither athlete submits inside 8 minutes, both are eliminated rather than continuing to a decision. A team duel is won by eliminating every member of the opposing team. Team managers get 30 seconds after a bout ends to name their next athlete, and once the event starts there are no substitutions for an athlete who can't continue.

If all ten athletes are eliminated by double-eliminations without a team winning outright, judges' decisions from earlier in the duel break the tie: the team with more individual wins by decision wins; if that's level too, it comes down to whichever team's athlete won the most recent non-draw bout.

Legal and illegal techniques, and stalling

The same legal/illegal list and the three-strike stalling system apply, with penalties landing on the team's score for that bout rather than a round.

The Pit

Both formats are contested in CJI's signature "Pit" — a sunken arena with padded walls set at roughly a 45-degree angle, with no out-of-bounds. There's nowhere to retreat to and no referee reset for stepping out, which is the point: it's built to remove stalling-by-disengagement rather than to reward wall-walking the way an MMA cage does. Touching the top of the Pit's wall draws a warning, and a repeat costs a point.

Main differences

Topic	Individual brackets / superfights	Quintet team duels (CJI 2)
Core format	3 × 5-minute rounds (5 × 5 + overtime in finals).	Single 8-minute bout, no rounds.
Decision system	Judges score every round, 10-point-must.	No mid-bout scoring — submission or the clock decides the bout.
Result when time expires	Judges' decision from the scorecards.	Both athletes eliminated (a "double elimination").
Winning the whole thing	Highest score / a finals submission.	Eliminate every athlete on the other team, or hold the tiebreak edge in decisions.
Penalties	Point deducted from the athlete's round score.	Point deducted from the team's score for that bout.

Practical reading

The individual format rewards the same things ADCC and Polaris do — initiative and finishing — but says so explicitly and ranks it above position, which is why CJI matches tend to open faster than a comparably-seeded IBJJF bracket. The Quintet format changes the incentive again: because a draw eliminates both athletes, sitting on a lead for 8 minutes costs your team the bout outright, so the format punishes stalling more directly than any scorecard-based ruleset can.

Sources

Adapted from the official CJI rules. See the official page for the complete, most up-to-date text.