Mikey Musumeci is not content with taking things easy as the reigning ONE Championship flyweight submission grappling world champion and he’s been booking a sequence of matches at higher weight classes against Gabriel Sousa and Kade Ruotolo, while also getting in some incredible training with Rubens ‘Cobrinha’ Charles. We were lucky enough to get the opportunity to sit down with Musumeci recently and although we originally started off discussing his rematch against Sousa at ONE 167, naturally the conversation turned towards the next match against Ruotolo as well.
It’s tough for anyone to prepare for multiple superfights at a time, even moreso when the first one is against the last person to beat you. Things get even trickier when the second match will be contested with a major title on the line, as Musumeci is actually moving all the way up to lightweight to challenge Ruotolo for his belt. We asked Musumeci how he’s dealing with preparing for one huge challenge so soon after another:
“I would never look past Gabriel, he’s f*cking tough. He’s the only one I’m focused on right now, but as I prepare for Gabriel it’s preparing for Kade (Ruotolo) too. I’m just focused on making my Jiu-Jitsu the best it can be right, I see Gabriel as a stop in my growth, like we’re gonna use that now as an indicator of what I need to get better at and what I need to keep working on. Then I’m staying in camp for Kade the same day I fight Gabriel.”
Musumeci isn’t taking a moment to breathe between matches and unlike most competitors, he isn’t allowing himself any time off even if he is successful against Sousa:
“So I’m competing with Gabriel that morning, because in Thailand it’s like 10am/9am, then I have a training already set with a lot of my friends at like 3pm. So I’m going to be staying in camp for Kade that whole time. I’m not stopping, the Gabriel match is just a training session for me. That’s how I see it, it’s just high level rolls that are just gonna keep giving me better looks at what I need to work on or get better at, and then I’m gonna later that day fix whatever mistakes I make with Gabriel.”
While a match against one of the Ruotolo brothers with a major title on the line might add pressure for a lot of competitors, Mikey Musumeci is not like a lot of competitors:
“I don’t think about these things, I don’t even think about winning. I just think about every exchange I’m going to do in these ten-minute matches. It’s a ten-minute match so every minute I’m thinking about winning the exchange, and at the end of each minute if I win each exchange then what happens? I win. I don’t like focusing on the results, I think that’s too broad and it takes you a little off the focus of the current moment. Gabriel’s a super tough opponent and every minute I have to win and at the end of that ten minutes, my hand will be raised if I do everything correctly and each minute I dominate. Then with Kade, same thing. The belt and all these different things, I’m not thinking about. I’m just thinking about Kade, a super dangerous opponent and he’s going to come at me really hard. He’s gonna come at me really f*cking hard, but I’m just thinking about each minute. Controlling him, winning the exchanges, and at the end of that my hand’s raised. Wow, my hand’s raised, I won. Wow, I have another belt. That’s just the indirect result of my perfection in that match through each moment.”
He’s in good hands too though, as Mikey Musumeci has been preparing for both Sousa and Ruotolo with one of the biggest legends of the sport; Rubens ‘Cobrinha’ Charles. He explained how training under his new coach has been going, and how much benefit he’s seeing at Cobrinha’s academy compared to what he’s had recently:
“Man it’s been great. The last four or five years I’ve just been training in my garage with hobbyists. I had no instruction, not really that many high-level training partners, just regular hobbyists that I train with. So I’ve really worked hard to be an athlete again. I’m training with Cobrinha, like the greatest person of all time in this weight class that Gabriel’s in. Training with him, rolling with him four hours straight sometimes, then rolling with his son Kennedy (Maciel) who’s beaten Gabriel like six times.”
