‘I Feel Years Ahead’ – Inside Mikey Musumeci’s Intense Training Camp For World Title Fight With Kade Ruotolo
BJJ superstar Mikey “Darth Rigatoni” Musumeci is pushing his body to the absolute limit as he prepares for the biggest challenge – and the biggest opportunity – of his decorated career.
On September 6 at ONE 168: Denver, Musumeci will move up three weight classes to challenge fellow American superstar Kade Ruotolo for the ONE Lightweight Submission Grappling World Title, marking his chance to become a two-division king.
That blockbuster matchup will go down in U.S. primetime at Ball Arena in Denver and represents one of the most important and intriguing contests in the history of submission grappling.
Given the magnitude of that match and the seemingly unmatched skill of his opponent, it’s no surprise that “Darth Rigatoni” is pulling out all the stops in his training camp.
Each week, “Darth Rigatoni” spends several days training in Las Vegas, sharpening his world-class submission skills at his home garage gym and at Faito Tamashii Combat Club. Along the way, he alternates between hard training sessions, strength and conditioning, and detailed film study.
The flyweight submission grappling king spoke to onefc.com about his intense schedule:
“It’d be about 10 to 12 hours total of the amount of work I’m putting in on these days of studying, training, everything.”
On the days he’s not in Las Vegas, Musumeci trains in Los Angeles under the watchful eye of all-time BJJ great Rubens “Cobrinha” Charles.
His primary training partner for those sessions is “Cobrinha’s” son – IBJJF European, Pan-American, and World Champion Kennedy Maciel.
For his part, Musumecis says the time spent with Maciel and “Cobrinha” is both grueling and technical:
“On Thursdays and Fridays, Kennedy and me go to war. We freaking kill each other. Like, we do, three hours of training, just me and him, and ‘Cobrinha’ supervising. But it’s basically 10-minute rounds of us trying to kill each other, figuring new things out.”
As always, the 28-year-old has been meticulous and detailed in his training as he works through the complexities of any and all positions he might find himself in against Ruotolo.
That careful, scientific approach has been fully embraced by “Cobrinha,” and the results speak for themselves. Musumeci started working with the living legend before his last match – a dominant submission win over the last man to defeat him, Gabriel Sousa.
“Darth Rigatoni” outlined the unique method that he’s been utilizing alongside “Cobrinha” and Maciel:
“In this training, the techniques that we figure out are insane because we’re just constantly changing things, constantly. I’ll be working one thing, and then Kennedy starts stopping what I’m working.
“Then all of a sudden, I’ll make an adjustment, then it’s working again. Then Kennedy stops it again. So then we just do this over and over, and it makes our level, like, another level. So it makes us develop things that I feel years ahead of what other people are doing right now.”
Musumeci Says Recovery Is The Most Challenging Part Of Camp
Mikey Musumeci’s rigorous and demanding training camp has him more confident than ever in his grappling and physical conditioning, but he admits to having trouble with one key aspect – recovering from sessions.
The New Jersey native explained:
“I don’t think I could be doing anything better than what I’m doing right now. I love it. The only thing that I’m struggling with is my recovery.
“It’s very difficult recovering when I’m training at this intensity – and I need to for lightweight because it’s more power. But the recovery is killing me a bit. So I’m really working hard to figure out how I could recover so I could keep doing this type of volume training.”
Grappling at a high level for hours on end, day in and day out, has been taxing on Musumeci’s body and nervous system.
As a natural athlete, he says that recovery and sleep are of the utmost importance, but that it’s difficult to relax without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs that other athletes might rely upon:
“I literally feel the cortisol in my body, like, peak high, and then I have to try to remove the cortisol with breathing, but it’s a constant battle. But, that’s what it takes, though, for me to become the level that I’m becoming, and to do it naturally without steroids.
“Recovery becomes almost like a training session to try to reset my nervous system from being so fried from the training I’m doing.”
Now just a month out from his highly anticipated World Title showdown with Kade Ruotolo, the challenger is in the thick of the hardest camp of his life.
In an effort to keep his training intensity at an all-time high, “Darth Rigatoni” is using everything at his disposal to recuperate from each session:
“A lot of sleeping, a lot of walking, a lot of sauna – all these things I’m trying. I’m eating more sugar sometimes, too, because the sugar helps me sleep. Like, sometimes if I’m not eating enough sugar, I’ll wake up starving still. So it’s a constant battle, but, yeah, that’s honestly where I’m at right now.”
