Claudia Gadelha is the head of UFC BJJ and although she’s been working hard to create a proper roster of grapplers in every division, she admits that finding Mikey Musumeci’s opponents has been tough. Musumeci inhabits one of the lightest weight classes at bantamweight so that alone makes finding suitable challengers difficult, but he’s also a very dominant champion. He won the inaugural title by submitting Rerisson Gabriel at UFC BJJ 1 and although that was just 4 months ago, he’s already registered his first title-defense too. Musumeci recently submitted Keven Carrasco at UFC BJJ 3 to remain the champion, and now the promotion is on the hunt for another challenger.
Gadelha spoke about that task and explained that, at Musumeci’s level, there aren’t many competitors in his weight class who would give him a difficult match:
“We try to pair him against the best. It’s very hard because he is probably the best pound-for-pound Jiu-Jitsu athlete in the world and it’s very hard to find him good matches.”
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Musumeci would comfortably beat the majority of bantamweights in the world right now, but there’s another important sticking point when UFC BJJ are matchmaking. They also reportedly want to sign exclusive contracts with their competitors, and this would be even more important for any potential champions. This means that any of the handful of bantamweights who could beat Musumeci would also have to be willing to commit their future to UFC BJJ in order to get that opportunity. Gadelha didn’t mention this factor though, and instead implied that competitors are turning down the match due to Musumeci’s skill level:
“A lot of people want to go against him but also at the same time a lot of people don’t want to go against him. When you look at the best, they know how good Mikey (Musumeci) is.”
The full interview with Claudia Gadelha where she discusses Mikey Musumeci’s opponents was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Cageside Press:
