Mikey Musumeci recently decided to attend UFC 309 and he took the time to have a rolling session with top lightweight MMA fighter Chase Hooper. Even the best grapplers in MMA often struggle to keep up with elite BJJ competitors on the mats, as they can only spend a fraction of the time working on that specific skillset. Hooper specifically is known for having fantastic grappling, and he actually started out his combat sports career in BJJ himself. He won the IBJJF Pan Championship as a juvenile blue belt all the way back in 2016, but he’s focused primarily on his MMA career since then.
Hooper was actually promoted to black belt at the age of 21 and it’s no surprise, seeing as he was already a UFC veteran with a 10-1-1 professional MMA record by that time. He’s since had several more MMA fights and currently has a 14-3-1 record, with half of his wins coming by way of submission. Hooper is also one of a handful of people to win a UFC fight with a heel hook and he’s currently riding a two-fight streak of submission wins, with his next fight booked for UFC 310. Hooper has stayed somewhat active in professional grappling as well, including a recent match against Aljamain Sterling at ADXC 2.
Even though Hooper has that superb grappling pedigree, Musumeci is on a completely different level. He is the former inaugural ONE Championship flyweight champion and he won multiple IBJJF World Championship titles in both the gi and no gi even before that. Musumeci has been competing at the very highest level of the sport since 2015 and he has beaten all of the best in the world at his weight class in that time. He was only in attendance at UFC 309 because he recently signed an exclusive contract with the promotion and will be making his UFC Fight Pass Invitational debut against Felipe Machado at their ninth event.
UFC Fight Pass shared the footage of Mikey Musumeci rolling with Chase Hooper in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
