Mikey Musumeci is declaring war on the rampant use of PEDs in BJJ.
After establishing himself as one of the best submission grapplers in the world under the ONE Championship banner, ‘Darth Rigatoni’ ditched the Singapore-based promotion to sign with the UFC. It was a big moment for the jiu-jitsu community as Musumeci became the first grappler to ink an exclusive deal with Dana White and Co.
Now, Musumeci is making it his duty to clean up the sport he loves so dearly.
“I feel like what I’m doing right now is definitely the most important thing for grappling in terms of having a stable platform,” Musumeci said on Wednesday during UFC 310 media day. “I feel like a lot of jiu-jitsu right now is very unstable. There’s a lot of horrible ethics, morals, and I hope now that with the UFC we can change that and make it a professional sport.
“Because it hasn’t been a professional sport, jiu-jitsu, with people they blatantly use [performance enhancing drugs]. They’re not athletes. They really don’t have the values of martial artists. I really just want to change that and give us this platform at UFC and become professionals” (h/t MMA Fighting).
Musumeci refrained from naming names but hopes that he can help the UFC grow the sport of BJJ and bring in other athletes who make it a priority to compete clean and avoid the very long list of practitioners who try to take chemically-induced shortcuts.
“People not on steroids,” Musumeci said emphatically when asked who the UFC should look to sign. “That’s pretty much what I would say but 99 percent of jiu-jitsu is on steroids. So at least them get off steroids a little bit, like a few months. They probably need like a year, six months to adjust and then maybe they could adjust with Darwinism.”
Mikey Musumeci sees signing with the UFC as his first step toward making BJJ great
Aside from trying to extinguish more of the seedy elements in the sport, Musumeci has a lot of personal goals he hopes to accomplish, including a potential transition to mixed martial arts.
Of course, the New Jersey native has a lot left to accomplish in jiu-jitsu, but Musumeci recognizes that signing with the UFC is a big first step towards meeting those goals.
“They want to make this professional also,” Musumeci said. “UFC’s a professional company. The way we’ve been in jiu-jitsu, we’ve been amateurs. We really are just in this barbaric amateur phase of jiu-jitsu. Now UFC is starting something professional. I’m so blessed for them for putting the effort into jiu-jitsu to change it. I’m so eager for them to do that.”
