Breaking Down the 2025 ADCC Dallas Trials

The 2025 ADCC Trials in Dallas didn’t feel like a tournament; it felt like a battlefield. No soft entries. No points if you flinched. Just raw ambition, shattered egos, and a room full of athletes willing to bleed for a shot at the show. If you came half-ready, you got folded. If you hesitated, you got clowned. This wasn’t about who looked good in a rashguard. This was about who could survive hell with nothing but grit and a gameplan.

Let’s talk about who made noise, who got exposed, and what you should be drilling before you end up part of someone else’s highlight reel.

Men’s Divisions: All Kill, No Chill
The 77kg bracket was a warzone. Kody Steele stormed the division like a man with a grudge. Every match looked personal. Snapping takedowns, relentless top pressure, and a motor that made grown men look like white belts. He didn’t just win; he asserted dominance.

At 66kg, it was the Ethan Crelinsten show. Fluid movement, sharp scrambles, and a pace that cooked everyone who thought they could keep up. No stalling. No coasting. Just calculated violence and a one-way ticket to the big stage.

Over in the big boy bracket (99kg+), Luke Griffith turned heads by dismantling dudes like he was King Kong on crack. But this wasn’t just fitness, it was controlled chaos. His jiu-jitsu was heavy, his transitions brutal, and every win looked inevitable.

Women’s Divisions: Killers Only
Brianna Ste-Marie took the 60kg division and ran through it like it owed her money. Her blend of positional control and relentless attacks made it clear this wasn’t her first rodeo. It was her mission.

Amy Campo at 60kg+? That wasn’t a bracket, that was a buffet. And she smoked it. Technical precision, dominant passing, and a calm that screamed confidence. She didn’t celebrate. She expected it. That’s what makes her terrifying.

The Match That Slapped Everyone Awake
Steele vs. PJ Barch. Semifinals. It was like putting 2 crackheads in a phone booth and telling them there was a little booger sugar on the other’s back. Back-and-forth scrambles, clutch takedowns, and a final flurry that showed exactly why heart matters just as much as skill. Steele edged it, but both walked off like warriors.

Lesson? Scrambles don’t lie. You either stay in the fight or you get drowned.

What Set the Winners Apart

• Takedown Threats: Wrestle or die. The guys winning didn’t pull guard, they pulled people’s souls to the mat.

• Pace Control: No one who coasted made it past round two. The champs dictated the tempo and made their opponents crack.

• Submission Pressure: If you weren’t chasing the finish, you weren’t advancing. Simple as that. The refs weren’t playing.

What You Better Start Doing

• Train for chaos. These winners didn’t “flow roll.” They trained like they were going to war and they fought like it.

• Get your wrestling up. If you can’t shoot, sprawl, or stuff a single leg, ADCC will chew you up and spit you out.

• Stop point-chasing. No one respects a staller. Fight to finish. Fight to dominate. Or stay in the kiddie pool.

Final Word
The Dallas Trials were a wake-up call. You can’t fake your way through this. You either show up ready to impose your game on every MF in your bracket, or you show up to lose with good intentions.

Gi vs NoGi: Why You Need Both If You Plan on Surviving

Every gym has that one former division 3 football player that used to pop steroids like they were skittles and only trains NoGi because they sweat the Gi is useless. Or the other way around, some wizard with fifty lapel traps who avoids NoGi because it’s "too fast." Both of them are wrong. And both of them are setting themselves up to get wrecked.

Can you tell the NoGi guys kick my ass every afternoon…

If you train jiu-jitsu not to be cute or flashy, but dangerous, then you need both.

Gi Training: Slow, Technical, and Inescapable

Gi teaches control, detail, and patience. It builds your timing. It makes you earn every inch. You can’t just slide out of bad spots or scramble your way to a better position. The friction makes everything harder; and that’s the point.

Want to sharpen your fundamentals? Want to actually understand posture, base, and balance? Throw on the Gi and suffer. Learn to control sleeves. Break grips. Use the lapel as a weapon. Because if you can dominate in the Gi, you can damn sure do it in NoGi.

Why it matters:

• Slows things down so you actually learn the mechanics

• Makes grip fighting second nature

• Builds deeper awareness of positional dominance

NoGi Training: Fast, Relentless, and Real

NoGi is unforgiving. Slippery. Explosive. Mistakes get punished in seconds. It’s a different game entirely, and if you don’t train it, you’ll drown the second someone takes the grips away.

In NoGi, you learn to move. You learn to flow. You learn to chain wrestling and jiu-jitsu together. No lapels. No stalling. Just raw reaction, relentless pressure, and constant scrambling.

