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At this stage in his career, Mikey Musumeci has nothing left to prove. Still, that hasn’t taken away from his love of training and competing.
Usually, you’d be hard pressed to find a time when the ONE flyweight submission grappling world champion isn’t on the mats, especially with his incredible work rate that has taken everyone by surprise.
This hasn’t been the case in recent times, however, and it’s not because of a lack of desire because ‘Darth Rigatoni’ would love nothing more than to be back rolling.
At ONE Fight Night 15, he once again competed inside the Circle although, this time around, it wasn’t to rack up another defense of his flyweight gold.
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Instead, in a dream match of sorts, he faced MMA and grappling legend Shinya Aoki up at a catchweight, submitting the Japanese icon with his own patented signature move, the Aoki lock.
After the match-up, Mikey Musumeci spoke about the adversity that he faced ahead of the contest with battling his own physical health to try and make it to fight night in shape to actually compete.
Having been extremely ill in the days before the contest, he did what he could to best prepare himself for the contest, went onto the mats and put on another show for the ONE Championship fans.
Since his latest win, Musumeci has been taking it easy, nursing himself back to 100 percent before returning to full training but fear not, the elite grappler is set to flick the switch in the coming weeks.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, he spoke about making the jump back to full “comp mode” now that he is well rested:
“My health was a little compromised this past month so I'm trying to just relax and chill until I get back to my health feeling 100 percent. And then I'll get back into the comp mode Mikey Musumeci”
Watch the full interview below:
North American viewers with an active Amazon Prime Video subscription can rewatch all the action from ONE Fight Night 15 via the free event replay.
