Mikey Musumeci Wants Demetrious Johnson in a Custom-Rules Submission Grappling Match

This weekend, Mikey Musumeci aims to capture the inaugural ONE flyweight submission grappling championship, but afterward, he has his sights on a particular next step. Musumeci walked out for the first time to the One Championship circle at One 156 in April, when he submitted Japanese grappling legend Masakazu Imanari by rear-naked choke in their submission grappling match. A multiple-time Brazilian-jiu jitsu champion of Italian origin, Musumeci is scheduled to compete against Cleber Sousa at One on Prime Video 2 on Oct. 1 to establish the promotion's first-ever submission grappling titleholder. While Musumeci isn’t overlooking his upcoming challenge, he confessed that he would love to face current ONE flyweight kingpin “Mighty Mouse” in a custom-rules submission grappling match.

“He's my favorite MMA fighter. I'm a big fan of him and I'm also friends with him. I think he's amazing, but the biggest reason would be is we would be able to spread jiu-jitsu to the most audience ever if we did this match. We would make it special rules, of course. Maybe no leg locks or anything like that to make it more fair for him. For example, my last match with Imanari had 25 million views, I believe if I fought 'Mighty Mouse,' we could get over 100 million views with people watching. We would spread jiu-jitsu to so many more people, which is what our goal is now. That’s my main goal right now of competing, besides the ONE belt. After that, my goal is to just spread jiu-jitsu as much as I can and then get as many people watching jiu-jitsu, and possibly [training] jiu-jitsu, as I can.”

(00:00) Intro
(00:17) Preparing in Las Vegas
(01:12) Submitting Imanari
(01:45) Commenting on Imanari’s foot lock
(02:27) Competing for the first time inside a cage
(03:13) Taking on Cleber Sousa at One on Prime Video 2
(05:49) Whether he’s considering transitioning to MMA
(07:30) Calling out Demetrious Johnson for a submission grappling match
(08:56) Walking out to Bon Jovi
(09:28) The origin of his nickname, “Darth Rigatoni”
(10:11) Discussing pizza
(10:29) Outro