Mikey Musumeci has just issued a public challenge to Nate Diaz for an openweight grappling match, after hearing that Diaz had originally said that he would like to fight him. It might seem like an unusual match at first but it wouldn’t be the first time that Musumeci has faced a veteran MMA fighter. He actually defended his ONE Championship flyweight title against the promotion’s MMA champion Jarred Brooks and defeated him by submission, but he’s already faced bigger opponents too. Musumeci’s most recent match was actually against Japanese MMA legend Shinya Aoki at ONE Fight Night 15 and he won that by submission as well.
It all stems from another beef that Musumeci has been involved in recently with YouTuber Sneako. Nate Diaz was actually on one of Sneako’s recent streams when the topic of Mikey Musumeci came up and he said “I want to beat that little f****** a***.” It appears as though it took a while for Musumeci to find out about it and despite being called a slur, he actually took it surprisingly well:
“Wow, so I just learned from a video that Nate Diaz called me out. And in no way am I calling him out right now. This is just me responding to that video. The first thing I’ll say is I was always a huge fan of watching Nick and Nate Diaz in MMA. They’re absolute legends. Amazing grappling, amazing striking. They’re about that life.”
Musumeci has even discussed making his professional MMA debut later this year, but he was open about the fact that Diaz wouldn’t be a suitable opponent:
“Obviously, I can’t fight Nate in an MMA fight. He would kill me. But I would absolutely accept a grappling match with him since we’re both black belts in jiu-jitsu. It would be an absolute honor to have the opportunity to face such a legend like Nate. A once in a lifetime opportunity. I don’t care about weight class or anything. I would be 100 percent down to grapple with him.”
It’s a match that ONE Championship would undoubtedly love to make and given that the promotion has started to put together events in the United States, this would be a fantastic main or co-main event as well. Sadly for fans of this potential matchup, it’s still incredibly unlikely of course. Diaz might be a third degree BJJ black belt but he’s always focused far more on his MMA career rather than taking grappling matches. He’s even gone in the complete opposite direction lately, making his professional boxing debut against Jake Paul last year.
Mikey Musumeci issued the challenge to Nate Diaz for a grappling match in a recent post to his official Instagram account:
