“That’s the right guy to be your champion” - Chael Sonnen hails Mikey Musumeci’s understanding of ONE’s grappling rules

Chael Sonnen hailed Mikey Musumeci’s cerebral performance that landed him his first-ever submission grappling world title belt under ONE Championship.

On September 30, the 26-year-old prodigy was crowned the new king of submission grappling after defeating former IBJJF rival Cleber ‘Clandestino’ Sousa by unanimous decision.

During the 10 minute match, the Italian-American flyweight was able to nullify any attempts made by Sousa from the guard position while imposing his own attacks to find a submission.

Mikey Musumeci’s clever strategy of offense vs. defense was not lost on Chael Sonnen, who watched the fight. Speaking on his YouTube channel, the American analyst examined some of Musumeci’s key strengths that helped him capture the win:

“When you have these long guys and you have something that I’m talking about called leverage, it’s true if you know how to use it. Mikey understood how to use it, and Mikey went on the attack - he went on the attack right from the beginning. Therefore he couldn’t be attacked, he was not being attacked. This whole thing was offense vs. defense and all his opponent was waiting for him to do was to slow down, and oh by the way, he never slows down. [If] he runs down the clock he’s going to win because he’s the one that attacked like this.”

Sonnen continued to praise Mikey Musumeci for executing his master plan seamlessly. He argued that having a thorough knowledge of ONE’s grappling rules and what the judges expected, is what makes him the perfect champion:

“This was the perfect plan by a guy who understood what the plan should be, what the strategy should be, he paid respect to the rules, he understood and listened when the judges told him what they were looking for. That’s the right guy to be your champion, but now he’s going to be hunted.”

Watch the full rant below:

---

Mikey Musumeci’s next outing could be a jiu-jitsu vs. sambo title match

As Chael Sonnen explained before, now that Mikey Musumeci is a world champion, he’s a walking target for new challengers.

The newest challenge Musumeci sees for himself is a BJJ vs sambo title match. Drawing inspiration from the recently announced inaugural ONE lightweight submission grappling world title matchup between BJJ prodigy Kade Ruotolo and sambo grappler Uali Kurzhev, Musumeci doesn’t mind having a similar matchup for his next title defense.

In the post-fight interview at ONE on Prime Video 2, 'Darth Rigatoni' said:

“I see myself facing ‘Mighty Mouse’ next or even possibly a sambo world champion like Ruotolo’s fighting next. It’s such a cool thing jiu-jitsu versus sambo in the submission grappling format, so I feel that would be a huge thing for our sport in general.”