Mikey Musumeci Condemns the 106-0 Match — 'That's Not Skill, That's Bullying'

A scoreline circulated through the BJJ community that sparked one of those rare moments when the sport's biggest names actually say what everyone's thinking. 106-0. Then a submission to end it.

Ethan Major, a Canadian black belt, had built a 106-point lead against his opponent in an IBJJF-style tournament match and then finished him by submission. Not because it was his only option. Because he got around to it. He won the finals 113-0. Also by submission.

The clips made their rounds online. The community weighed in with the usual mix of hot takes. And then Mikey Musumeci — the reigning ONE Championship flyweight world champion and currently the sport's most visible face — said what a lot of people were already thinking, but few were willing to put their name behind:

"I really don't think that that should be celebrated. I think that that's ridiculous, and I think that that's bullying."

He didn't stop there. The score itself, Musumeci argued, was a tell of something deeper. "If you're trying to humiliate somebody scoring a billion points on them, it actually looks bad on you because it shows that you're not able to submit them." He continued with a theory about the type of person who does this: "Typically, the person that will do this is a frustrated person that couldn't even win their division anyway."

But then he added a carve-out, just to keep things interesting: "Unless the person was a complete asshole, then maybe they deserve it."

What became clear in the aftermath was that Musumeci was simultaneously right and wrong in ways that exposed how the community thinks about rules, sportsmanship, and what actually needs to change.

The Defense Is Technically Accurate

Major, for what it's worth, competed entirely within the rules as written. IBJJF points format had no mercy rule. There was no scoring cap, no mechanism that says you've dominated enough and now you're required to finish. There was no freeze at 30 points up that triggers automatic victory. The clock ran. You could score. Major used every second of that clock, and the rulebook had nothing to say about it.

One commenter summed up the institutional problem this way: "The only one who should be punished here is the black belt who gave the other guy his brown belt." Dark. Possibly accurate as a character judgment. But ultimately beside the central point of whether Major should have chosen to finish sooner.

Here's what was indisputable: Major played the game the ruleset allowed him to play. He didn't violate a single rule. He didn't stall. He didn't sit idle. He scored points continuously and legally until he decided the match was over, at which point he submitted his opponent. The rulebook was silent on his choices, which means technically, legally, his choices were fine.

Where Mikey's Argument Actually Falls Apart

But this is where Musumeci's critique, for all its moral clarity, started to crack under scrutiny.

Musumeci said that running up 106 points "shows that you're not able to submit them." The problem: Major did submit both opponents. That's not inability. That's sequence. That's a deliberate choice about when to end the match. He scored 106 times and then decided he was finished. He scored 113 in the finals and made the same call.

This wasn't someone hunting a submission he couldn't find. It wasn't a case of a competitor who tried to finish and failed, then had to settle for points. It was someone who — by his own actions — demonstrated he was capable of submitting whenever he wanted. The submission came. It just came late.

Musumeci's psychological profile was also worth examining: "a frustrated person that couldn't even win their division anyway." Here's where the description didn't match the actual person. Major won the division. Twice. By submission both times. The frustrated-loser profile didn't fit the winner who actually finished his matches. It was a compelling theory about a type of competitor, but it wasn't the right explanation for this specific case.

The behavior looked bad — Musumeci got that right. But "it's a frustrated guy who couldn't win anyway" was just the wrong explanation for someone who did win, did finish, and simply chose his own timeline.

The Deterrence Point Is Where It Gets Real

But Musumeci landed something sharper, something that actually mattered for the sport's health: "It deters people from competing."

This is the line that cuts to the bone. The 106-0 match happened in adult black belt — people who trained seriously for a decade to earn that rank. These aren't white belts. These are people who invested a significant portion of their lives into this pursuit. If the competitive ecosystem at elite levels produces matches where a 106-point gap opens before a submission, that tells you something important about who's choosing to compete and who already decided it wasn't worth it.

BJJ's black belt competitive pool was thin. The middle of the bracket — people who train seriously but aren't hyper-specialized competitors, the core community of people who show up every Saturday — was drying up. The pipeline from brown belt into meaningful black belt competition had been narrowing for years. And when you're a serious recreational black belt in your 30s or 40s, and you see what happens at the top, the math became very clear very fast. Training for ten years and then getting scored on 106 times before being submitted was an expensive way to have a bad Saturday. The calculus discouraged everyone except the people at the absolute top, who were the ones running up the score in the first place.

A 106-0 loss wasn't just demoralizing. It was the data point the recreational black belt used to decide whether to register for next year's tournament. It was the story that traveled through the gym. It was the reason someone quit. And you could trace some of the shrinkage in the black belt bracket directly to conversations that started with "Did you see that match?" followed by "Yeah, I'm not doing that."

Musumeci was right that this had consequences for the sport. The problem was that those consequences were often invisible to the people at the top who were producing the high scores.

But the Culprit Is the Format, Not the Competitor

Here's what almost nobody said in the conversations afterward: Sub-only format doesn't produce 106-0 matches. That's because there's nothing to accumulate in sub-only. You can dominate someone for fifteen minutes. Without a finish, you don't win. The format rewards what the sport is literally named for: submissions.

IJJF points format had no mercy rule. It had no early-submission bonus that incentivizes finishing quickly. It had no differential cap — no "we're 30 points up, clock's running, this is enough." If you can score, the rules say keep scoring. Major didn't break the format. He optimized it.

If the community actually wanted this behavior to stop happening, condemning Ethan Major's character wasn't the fix. The real question — the one almost nobody was asking in the weeks after this went down — was why the format had no ceiling. Why there was no mercy rule. Whether a cap at 30 points up or a time bonus for early submissions might fundamentally change what behavior gets rewarded. That conversation wasn't happening. It was easier to find someone to blame and settle for moral outrage than to question whether the rules themselves should change.

The community would settle on an answer about Major's character, leave the rules exactly as they were, and then be genuinely shocked when someone did it again next year.

Mikey's Right — and Pointing at the Wrong Target

His moral instinct was correct. If you can end a match and choose not to — because you're enjoying the scoring, or enjoying the gap, or enjoying the humiliation — that's a character statement. The rules allow it. That doesn't make it a good idea. That doesn't make it something to celebrate.

The "played within the rules" defense got you exactly six inches in any serious conversation. Rules set the floor of acceptable behavior. They're the minimum. They don't define sportsmanship or character. Every sport has competitors who play within the rules but violate cultural norms about how the game should be played. Running up the score in basketball. Throwing the ball away in soccer when someone's injured. Running up the score is the right term for this, and only some sports enforce it through the ruleset.

Musumeci was right that this shouldn't be celebrated. He was right to say something publicly. He was right that it's a form of running up the score and that the cultural norm against it should matter. He was wrong about where the actual fix lived.

The Inevitable Repeat

Somewhere in Canada right now, someone is drilling takedowns. They're getting ready to enter a tournament. They're going to score on a person 112 times before submitting them, and everyone will pretend like it's a surprise. The format guarantees it. The community will be shocked. The moral condemnation will circle again. And nothing will change because the rules still won't have a ceiling.

Major did exactly what the ruleset incentivized. Musumeci was right to call it out. But until someone asks why the format allows it in the first place, we're just playing the same cycle over again every time someone optimizes their way to an ugly scoreline.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Mikey Musumeci Condemns 106-0 BJJ Match: 'That's Not Skill – That's Bullying'
• Musumeci Delivers a Takedown of the Competitor Who Won Match 108-0, Claims This Constitutes Bullying
• New World Record: BJJ Black Belt Defeats Opponent 106-0 in Wild Match