Mikey Musumeci had a lot of reasons to sign with the UFC as the first Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner to ink an exclusive deal with the promotion but treating grappling as a professional sport was at the top of his list.
After spending the past few years competing with ONE Championship, Musumeci signed a deal to compete under the UFC banner with his first match booked on Thursday night in Las Vegas. The 28-year-old New Jersey native admitted that working with the UFC would give him the chance to lead the charge into making sweeping changes across grappling with cleaning up the sport as the first item on his agenda.
“I feel like what I’m doing right now is definitely the most important thing for grappling in terms of having a stable platform,” Musumeci said on Wednesday during UFC 310 media day. “I feel like a lot of jiu-jitsu right now is very unstable. There’s a lot of horrible ethics, morals, and I hope now that with the UFC we can change that and make it a professional sport.
“Because it hasn’t been a professional sport, jiu-jitsu, with people they blatantly use [performance enhancing drugs]. They’re not athletes. They really don’t have the values of martial artists. I really just want to change that and give us this platform at UFC and become professionals.”
While Musumeci stopped short from naming names regarding the jiu-jitsu practitioners who he believes are cheating, it’s apparently a very long list.
He unloaded on the grappling community as a whole when asked who else he would like to see the UFC target as potential signings as the organization looks to grow the roster of exclusive athletes under contract.
“People not on steroids,” Musumeci said emphatically. “That’s pretty much what I would say but 99 percent of jiu-jitsu is on steroids. So at least them get off steroids a little bit, like a few months. They probably need like a year, six months to adjust and then maybe they could adjust with Darwinism.”
Musumeci isn’t the only high-level grappler to lob cheating accusations at other competitors competing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu but he really hopes the UFC investing in the sport will change that.
In fact, he knows the UFC is on board with his plans because that was a huge part of the reason he was so excited to sign with them in the first place.
“They want to make this professional also,” Musumeci said. “UFC’s a professional company. The way we’ve been in jiu-jitsu, we’ve been amateurs. We really are just in this barbaric amateur phase of jiu-jitsu. Now UFC is starting something professional. I’m so blessed for them for putting the effort into jiu-jitsu to change it. I’m so eager for them to do that.”
Long term, Musumeci has a lot of individual goals he would like to achieve and that might include an eventual transition into MMA but he’s still got plenty of work left to do in jiu-jitsu before he starts fighting.
It turns out signing with the UFC really was just the first step.
“I need to first grow us and UFC to the point where we are professional athletes,” Musumeci said. “What does that look like to me? That looks like we have belts, we have everything just like MMA fighters. Drug testing and belts and stability.
“We need drug testing. Completely make Darwinism with the people on steroids that the either have to just get off and they either die or they adapt. Then the next generation realizes they can’t just start steroids when they’re like 10 years old. I want to change that. That will give me the most fulfillment.”
