ABU DHABI SUBMISSION FIGHTING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 

The ADCC Submission Fighting Circuit is world-wide represented by the ADCC World Comitee who leads and controls the discipline, menaging the activities of the whole Circuit:

ADCC World Comitee

President: H.H. Sheik Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Vice President: Guy Neivens
World Head Referee: Peter Ivanov

Recently the ADCC Circuit has reached a wider spreading in the world thanks to the diffusion of its national and international Committes operating in Europe, Canada, USA, Ecuador, Brasil, South-Africa, United Arab Emirates, Korea, Japan, Australia.

ADCC Submission Fighting World Champions - Men division

ADCC Submission Fighting World Champions - Women division

 
The ADCC World Championship was born in 1998 as international tournement organized every year by the Abu Dhabi Combat Club staff in Abu Dhabi:  at this event some of the world renowned athlets of different wrestling styles were selected and invited to compete as rapresentatives of the various continents. For the occasion specific rules were created to mediate the regulations of the main wrestling styles (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Sambo, Judo, Lotta Olimpica) and creating a new discipline, the Submission Wrestling. From the begining the tournement had the characteristics of a real World Championship of the discipline, directed to elect the best fighter in the world. 

From the second edition in 1999, the ADCC World Championship has been considered, from the sector operators, a real World Championship for Submission and for all wrestling styles in general, (many consider it also the Wrestling Styles Olympics): in one solo year the fame of the event has grown together with the level of the athlets and the number of nations rappresented. 

The great attraction of comparing to different disciplines, the perfect organization of the event and the technical level of partecipants, as well as the rich prize money have marked its success worldwide and in few years, we assist at a fast and surprising diffusion of the discipline in all over the world with tournements and  competitions in all continents. 

The editions of years 2000 and 2001 declare its popolarity: the fast diffusion of the discipline and the highest importance acquired by the event, as well as the willness to extend the prominence of the tournement, urged the organization committee into transforming the event from annual to biennial and  into organizing it in different continents by rotation, to confer a more international relevance. In that period qualification competitions and official national selections were organized in the countries where the discipline was more popular (Usa, Brasil, Japan and Scandinavia). Consequently the finals in 2003 and 2005 were respectively in San Paolo (Brasil) and Los Angeles (USA).

2005 marked a further evolution of the most important and prestigious Submission Wrestling Tournement in the world: the need for a widespread regulation of the global movement and the willness to give a possibility of qualification at the world finals to fighters from any nation, led the ADCC World Committee to the creation of national committees selecting and authorizing some official qualification tournements.

A further evolution: the tournement born as competition by card opens to the whole world becoming a real and concrete world circuit made by a net of tournements and championships for continental and national qualifications. On the same wave of this important innovation, after one year of planning and tasks, the ADCC European Commission is officialized at the beginning of 2006, together with ADCC Europe directed by Marko Leisten: to represent the ADCC circuit in Italy Filippo Leone is called and elected President and coordinator of the ADCC Italy Committee.

The ADCC World Committee controls and regulates the discipline in all continents through the national Committees. It has also decided to:

• change the name of the discipline into Submission Fighting; 

• create the categories Amateurs, Women and Juniores in addition to the PRO category, adopting some specific modifications concerning rules of competition  and weight categories; 

• allow the national ADCC Committees to organize official competitions and tournements on their own country.

Today ADCC is the most important and world renowned Circuit of Submission and of Wrestling in general: to have a victory in ADCC marked in the curriculum is for any MMA athlets, wrestlers or fighters a title of prestige!