Tonight on Amazon Prime, ONE Championship is promoting three of the best grapplers competing today. Gabriel Sousa is rematching perhaps the best American jiujitsu player ever, Mikey Musumeci, and Kade Ruotolo is finally transitioning to MMA. The action looks great, but is this card just too little too late?

Mikey Musumeci is arguably the best American jiujitsu athlete ever. He’s won the IBJJF World Championships multiple times, as well as the Pan American and European championships. The guy is so technical he has a submission named after him.

Before Musumeci started competing in ONE, he was on a path to see how his jiujitsu worked against bigger athletes. Musumeci competes at 141, but was taking on and beating opponents that outweighed him by 20, 50, and even 100 pounds!

At his weight class, it wasn’t a matter of how he was going to win, but what new techniques he would teach us in victory.

In September 2021, FloGrappling’s WNO promoted a giant weekend-long tournament. Three men’s divisions and two women’s divisions would run for two days straight to crown five grappling champions.

Musumeci, again competing just above his normal weight, was matched against Gabriel Sousa.

Originally a tournament alternate, Sousa was brought in for his aggressive style. At the beginning of the match, that style looked to be playing right into Musumeci’s hands and feet.

When Sousa tried dropping his weight and passing from closer, things got worse for him and his legs.

Musumeci is a highly skilled leg locker so he was happy to keep spamming leg attacks. Unfortunately for him, time is generally never on the side of the guard player.

Sousa had a tricky problem in front of him. Whenever he got close enough to attack, Musumeci would pull him into a leg entanglement. If he stayed on the outside, Musumeci would just invert and rotate to keep Sousa in front of him.

Musumeci’s guard is challenging for a few reasons, the least of which being his actual limb length. His legs are so relatively short that he can reinsert them from odd angles and stop his opponents from getting around to pin him.

Musumeci’s relativel short legs also mean he cannot always connect to his opponents from a distance with his hooks. Sousa used this to his advantage.

Connection is a fundamental principle of jiu-jitsu. You need full hands and firm feet to exert force. That means, to exert force on your opponent, you need to have your hands and feet connected to your opponent, or the floor, simultaneously.

The degree of control you have over your opponent is directly related to how effectively your hands and feet are firmly connected to your opponent and/or the floor. Conversely, if your hands are connected to your opponent, but your feet are disconnected from them or the floor, you cannot generate enough force to move them around and attack. Sousa exploited this principle by simply staying so far away from Musumeci that he could not connect to him effectively and generate enough force to threaten.

Sousa spent about 8 minutes running side to side to tire Musumeci’s legs out. After a momentary lapse in attention, Sousa pinned Musumeci’s leg to the mat and hopped to the north-south position.

Sousa maintained the position by holding Musumeci’s hips and lifting his arms and shoulders. When Musumeci tried to circle his arms in to build frames and reclaim his guard Sousa simply cleared the hands to attack a north south choke.

The audience was stunned. Everyone knew Sousa was tough, but he made Musumeci’s guard look simple.

Since this match, Sousa went on to take second at the ADCC World Championships. The outside passing strategy he employed in this match became a common attack from him and many of his fellow ADCC competitors.

Musumeci went on to sign with ONE Championship. While it’s been great for his wallet, ONE hardly has enough good grapplers to give him matches. You’d like to say that this match is the start of ONE signing more grapplers to build the roster but that hope goes out the window when you look at ONE’s event calendar.

Before Gabriel Sousa and Mikey Musumeci square off, Kade Ruotolo will make his MMA debut. Ruotolo might just be the hottest prospect in MMA.

Kade is one half of the infamous Ruotolo twins. Both of these brothers participated in the WNO’s aforementioned tournament. Kade’s brother Tye ended up taking the 185-pound belt that night. Kade claimed the belt that Musumeci and Sousa were fighting for that night.

Since the twins claimed those titles, they have both set major records. Tye became the youngest IBJJF World Champion after winner Mica Galvao failed a drug test, and Kade became the youngest ADCC World Champion. The Ruotolo twins are two of the best, most accomplished grapplers in the world, and they’re only 21.

Part of the reason they signed with ONE is because they both want to transition to MMA. Kade is up first this week, but when you look at ONE’s calendar you can’t help but be confused, worried, or both.

Both Musumeci and Kade have their next matches booked already. According to ONE’s website, they will be grappling in 3 months against…each other?

Generally, combat sports athletes plan 8 to 12-week camps to get in shape for fights. ONE is giving two of their marquee competitors that, barely, and expecting them both to leave their prior matches tonight unscathed. Not to mention, Kade now outweighs Musumeci by about 30 pounds.

I’m happy that Musumeci and Kade are both getting paid. I’m excited to see Kade start his MMA career too. But now I’m just not sure how long ONE’s operations can continue for.

Many of ONE’s MMA fighters have been unable to get fights. Some are starting to get more vocal about how they’re being mistreated. Sage Northcutt took to Instagram to say the following after he pulled out from his previous fight due to an issue between ONE and his cornerman:

We can only be hopeful that ONE’s reduced event calendar and shrinking roster doesn’t impact their fighters’ careers.