Mikey Musumeci recently talked about his frustrations with IBJJF during a recent episode of the Overdogs BJJ Podcast.
The conversation turned to rule sets when guest Jackson Nagai observed that modern competitors think too much about strategy rather than actually engaging. Musumeci agreed, pointing to the ruleset itself as the root cause.
“I think it’s the rule,” Nagai said. “The rules change the game. So we need a better rule to make people go forward.”
Musumeci backed this up with a direct observation from his own competitive experience.
“My experience competing in IBJJF, it’s what Jackson said, but nobody actually wants to fig ht. It’s all strategy. It’s so easy to lose in IBJJF.”
He pointed to Nagai’s own final at Panams as a perfect example of how the scoring system can distort reality.
“Jackson was dominating this guy. I watched this match… like 100% of the time dominating. Like if you didn’t know the scoring of IBJJF, you’d think the match was 100 to 0. But then because of the weird rules, he ends up down by like an advantage or something with like 15 seconds.”
Musumeci went further, explaining how the ruleset actively penalizes aggressive, attacking jiu-jitsu.
“It’s so easy to lose in the IBJJF ruleset because of how many variables there are of the advantages, the points, how actually attacking and doing jiu-jitsu doesn’t favor you. It makes it easier for you to lose.”
He described the strategic trap competitors face in his division.
“Everyone just plays strategy. Nobody even wants to fig ht in my divisions. Most of them are just trying to hold and play strategy. So I would always have to outstrategize them, get up ahead on the score, and then when they’re desperate and losing, they start figh ting me.”
“Then it’s easier for me to do jiu-jitsu with them because once they do jiu-jitsu for jiu-jitsu, I can attack, I can do things. But it’s very hard to attack somebody that’s just holding, that’s just not doing jiu-jitsu at all.”
One of his strongest criticisms was directed at the ability of referees to retroactively change scores late in a match.
“The worst thing I’ve seen with this with the points is how they could go back and change the score in points with 30 seconds left, 20 seconds left. So let’s say that I’m winning a match. I’m up two zero, two advantages on top, and I’m just staying on top. All of a sudden, the ref could come back and just change the whole score with 10 seconds left.”
