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Mikey Musumeci

“Darth Rigatoni”

Source: jitsmagazine.com

Mikey Musumeci won five IBJJF world titles at black belt, then became UFC BJJ's first bantamweight champion with a heel hook in 2025.

Biography

Mikey Musumeci, born Michael Musumeci Jr. in Marlboro, New Jersey, in 1996, is an American jiu-jitsu black belt who won IBJJF world titles as a juvenile, at purple and brown belt, and five times at black belt. In 2025 he became the first bantamweight champion of UFC BJJ, the UFC's grappling league. The route there ran through a long line of teachers and teams, and through moves to Florida, Nevada and Singapore. He started jiu-jitsu at the age of four. His first teacher was Fernando "Cabeça", at Fatijo's Martial Arts Academy, and he stayed with him until he was ten, when the family moved to Wellington, Florida. There he trained for a short time with Marcelo Ribeiro, who soon left for Texas, and then with Emyr "Shark" Bussade of American Top Team, who gave him his green and blue belts. Rafael and Guilherme Mendes came to Bussade's academy to teach seminars, and the connection outlasted his time there: for years he kept going to their seminars, took private lessons with them and visited their Art of Jiu-Jitsu academy. The family moved again, further south, and he joined Javill Byron at WMB Miami. Byron promoted him to purple belt after he won a second juvenile world title at blue belt. Once the family was back in Boca Raton, he resumed training with Bussade, now at ATT Wellington, and also worked with Jonatas Gurgel at ATT Aventura, while he and his sister Tammi Musumeci taught at the Jaco Training Center. It was at Jaco that they met Gilbert Burns, who became his training partner and mentor. According to BJJ Heroes, he won the IBJJF juvenile no-gi world title in 2011 and juvenile world titles in 2012 and 2013. In the adult division he won the World Championship at purple belt in 2014, competing for Atos, and at brown belt in 2015, for American Top Team. Guilherme Mendes gave him his brown belt on the podium after the 2014 title. After the 2015 title, Gurgel and Burns promoted him to black belt together. He was 18. BJJ Heroes describes his colored-belt game as leaning on the berimbolo and the crab ride, and lists the berimbolo as his favorite technique. In his first year at black belt he won the 2016 Pan Championship at roosterweight, with Lucas Pinheiro second. At that year's World Championship, his first as a black belt, he lost on advantages to Isaac Doederlein in the 64 kg quarterfinal. In July 2016 he and Tammi left Atos and the Art of Jiu-Jitsu for Caio Terra Association. In a joint statement to FloGrappling they described the change as a personal choice of the team where they felt most at home, said they held nothing against their former teams, and explained that they had moved to Henderson, Nevada, and would also train with Terra's team. Competing for Brasa CTA, he won the 2016 World No-Gi Championship at light-featherweight, with João Miyao second. By January 2017 FloGrappling was writing about his rivalry with Miyao. It called Musumeci "The Berimbolo Kid" and counted four meetings, all won by him: the finals of the 2015 and 2016 American Nationals, the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam in Los Angeles, and the No-Gi World final, which ended 10–8. At the World Championship he then won light-featherweight in 2017, with Miyao second again, and in 2018, with Ari Farias second. For 2019 he moved down to roosterweight and won the world title again. In the final he caught Rodnei Barbosa in a straight ankle lock, which the IBJJF regarded as the fastest submission in its history, Jits Magazine reported, replacing a mark Rodrigo "Comprido" Medeiros had set at the 1999 Worlds. He also won the 2020 European Championship at light-featherweight. In March 2020 he and Tammi left Caio Terra Association; he stressed that there had been no conflict and thanked Terra. His next world title came in 2021, again at roosterweight and with Bruno Malfacine second, and this time he represented Pedigo Submission Fighting. The four gi titles and the 2016 no-gi title add up to five IBJJF world titles at black belt, the number UFC.com used when it called him a five-time world champion. In FloGrappling's account, no American before him had won a second IBJJF black belt world title, and BJJ Heroes counts him as the fourth North American man to win one. He, Tammi and Dante Leon had announced in October 2021 that they were joining Heath Pedigo's team. Jits Magazine tied his move to his stated wish to improve his heel hooks and leglock game now that the IBJJF allowed those attacks for adult black belts. That year Gabriel Sousa submitted him with a north-south choke in the lightweight title tournament at the Who's Number One (WNO) Championships, but in October he came back to win WNO's new bantamweight title by submitting Richard Alarcon with the Mikey lock. He beat Sousa in a 2024 rematch at ONE 167 with a calf slicer. Of the 36 submission wins BJJ Heroes records for him, the botinha footlock accounts for the most, eight, followed by chokes from the back and the Mikey lock. In early 2022 he signed an exclusive contract with ONE Championship. His debut, at ONE 156 in April, was against the leglock specialist Masakazu Imanari. After the two traded attacks on the legs, Musumeci used the entanglement to take Imanari's back, finished with a rear-naked choke and earned a $50,000 performance bonus. Days later he relocated to Singapore and began training at Evolve MMA. Chatri Sityodtong, who founded both ONE and Evolve, said Musumeci had come to train, compete and teach, and praised his technical detail after training with him. In October 2022, at ONE on Prime Video 2, he met Cleber Sousa, the last man to have beaten him at light-featherweight, in the first submission grappling world title match ONE had staged. Musumeci attacked from open guard, turned upside down into the legs again and again as Sousa tried to pass, and won the decision and the inaugural flyweight submission grappling title. He defended it in August 2023 against the MMA fighter Jarred Brooks with a triangle armbar from closed guard. Two months later he moved up in weight for a non-title match with Shinya Aoki and submitted him with the Aoki lock, the footlock named after Aoki himself. His nickname, "Darth Rigatoni", came from a fan at one of his superfights, late in his career. Jits Magazine reads it as a Star Wars reference mixed with a nod to his Italian heritage and his love of pasta. In February 2024 he announced that he would train under Rubens "Cobrinha" Charles and compete for his academy. The move grew out of a visit to Cobrinha's academy, where he helped Cobrinha's son Kennedy Maciel get ready for the ADCC South American Trials. That month Cobrinha awarded him the second and third degrees of his black belt at the same time. In his statement on the promotion, Musumeci said he had been training for 23 years, had been a black belt for nearly ten years, and had been through many ups and downs in the sport. His time in ONE ended the same year. After he missed weight for a late replacement match, ONE removed his title, and in November he announced that he was leaving the promotion. Jits Magazine described him as ONE's longest-reigning champion up to that point. Later that month it reported that he was the only athlete Dana White had publicly confirmed for an exclusive contract with the UFC's planned grappling league. His first match under the new deal headlined UFC Fight Pass Invitational 9 on 5 December 2024, where he beat Felipe Machado 2–0 on points in overtime. Before the first UFC BJJ event, in June 2025, UFC.com presented him as the face of the new format. He had coached one of the teams on the reality series UFC BJJ: Road to the Title, and the site noted that he had not lost at 135 pounds in eight years. Musumeci told the site that as a boy who followed the UFC he had never imagined grappling on its cards, and that headlining the event was the most pressure of his life. Because he was not the macho fighter type, he said, he thought he could bring the sport to a wider audience. On 25 June 2025, at UFC BJJ 1 in Las Vegas, he became the first UFC BJJ bantamweight champion. His opponent, Rerisson Gabriel, had coached the rival team on the show; after repeated leg attacks Musumeci finished him with a heel hook at 1:12 of the third round. On the same card two members of Team Musumeci met for the first lightweight title, which Carlos Henrique won against Danilo Moreira. In 2025 he also beat Keven Carrasco with a Mikey lock at UFC BJJ 3, according to BJJ Heroes. At UFC BJJ 5 in February 2026 he faced Scotland's Shay Montague, an IBJJF no-gi world champion, worked mostly on the upper body and then finished with a straight ankle lock in the second round. At UFC BJJ 8 in May he caught Kevin Dantzler in a heel hook at 2:15 of the first round, his third straight title defense. In 2026, on his Overdogs podcast, he criticized the IBJJF ruleset for rewarding strategy over attacking, saying that in his divisions "nobody actually wants to fight". For UFC BJJ 11 he faced an opponent from MMA. UFC featherweight Bryce Mitchell had publicly criticized Musumeci's grappling style, and Musumeci answered that he would neither pull guard nor use leglocks against him. He moved up to featherweight to headline the event on 24 September 2026 and, having agreed not to use leglock submissions, won a unanimous decision after three rounds. Alongside the grappling he has been preparing for MMA. In May 2026, on the Overdogs BJJ podcast, he said that former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson would mentor him through the move, and admitted that his striking still needed work. After beating Mitchell he said he planned to speak to the UFC about vacating the bantamweight title, since he had already won every title he wanted in his weight class, and repeated his aim of making his professional MMA debut before the end of 2026.

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