Grappling ace Mikey Musumeci has been an advocate for a clean sport in the jiu-jitsu world, and now that he’s signed with the UFC, he hopes it will help transcend that world moving forward.
Musumeci competes for the promotion’s inaugural bantamweight title on Wednesday night at UFC BJJ 1 against rising star Rerisson Gabriel. Three titles will be on the line at the event.
For Musumeci, having a clean sport is one of the main motivations to signing exclusively with the UFC as they added something new to their combat portfolio, and also revealed that the promotion will take part in the UFC’s drug-testing protocols.
“That was one of the reasons I even went to UFC,” Musumeci told MMA Fighting. “I would have not went if they were not enforcing drug testing. For me, being a natural athlete my whole life, I really want to change our sport and get rid of all the steroids and all these bad things in our sport right now. It became acceptable for people to do all these things, and I want to get rid of that now, and I want it to be a professional sport just like NFL, NBA.
“Now people will still take steroids and cheat the system, but let them spend a lot of money to cheat the system. At least let them have to spend the money. So, at least now we’ll be more legitimate and professional, and that’s what we’re working towards. In 2026, they’re going to start drug testing, and I’ll be a lot stronger in my matches when they start.”
UFC BJJ 1 is the culmination of the promotion’s first season of UFC BJJ: Road to the Title, a reality show similar to The Ultimate Fighter.
The program introduced a new UFC BJJ octagon — with a ramp-like structure on the outside to force action — along with a new championship belt that will be awarded to all three new champions.
With everything in play, Musumeci wholeheartedly agrees he made the right choice to be a part of the UFC’s new project.
“Man, so it’s the most meaningful thing I could probably do in my life,” Musumeci said. “We’re starting this program from scratch. This is UFC BJJ 1. I got together with Hunter, Claudia and [others from UFC] at the end of November, December time, and we formulated a plan how we want to change and grow grappling. Because the old way of grappling, it was not really appealing. There’s just so many problems with it with matches stopping, resets, boring matches, people stalling, so it wasn’t really appealing to anyone.
“So we really wanted to get together and figure out a way that we can make this actually exciting and make it a platform that’s actually professional and long term where competitors could compete in and make money. And I really feel like we did that now. It’s like the old, Royce Gracie days. It literally says ‘1’ on [the event title]. It’s like the beginning of UFC, so it’s crazy.”
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