Mikey Musumeci Is Training Wrestling and Boxing for an MMA Debut — The Butt-Scoot Champion Is Tired of Being Called a Wimp

Mikey Musumeci has five BJJ world titles. He's the current UFC BJJ Bantamweight Champion. He's arguably the most technically complete submission grappler alive at his weight, and he's spent the last decade proving it in a way that looks almost unfair — feet in the air, hips low, legs everywhere, ratcheting down leg locks until even elite competitors run out of options.

He is also, apparently, extremely tired of being called a wimp.

"I've just been called a butt scooter and like a wimp so long," Musumeci told reporters, "that I just want to go out there and just scrap."

That's the whole story. The wrestling camp and the boxing footwork and the trip to Dagestan he's been planning — all of it is downstream of that one quote. The best submission grappler alive at 125 pounds looked at his resume and decided the public didn't respect it. He's probably right. That's the uncomfortable part.

The training

The MMA transition isn't just talk. Musumeci has been training in Las Vegas alongside high-level fighters and has been specific about what he's adding to his game. "I definitely have to keep learning more wrestling and I'm learning basics of boxing right now," he said in a February interview with BJJDoc. He's also planning to visit Dagestan for additional time with fighters from that camp.

He trained with UFC Bantamweight contender Umar Nurmagomedov and came away calling it a fundamental style shift. "Dagestani Mikey" is how he's framing the approach: constant forward pressure, top control, wrestling-first entries instead of the guard-pull-to-leg-lock sequence that made him famous.

For anyone who has watched Musumeci compete, this is roughly as surprising as a Michelin-starred chef announcing he's been spending weekends on nachos. The issue isn't that nachos are bad. It's that you wonder what was missing.

The decision to seek out Dagestan training camps represents something deeper than just picking up new techniques. Dagestan has produced some of the most wrestling-heavy fighters in modern MMA — the region's tradition of combat sports is built on a completely different foundation than Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Where BJJ evolved from Japanese judo and catch wrestling, Dagestan's wrestling lineage comes from sambo and freestyle wrestling, disciplines where the standup phase is considered non-negotiable. The fact that Musumeci is willing to travel there, to immerse himself in a completely foreign combat philosophy, signals how serious he is about this transition. It's not a weekend boxing class. It's a fundamental recalibration.

The reputation problem

Butt-scooting is exactly what it sounds like: dropping to the floor instead of engaging in a takedown, then pulling guard. It's a legitimate strategy — Musumeci's results make that case better than any argument could — but it reads as passive even when it isn't. Especially to MMA fans and wrestlers who treat the standup phase as the actual contest.

Jarred Brooks has been among the more vocal critics. The broader complaint from MMA-first audiences is simpler: if you won't fight for position standing up, have you really won anything?

That complaint ignores that submission grappling and MMA are different sports with different demands, the same way asking why a marathon runner won't sprint is technically a question but not a useful one. But Musumeci isn't in a position to ignore it. He's signed exclusively with the UFC. The UFC's audience is primarily MMA fans. His path to relevance runs directly through winning over people who currently see him as a mat-level puzzle piece.

The criticism, though, reveals something more fundamental about how combat sports audiences consume and value competition. There's a deeply rooted belief that "real fighting" requires the standup phase. It's baked into how we talk about combat sports — phrases like "he took it to the ground" are used as explanations or sometimes even excuses, implying that the true test of a fighter happens standing up. This bias exists despite decades of evidence that highly technical grapplers can dominate MMA. Anderson Silva faced similar skepticism early in his career. So did Demian Maia. So did virtually every elite grappler who ever tried to break into the sport.

Musumeci's case is unique because he's not just facing skepticism — he's facing mockery. Butt-scooter isn't a technical critique. It's a punchline. And punchlines, in the modern fight world, have real consequences. They affect sponsorships, media coverage, and ultimately, how many people tune in to watch you compete.

"I want to fight in the future. I would love to," he said. "I'm doing an MMA fight soon." That was the statement. The announcement hasn't consistently materialized as a confirmed opponent and date, but the training has been undeniable. Every session in Las Vegas, every round with Nurmagomedov, every meeting with Dagestan coaches is Musumeci putting his money where his mouth is.

What MMA actually looks like

Musumeci would fight at strawweight (125 pounds). At that weight class, his ground game is a superpower. Nobody at 125 pounds is going to submit Mikey Musumeci once he gets his hooks in. The question has always been whether he can get the fight to the ground against opponents who know exactly what he wants to do and have been training specifically to stop it.

