Marcus ‘Buchecha’ Almeida is one of the biggest names in the BJJ world and he’s just decided to preview the grappling matches booked for ONE Fight Night 10 on May 5th, 2023. Buchecha is a competitor for ONE Championship in their heavyweight MMA division, but as one of the most successful BJJ competitors of all time he has a fantastic insight into how the upcoming grappling matches might go. Because of that, an interviewer at ONE Championship sat down with him to get his take on the exciting matches booked for the event.
The first grappling match scheduled for the event actually involves one of Buchecha’s close friends, Tye Ruotolo. He has been booked against the current ONE middleweight MMA world champion Reinier de Ridder and although he has significantly more experience in grappling competition, it will likely be a much closer match than it looks on paper. Buchecha was open about his relationship with Ruotolo in his explanation and explained that he has trained with him very often:
“That’s gonna be a really good one, and it’s gonna be a tricky fight for both of them. You know me and the Ruotolo brothers. We are friends for a long time, and I met these kids when they were like green belts. And back in the day, we’re from the same team, RVCA team. And I just had the opportunity to train with Reinier (de Ridder) only one time so, I know more about Tye’s (Ruotolo) game. It’s gonna be a good one.”
Although de Ridder has spent nowhere near as much time training in Jiu-Jitsu, he has been rolling with some excellent training partners at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu during the build-up to this fight. He definitely won’t be an easy match for Ruotolo and will likely present some surprises, which is something that Tye Ruotolo himself is aware of. Regardless, Buchecha has faith in his old training partner:
“I know [De Ridder] is doing camps in America, and he’s trying to keep it up with the younger game, and newer game. So that’s why I think he’s not gonna get left behind on the new games, the new technique, this kind of stuff.”
Marcus ‘Buchecha’ Almeida also reviewed the second of two grappling matches booked for ONE Fight Night 10, Mikey Musumeci v Osamah Almarwai. Musumeci is defending his flyweight submission grappling world championship against Almarwai and Buchecha seems to see a clear favourite in the match:
“For sure, fighting against the champ like Mikey will be a really tough job for [Osamah Almarwai] because Mikey (Musumeci) is something special for sure. The kid, he sees jiu-jitsu in a different way. He thinks so fast. He makes decisions really fast in a fight, and that is something amazing to watch, so I think it’s gonna be a great fight. But I think Mikey’s gonna keep the belt.”
Marcus ‘Buchecha’ Almeida didn’t just predict the outcome of the grappling matches at ONE Fight Night 10 though, as he also had an unexpected prediction on how he sees Musumeci winning:
“Being honest, his passing game is really good. He has really good techniques passing. We don’t see him much on top, but once he gets on top, for sure we’re gonna see a lot of pressure and I think because of that, he wants to test himself so we’re gonna see a lot of top game for sure.”
