MATSIDE

Melbourne — Open the men's −66kg results for the 2026 ADCC World Championship today and the division begins in the quarterfinals. Diego Oliveira beats Gianni Grippo 6–0. Kennedy Maciel beats Fabricio Andrey on a decision. Gavin Corbe heel-hooks Ryoma Anraku. Dominic Mejia beats Owen Jones 3–0. Maciel takes the title from Corbe with a triangle armlock; Oliveira takes bronze when Mejia cannot compete.

There is a round of sixteen missing from the front of that list, and in it is the only athlete this region sent to −66kg.

Bekzat Kapashov qualified for Kraków at the 2nd ADCC Asia & Oceania Trials at Carrara in June — one of eight, and the only one from Kazakhstan. In Vol. 1 No. 2 this paper recorded his exit as Disputed, because two secondary accounts of the same match could not both be true: one recorded a disqualification, the other a submission at 8:04. We declined to choose between them and said we would publish the answer when we had it from the official record.

What the outcome was. On Saturday 12 September, the opening day, Kapashov met Dorian Olivarez in the round of sixteen. What happened inside the match is contested and is set out below. What followed it is not: ADCC removed both men from the tournament and suspended both from its competition for one year. The vacant place went to Owen Jones, who had already been eliminated from the division and was put back into the bracket; he reached the quarterfinal and lost to Mejia 3–0.

ADCC's decision, as relayed by FloGrappling on 12 September, was that the two athletes "have been disqualified from the ADCC World Championship for their conduct on and off the mat," that "both athletes will receive a one year ban from ADCC," and that Jones would "step in as a replacement for the vacant spot in the −66kg bracket."

We have not found that statement published on ADCC's own site. As of this issue, adcombat.com carries its Day 1 and Day 2 bracket posts and its competitor list, and no disciplinary notice. A one-year ban on two competitors at a world championship exists, in public, as a quotation in other people's coverage.

The one answer anybody gave. We asked ADCC, and we also asked the people who run this region's qualifying event a single question: does the one-year ban cover the Asia & Oceania Trials? ADCC Australia replied the same day, from the address ADCC publishes for Australia: "I haven't spoken to ADCC about this specifically, but generally it is a worldwide ban."

That sentence is worth reading twice, because it does two things at once. It says the suspension is not confined to the World Championship — and if it is worldwide it covers the Trials, which is the single route out of this region, so Kapashov's next entry to that route is closed for a year. It also says that the man whose event that is has not been told. He is describing what ADCC generally does, not what ADCC has decided here.

ADCC itself has not answered. Neither has Kapashov. So the only account of the scope of a one-year worldwide ban, seven days after it was imposed, is a regional organiser's general understanding, offered in good faith and explicitly second-hand.

What is alleged to have happened in the match. Olivarez has given an account, in a video interview published after the event, in which Kapashov took hold of his hand from underneath the mount, put it in his mouth and bit down on a finger. He says officials stopped the match briefly and restarted it, and that he then finished it. Secondary outlets have repeated that account, some of them as a flat statement of fact.

It remains one competitor's account of what his opponent did. Kapashov has not been reported as having answered it, in English or otherwise. Under § 2.2 of this paper's charter — two sources for any allegation against a person — we report that the allegation was made, by whom, and on what date. We do not report that it is what happened.

What followed the match is described the same way. Gordon Ryan, who was cornering on an adjacent mat, has said publicly that roughly fifteen Kazakh competitors went after John Danaher, Mike Olivarez and Dorian Olivarez, and then at him. Mike Olivarez, Dorian's father, is reported to have received a two-year suspension and a ban from attending or coaching at ADCC events. Beyond him, no participant in that account has been named and, as far as the public record shows, none has been sanctioned. A collective account of fifteen people has produced three named consequences.

The name. The man serving a one-year ban is recorded under three spellings in the coverage of the week he received it. ADCC's official results for the Asia & Oceania trials give Bekzat Kapashov. FloGrappling and the wire coverage taken from it give Bekzat Zapashov. BJJ Heroes' results page gives Вekzat Kapashov — the first letter a Cyrillic В, which is not a B and will not be found by anybody searching for one.

This is the third consecutive issue in which this paper has had to set out how a competitor from this region is spelled. Daniel Schuardt, who took bronze at −99kg on Sunday, is still filed as David Schuardt on the same results page a week after we said so.

Why it goes in the register. This paper's method is written down: results are verified against the bracket. The bracket is the primary source, and secondary coverage is checked against it.

The bracket for men's −66kg no longer contains the match. Two people competed at a world championship on Saturday morning; one of them advanced on the mat and both were then removed; and the document of record for the division now opens after the fact. Nothing is marked as vacated. Nothing is marked as void. The round is simply not there, and a reader in five years will not know to look for it.

Under § 4.2 this paper does not unpublish, and that clause exists precisely because a record which can be quietly shortened is not a record.

There is a practical consequence, too. Kapashov won a place at the world championship through the only qualifying event this region is allocated. He is now banned from ADCC competition for a year. Whether that year covers the trials, when it began, and what it takes to end it are not published anywhere we can find.

So, for the register: Bekzat Kapashov, ADCC Kazakhstan, men's −66kg, ADCC World Championship, Tauron Arena Kraków, 12 September 2026. Round of sixteen. Removed from the tournament by ADCC, together with his opponent, and suspended from ADCC competition for one year. He did not lose. He was taken out, and so was the match.