The answer depends entirely on the wrestling, which is why the Las Vegas camp makes absolute sense even before any fight is announced. You don't learn a takedown in a month. You learn not to be embarrassed by your takedown in a month. The actual competency — the timing, the level changes, the grip fighting, the setups, the ability to chain techniques together — takes years to develop to the point where you're competitive against other trained athletes.

This is where Musumeci's willingness to train with elite wrestling backgrounds becomes crucial. Nurmagomedov and the Dagestan camps aren't teaching him flashy techniques. They're teaching him wrestling philosophy: the idea that position comes before submission, that control of the center of the mat matters more than anything else, that you dictate the fight's location rather than waiting for your opponent to make a mistake.

It's fundamentally different from how elite BJJ practitioners typically approach grappling. In submission grappling, you can be incredibly defensive, incredibly patient, and let your opponent make mistakes. In MMA, you have striking to worry about. You can't stall indefinitely. You can't pull guard from the clinch and expect the referee to stop the action while you figure out what to do next. The pressure is constant and linear.

And here's what's strange about all of it: Musumeci is already one of the most effective grapplers in the world using exactly the techniques he's being criticized for. The butt-scoot-to-leg-lock sequence isn't a defensive strategy. It's a weapon. It's a calculated choice to enter the position where he's most dangerous. He won five world titles with it. He's changing it, or at least supplementing it, not because it doesn't work in pure grappling, but because people don't like watching it. He's not fixing something that's broken. He's repackaging something that's already extraordinary because the audience has decided they prefer a different presentation.

The part nobody wants to say

BJJ has been arguing about its own identity forever. Martial art or sport? Does the standup phase count if the ruleset doesn't require it? Every answer implies different values, and different techniques get rewarded depending on which framing wins.

Musumeci's career has been the clearest answer to that: technique wins matches, aesthetics are optional. Win the match, it doesn't matter how. Five world titles should settle it.

Instead, he's in Las Vegas learning how to throw a jab.

The broader implication here is troubling for the sport of BJJ itself. If one of the most accomplished competitors the sport has produced feels compelled to completely restructure his training around standup fighting just to gain respect, what does that say about how the grappling community is perceived? It suggests that technical excellence in pure grappling is considered a consolation prize rather than the pinnacle of the sport. It suggests that no matter how dominant you are within the rules of BJJ, there's an asterisk attached unless you can also prove yourself in a "real" fight.

This dynamic has been creeping into BJJ for years. The sport's biggest stars now regularly cross over to MMA or grappling rule sets that emphasize wrestling and takedowns. Instructors at high-level academies spend significant resources teaching wrestling to their students, not necessarily because it makes them better grapplers in a pure sense, but because they understand that the sport's cultural capital increasingly depends on the ability to prove yourself in multiple contexts.

Musumeci's transition represents the logical endpoint of this trend: when the only way to be taken seriously as a grappler is to compete outside of grappling.

The redemption question

If the MMA debut goes well, this becomes a redemption arc in the way sports fans love. The technical wizard proves he can scrap. The doubters are silenced. Musumeci gets to walk away from the interview satisfied that he's proven something.

If it doesn't go well, it's a cautionary story about letting critics set your training agenda. It's a reminder that you can't actually prove your worth to people who've already decided how they want to feel about you. There will always be someone saying that MMA is different from BJJ, that success in one doesn't translate, that you need more time, that the competition wasn't tough enough.

Either way, the fact that it's happening at all is the tell: in combat sports, it's never enough to win. You also have to win in a way people don't mock. You have to win in a way that fits the narrative people want to tell about fighting. You have to win in a way that looks like they think fighting should look.

Musumeci is trying to fix that. Starting from the ground up — which, yes, is where he's always been most comfortable, and where he's achieved everything worth achieving. But now he's adding what the audience demanded all along: the ability to stand up and punch someone in the face while getting there. Whether that actually makes him a better fighter is almost beside the point. It makes him a more culturally legible one. In 2026, that's become the same thing.

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

Sources

• Mikey Musumeci Eyes MMA Debut: 'I Want To Go Out There And Scrap'
• Mikey Musumeci Is Transitioning Into MMA: We'll Announce Soon
• The Birth of 'Dagestani Mikey': Mikey Musumeci Announces Radical Style Shift After Training With Umar Nurmagomedov
• Mikey Musumeci Excited For 'Opportunity To Fight MMA In The UFC'