Why it matters:

• Forces fast decision-making under pressure

• Builds takedown and clinch competency

• Mirrors real-life scenarios better than anything

The Truth: One Without the Other is Weak

The Gi builds precision. NoGi builds pace. Together, they build a complete grappler.

You only train Gi? Good luck when your grips get ripped off and you’ve got to scramble without handles.

You only train NoGi? Enjoy flailing when a seasoned Gi player ties you up like a pretzel and chokes you with your own jacket.

Here’s the rule:

• If it makes you uncomfortable, train it.

• If it exposes your weakness, lean into it.

“The only time I am growing is when I am uncomfortable” - T. Harv Eker

Want to Compete? You’ll Need Both.

IBJJF. ADCC. Fight to Win. Your local smoker. Every single event will test different parts of your game. The guys who dominate aren’t the ones with a favorite. They’re the ones who trained it all.

Competition reality:

• Gi teaches control and clean technique; what judges want.

• NoGi forces action and aggression; what wins the crowd.

Train both. Or train to lose.

Final Word

You don’t become a savage by avoiding the hard shit. You become one by embracing it. Gi and NoGi both suck in their own way. That’s why they work.

You want to be well-rounded? You want to be respected on the mats? You want to be capable in any situation?

Then stop hiding behind excuses and train both.

Camp Vertex doesn’t train hobbyists. We train fighters. And fighters don’t care what uniform you’re wearing—they just care if you’re ready for war.

Pistol vs Rifle: Know Your Role, Train for Both

Owning a gun and knowing how to run it under pressure are two different worlds. This is not about gear. This is about being the kind of individual who refuses to get caught unprepared.

Rifles and pistols serve different purposes. But if you think you get to pick which one you’ll need when the real shit goes down, you’re dreaming. Train both or stay on the sideline supporting your girlfriend’s boyfriend.

The Rifle: Reach, Power, and Control

The rifle is the problem solver. It’s how you control space. How you own distance. If the fight gives you time and range, the rifle is your best friend; assuming you’ve put in the reps.

Most people zero it once and call it a day. Maybe shoot from a bench a couple time a year. Ok Karen.

The way you do somethings is the way you do everything:

• Zero the damn thing. Confirm it. Re-confirm it. Don’t guess.

• Drill reloads from cover. Real-world awkward, not Instagram reels pretty.

• Train positions. Standing, kneeling, prone, barricaded. You don’t get to pick the terrain.

• Master the sling. If it’s in your way, you’re doing it wrong. Find a solution.

The Pistol: What You Actually Have When It Goes Down

The pistol is your last line and first response. You carry it every day—or you should. When things get loud fast, the pistol is what saves your life.

But most of you don’t respect it. You shoot casually. No stress. No clock. No draw work. That’s not training. That’s wasting ammo.

Fix it:

• Dry fire until the draw is automatic. Every damn day. Muscle memory.

• Live fire under pressure. Timers. Movement. No excuses.

• Clear malfunctions fast. Tap. Rack. BOW. Faster than yo daddy the night you were conceived.

• Train from concealment. Hoodie, appendix, ankle; it better be fast and smooth.

Choose Nothing. Be Ready for Everything.

You don’t get to decide if the fight happens in a parking lot or across a field. You don’t get to call time-out. You react with what you’ve got.

• Inside your house? Rifle wins, but only if you know how to move without flagging everything you love.

• On the street? Your pistol is your lifeline. If it ain’t slick, you ain’t surviving.

• Vehicle ambush? Whatever you can reach, you better know how to run it like your life depends on it—because it does.

Stop Worshipping Your Favorite

Being a pistol guy or a rifle guy is like saying you only like No-Gi, when in reality you just suck with a Gi. Be dangerous with both. If you hate one, that’s the one you’re weak with. Train it until that’s no longer true.

Every range day should test you. Make you uncomfortable. Make you sharper.

Mix it up:

• Zero rifle. Then shoot it off your knees, under stress.

• Work pistol reloads with gloves on. From concealment.

• Transition rifle to pistol like your rifle just failed.

• Move. Breathe. Shoot. Then do it again.

Final Word

This ain’t about looking cool. It’s about being the last man standing. You train rifle and pistol so no matter what, you stay in the fight.

Own both. Master both. Live ready.

Camp Vertex doesn’t train hobbyists. It trains hard people to do hard shit.

So the next time you step on the range, ask yourself this: “Am I just checking a box, or am I building the kind of skill set that wins fights?”

HOLD FAST