Mikey Musumeci is confident that his involvement with UFC BJJ’s massive kickoff can create the most impactful butterfly effect possible for the sport that he loves. This was expressed during a recent interview that took place with Mike Heck of MMA Fighting and covered several subjects relating to the mixed martial arts promotional leader expanding their promotional efforts into the Brazilian jiu jitsu world.
When describing what this current situation, and by proxy the road to the future, means to him, Mikey Musumeci said,
“It’s the most meaningful thing I could probably do in my life with jiu-jitsu, what I’m doing right now. We’re starting this program from scratch. This is UFC BJ1. I got together with Hunter Campbell and Teti in the end of November, December, and we formulated a plan how we want to change and grow grappling. The old way of grappling was not really appealing—there were just so many problems with it: matches stopping, resets, boring matches, people stalling."
"We really wanted to get together and figure out a way we can make this actually exciting and make it a platform that’s actually professional and long-term, where competitors could compete in and make money. I really feel like we did that. Now it’s very cool just seeing UFC and BJJ coexisting as one. It’s pretty wild to see—it’s like the old Gracie days, literally. It’s absolutely insane.”
Mikey Musumeci and his involvement within UFC BJJ
Mikey Musumeci will be involved in the UFC BJJ kickoff card which transpires on June 25th. This will be part of UFC's international fight week proceedings with everything culminating in UFC 317 on June 28th which features the headliner between Charles Oliveira and Ilia Topuria for the vacant lightweight title. UFC BJJ 1 will broadcast on UFC Fight Pass with three title fights slated to make place at that event.
Rerisson Gabriel and the former ONE Championship submission grappling titleholder served as opposing coaches on UFC BJJ: Road to the Title with eight overall episodes and the final episode in the series comes out on Monday, June 23rd.
