UFC BJJ announced a welterweight title fight between Andrew Tackett and Jonnatas Gracie plus a four-woman featherweight bracket this week, and the news arrived alongside word that reigning ADCC champion Adele Fornarino will skip defending her title in Krakow to compete for the promotion instead.
Reviewed by BJJ Gyms · Updated 2026-07-27
Sources: FloGrappling, BJJ Doc, July 2026.
Andrew Tackett has held the UFC BJJ welterweight title since the promotion launched, defending it multiple times against a steady stream of credentialed challengers. His next assignment is Jonnatas Gracie, a black belt under Andre Galvao with IBJJF World, European, and Pan-American medals to his name and a habit of hunting the back for rear-naked chokes and gi chokes whenever a match opens up.
Gracie enters with real momentum of his own, having already tested some of the sport's top competitors at the highest level of superfight grappling. A matchup between a champion known for well-rounded positional control and a challenger who thrives once he gets to someone's back is exactly the kind of stylistic contrast that makes UFC BJJ's tournament format compelling to watch.
Alongside the welterweight title fight, UFC BJJ confirmed a four-competitor women's bracket featuring Cassia Moura, Bri Stikk, Adele Fornarino, and Caroline Brunacio. Bracket formats like this compress a full tournament into a single card, meaning competitors have to win twice in one day to walk away with the title, a format that tends to reward fighters who can push pace without gassing out.
Fornarino's inclusion is the most notable piece of that bracket given what it means for her competition calendar elsewhere. Moura and Brunacio both bring strong credentials of their own, and Stikk rounds out a group that should produce at least one genuinely competitive semifinal.
Adele Fornarino won the -55kg division at ADCC 2024, becoming the first Australian to win an ADCC World Championship title and the first to win the open weight class in the same event. That made her removal from the 2026 competitor roster on July 11 notable enough to draw coverage on its own, but the timing next to the UFC BJJ bracket announcement makes the connection hard to miss.
Her ADCC spot has already been reassigned to Valerie Hamilton, a runner-up from the East and West Coast Trials, so the bracket in Krakow stays full. Still, losing a defending champion to a competing organization's roster is exactly the kind of story that fuels ongoing questions about how exclusive UFC BJJ contracts will shape who shows up at ADCC going forward.
ADCC and UFC BJJ are increasingly pulling from the same pool of elite competitors, and moments like this one make the competition between the two organizations more visible. For fans, that tension is mostly good news. It means more high-level grappling gets contested across more stages, even if it occasionally means a specific title defense does not happen the way fans might have expected.
For anyone inspired by watching this level of competition, the entry point is much simpler than it looks from the outside. Use the gym finder at BJJGyms.org to find a BJJ or no-gi academy near you, including 10th Planet locations that emphasize a fast-paced, scramble-heavy no-gi curriculum. Most gyms will let you try a class before you commit to anything.
A lot happened in a short window. Here is the rundown broken into digestible pieces.
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Jonnatas Gracie, a black belt under Andre Galvao known for finishing fights from back control.
She was removed from the ADCC 2026 competitor roster on July 11, choosing instead to compete in a UFC BJJ women's bracket.
Valerie Hamilton, a runner-up from the East and West Coast Trials, was awarded the vacated spot.
It generally means more high-level grappling gets contested across multiple organizations, even as it creates roster tension when top athletes have to choose between events.