MIKEY MUSUMECI DOESN’T look like one of the most feared fighters on the planet at first glance. He’s a slight young guy with glasses, usually smiling and offering up his signature hand gesture (you know the emoji, at least: 🤌) to reference his Italian heritage and deep love of pizza and pasta.
Catch him on the mat at your local martial arts gym, though, and you’ll find yourself at the mercy of a terrifyingly efficient submission technician. The 28-year-old “Darth Rigatoni” is one of the most accomplished Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners in the world. He’s won five IBJJF World Championships and he’s currently the ONE Championship Submission Grappling Flyweight title-holder. Unfortunately for me, when Musumeci visited the MH Fitness Hub ahead of ONE 168 in Denver, I was meeting him on a mat—and I would be subjected to one of his super-effective submission moves, the closed-guard arm bar.
This finisher put me in a tough position, and one in which I’m not totally familiar. Most of my martial arts experience is with striking in boxing and Muay Thai. I’ve been coached a bit on grappling, but that was still from an MMA perspective where punching and kicking is still an option. Since Musumeci competes in ONE’s submission grappling division, that means he’s only using his jiu-jitsu to best his opponent—and I have no recourse other than to try to wriggle out of his grasp. As any of his seven opponents at ONE can attest (he’s got a 7-0 record with 5 submissions), that’s much easier said than done.
Thankfully, I wasn’t rolling against Musumeci to compete. He would teach me how to do the arm bar, and I would (hopefully) live through the demo with a new skill.
Mikey Musumeci’s Closed Guard Arm Bar
The Skill
First, Musumeci demonstrated exactly what it means to be in closed guard on bottom position. “Closed guard on bottom’s a great position, you’ll it even in MMA, because I can protect myself from getting strikes,” he said. “You can’t just stand up and punch me.”
What that looks like in practice is the person who will be eventually deploying the arm bar on their back on the mat, using their legs wrapped around their opponent to lock them into their guard. The grappler in bottom position is then able to “frame” their opponents biceps, preventing them from punching or elbowing them and controlling the match.
In practice, this meant that Musumeci could totally control my movements once I entered his guard. I outweigh him by around 70 pounds (his fight weight, that is), but I couldn’t budge from where he wanted me to be.
Thankfully, he was with me in teacher mode, not as the ruthless Darth Rigatoni. He walked me through the steps for the arm bar, which were simple to learn, but complicated to remember.
First, shake your opponent’s hand. In practice, you’re grabbing their arm, not actually grasping palms—but the introductory aspect helps to remember the first step. Next, grab their elbow with your other hand and place it in your lap. Align their hand, elbow, and shoulder. Then, lift your leg up over your opponent’s shoulder and lock your heels around their back. From there, shift your weight to the side, throw your leg over your opponent’s head, pinch your knees, and clamp your feet down. The final step: Press down with your hands and lift up with your hips. Keep putting the pressure on your opponent until they tap out or their arm breaks.
I got uncomfortably close to that fate during the first demo of the arm bar. I was a bit slower on the tap than I likely should have been, but thankfully there was no lasting damage—to my arm, at least. My pride was a slightly different matter.
The Drill
After learning the steps to throw the arm bar, I needed to reinforce the body position I would need to get my opponent in closed guard—and keep them there. To do that, Musumeci put me through a deceptively difficult drill that pushed my hips and adductor muscles to their limits.
Musumeci had a surprising reference to support this maneuver: the Adam Sandler classic Happy Gilmore. Much like Chubbs Peterson (Carl Weathers, RIP) teaches Sandler’s Gilmore that golfing is “all in the hips,” Musumeci taught me the same is true in throwing an arm bar, since the hips are essential for locking the legs to keep control of the opponent. “In jiu-jitsu, you’re using your whole body at once,” he says. “It’s a whole-body exercise.”
In practice, this wound up with me gripping a medicine ball between my legs as I scooted around the mat. This was a surprisingly tough; the key is, again, to lock the feet at the ankles, then squeeze the ball with the thighs throughout the entire period of the drill. The adductors aren’t the only muscles that are put to the test; my core was on fire by the end of the period. Immediately putting my arm bar to the test afterword was a tough task—but the real challenge was just about to start.
The Challenge
This all led up to the final stage: Musumeci challenged me to run through the drill for 30 seconds, then nail two out of three attempts at an arm bar. “Think of it like a cookbook,” he advised. Now, just to remember the steps of the recipe.
He started the timer, and my adductors and core were immediately on fire. I was concentrating on form—and then immediately had to rack my brain for the proper steps. The first attempt was a fail. Musumeci needed to “introduce himself” to me once again to jog my memory. After that (and with some extra assistance), I remembered well enough to get into position to make him tap out. I had learned the arm bar from Mikey Musumeci, giving me another deadly fight skill. At least that’s what I’ll tell myself.
I know that if we wound up on the mat without my training wheels and plenty of friendly assistance, Darth Rigatoni would be an impossible adversary for someone like me. Musumeci is one of the best in the world, after all—and his next ONE Championship opponent will be faced with a steep challenge to last to the final bell before tapping.
