It’s a crossover that nobody would have seen coming, but Mikey Musumeci and Umar Nurmagomedov have recently managed to get some time training together. Both men are incredible grapplers but they take completely different approaches to it, and they use it under different rulesets too. Musumeci focuses on playing guard and is happy to sit down in order to get the finish as quickly as possible in Jiu-Jitsu matches, whereas Nurmagomedov uses elite wrestling and suffocating top control to damage his opponents in MMA. Despite the fact that they don’t appear to have much in common, everyone benefits from sharing knowledge at that level.
The pair ran into each other at the UFC Performance Institute, as both men are preparing for upcoming matches with the promotion. Nurmagomedov was at the end of his training camp for Deiveson Figueiredo, a fight he ended up winning, while Musumeci was right at the start of his training camp for his upcoming title-defense against Shay Montague. When asked about how that session was, Musumeci explained just how good Nurmagomedov is on the ground:
“I love Umar [Nurmagomedov]. Honestly, out of all the MMA Jiu-Jitsu people I’ve trained with, he’s probably the best guy. Like he could beat a lot of the Jiu-Jitsu people I compete with. I was super impressed with him.”
It wouldn’t be the first time that an MMA fighter has beaten grapplers at their own game of course, but it doesn’t happen very often. That kind of skill level is rare, and Musumeci thinks that he could even benefit from learning a little more from Nurmagomedov:
“I love training with him, and I’ll probably go to Dagestan later in the year to train more with those guys and learn more wrestling and that style.”
UFC BJJ shared the clip from the interview with Mikey Musumeci where he talks about Umar Nurmagomedov in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
