Mikey Musumeci clears air on disaster in Denver: "ONE Championship NEVER forced me to do the 135 division"

Mikey Musumeci takes full responsibility for the dire events that occurred during his supposed co-main event match at ONE 168: Denver last Sept. 6 at the Ball Arena.

After his original opponent, Kade Ruotolo bowed out due to an injury he suffered at CJI, Musumeci insisted on defending his flyweight submission grappling crown against replacement Bebeto Oliveira.

Unfortunately, 'Darth Rigatoni' failed his weight and hydration tests, leading him to lose his belt on the scales.

A catchweight bout was being negotiated up until Mikey Musumeci was suddenly hospitalized, which effectively scrapped the match altogether at the last minute.

Test results confirmed that the American BJJ ace tore his lung after performing deep breathing exercises in Colorado's high altitude.

In a lengthy Instagram post, Mikey Musumeci broke his silence and made it clear that it was his decision to defend his belt since he was confident he could make the weight. He wrote:

"It wasn't my time yet. I just want to thank everyone for all the love, messages and support, I’m so grateful for how kind everyone has been to me 🙏🏻 I’m recovering super fast, all the air in my neck and chest is being reabsorbed back into my body with no complications, and I will be able to go back to training soon. What I want to talk about today is how God saved my life. First of all the condition that I got (pneumomediastinum) is super rare. 1 out of 44,000 hospital admissions per year!!! For this reason, it’s very difficult to even guess that I had it. I want to clarify that ONE Championship NEVER forced me to do the 135 division for this match."

The former flyweight submission grappling king continued:

"I’ve always made 135 rather easily and I was exactly where I needed to be in weight to make it. The pneumomediastinum had 0 to do with the cut, it had to do with the elevation change and my diaphragm breathing the doctors told me. (Bizarre right? 😭) I always did this breathing as a form of meditation before competitions, and the day before weigh ins, I was just doing it to unwind and relax my mind post-training, and all of a sudden my neck, throat, and chest got extremely sore. Again we thought it was just muscle fatigue from training and the cut! Tough it out right?"

Read Mikey Musumeci's full post here:

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Mikey Musumeci is grateful to be alive after massive health scare

While Mikey Musumeci feels bad for being unable to perform at ONE 168, he also sees it as a blessing in disguise.

'Darth Rigatoni' believes a divine power allowed him to escape what could have been a fatal scenario.

He wrote:

"I’m one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet and it takes a lot for me to pull out of a match. For some reason, I felt something was wrong that we didn’t know. But that was God protecting me, because again if I would have forced myself to compete at any weight with this condition/cut more that we didn’t know I had I could have collapsed my lung and died."

He added:

"So I say this again, God has everything happen for a reason; I’m alive today because of how everything turned out. It wasn’t my time to go yet and I’m so grateful and fortunate to be alive."