Mikey Musumeci recently revealed that he still wants to pursue an MMA career even after signing an exclusive submission grappling contract with the UFC. Although Musumeci was originally known as an elite competitor more than anything else, he made the transition to no gi seamlessly and quickly established himself as one of the best in the world at that too. It stands to reason then that he might be confident about making another switch to MMA, and it’s something that he’s mentioned before. That might surprise some people given that Musumeci is a guard-player who doesn’t really wrestle in his matches, but he’s actually spent some time learning Muay Thai over the years.
Now Musumeci has to focus on his upcoming grappling match with Felipe Machado at UFC Fight Pass Invitational 9 of course. He’s very aware of that himself as well, and he’s recently shared some of his thoughts about his move to the UFC in an interview with MMAFighting:
“It’s all so incredible to me. We’re trying to change the sport. It all started with IBJJF, which was important, but now we can grow the sport to a more professional place for other people. This is my dream. I have enough titles already, I don’t want more titles. The only thing I want is to have an impact for the future generation, so they have an organization where they can make enough money.”
Musumeci is right as well, him signing with the UFC is a huge moment in the sport and it could lead to dramatic changes moving forward. While competing for ONE Championship made an eventual MMA transition seem possible, the downside to the switch over to UFC definitely is that it makes it less likely for Mikey Musumeci. He originally planned on making his MMA debut by the end of 2024, and now that window has passed of course. Although Musumeci might have missed his original timeline, he still thinks he’s got plenty of time to achieve that particular goal:
“I have the desire to maybe do MMA again in the future. I’m young, my body is very young. I’ve never taken steroids, so my body is like 20, 21, actually. I can have many more years of competition still.”
One thing he did point out is that the decision to join the UFC also gives him access to most of the best professional MMA fighters in the world. That is a huge opportunity for anyone who’s motivated to take an MMA fight, as it’s an endless supply of incredible training partners and coaches:
“Being in the UFC now, I’ll have the opportunity to train with a lot more people that I wouldn’t in the past, and learn from them on the feet, takedowns, wrestling. The first thing I loved in life was MMA. If I can have the opportunity to fight MMA in the UFC, that’s going to be a dream, too. I want to do MMA, but the gift God has given me was Jiu-Jitsu, so I have to grow our sport first. I can’t leave our sport before helping it grow to a place where other people, other kids can have an organization to compete at in the future.”
