Mikey Musumeci recently shared his thoughts about the current state of grappling – describing a sport running low on momentum after losing several of the athletes who fueled its growth.

Here is what Musumeci had to say in a recent interview:

Right now the state of grappling is really bad. I think that there were five people from the past generation when this growth of no-gi happened.

First of all, it’s because of Gordon Ryan I feel that no-gi exploded.
Shout out to Gordon Ryan. He deserves a lot of props for growing our sport, especially no-gi.

He continued, pointing to how much that momentum depended on a small group of athletes who have since stepped back:

But Gordon Ryan, Craig Jones, the Ruotolos, and me, I feel like really benefited from that time period.

And then what happened was Gordon stopped competing. Craig stopped competing. Ruotolo started focusing more on MMA.
So no-gi, unfortunately, everything’s phased out a little bit and we’re kind of in this dry area.

Musumeci elaborated on just how far the sport’s energy has dropped compared to before:

We’re in a really bad area in grappling right now. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it.
It just doesn’t feel like it used to.

You know, at one point grappling had so much buzz, so much energy, and it’s kind of less right now.
Even ADCC doesn’t feel like it used to, right? All these tournaments don’t.

He also pointed to a personality gap among current competitors as part of the broader problem:

We’re not getting the buzz from grappling athletes anymore. Jiu-Jitsu athletes, they all have no personalities.
They’re kind of like robots. There’s no appeal to it.

The grappling athletes don’t think in their mind, how can I be exciting to fans?
They just think in their mind, how do I win?

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