The tournament is unique. There are 16 wrestlers in each weight class, divided up into four pools of four wrestlers each. After a round robin competition and three matches, the winners of each pool advanced to the championship semifinals with the winners wrestling for the title and the losers wrestling for third place.

The four second-place finishers in each pool also competed in the consolation round along with the four wrestlers who finished third and the four wrestlers who finished fourth.

The tournament is named in honor of Colter J. Abely, a 2010 Xavier graduate and a former Falcon wrestler, who died in 2012 at the age of 20 as the result of injuries sustained in an automobile accident