Most pundits are giving Demian Maia little or no chance to unseat middleweight champ Anderson Silva at UFC 112.
This is in spite of the fact that Demian Maia is one of the most credentialed jiu jitsu practitioners to ever fight for a UFC title. Maia has won the world jiu jitsu title three times and has also won the Abu Dhabi Combat Club submission grappling championship. Forget BJJ black belts like Thales Leites and Rousimar Palhares. Anderson Silva may have excellent jiu jitsu, but Maia is on a different plane as a grappler. He’s in that rarefied air where only the best of the best contend. His peers are Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, Roger Gracie, Xande Ribeiro and Marcelo Garcia. And not only is Maia among the very elite of the jiu jitsu world, he’s shown that he is the rare fighter who goes for the kill every time out with 8 of his 12 wins coming via submission and four of those subs sweet enough to win the UFC Submission of the Night bonus.
The overwhelming odds in Silva’s favor are set despite the fact that Silva isn’t the most difficult fighter to take down. Because of his confidence in his jiu jitsu skills, Silva is very aggressive with his striking and has there fore been taken down by Travis Lutter, Nate Marquardt, Dan Henderson, and even poor Thales Leites managed to get Silva to the floor. And as formidable as each of those fighters are on the ground, Maia is in a whole ‘nother league.
There are two reasons why people are less intrigued by this fight than they should be:
- The memory of Maia getting KTFO’d by Nate Marquardt at UFC 102 is very fresh in people’s memory. In that fight, Maia got sloppy and aggressive on the feet and threw three straight low kicks at Marquardt while dropping his hands each time. On the third kick, Marquardt blasted Maia with a right hand that ended the fight. Silva is a far more dangerous striker than Nate the Great.
- The colossal dud of a fight that was Thales Leites vs Anderson Silva at UFC 97. Even though Maia is head and shoulders above Leites, fans have a “once-bitten-twice-shy” attitude about seeing Silva in the cage with a Brazilian jiu jitsu master. No one wants to see a five round butt scooting vs knee punching exhibition again.
But there is nothing in Maia’s history to indicate he’ll do anything but fight hard with a kill or be killed mentality. And unlike many BJJ-based fighters, Maia has a very innovative bag of tricks to get a fight to the ground. He’s been featured in a couple of technique posts here before: Demian Maia’s Bait and Switch by Mike Fagan and this Judo Chop on the half-guard to dogfight take down he pulled on Nate Quarry.
So review those and then join me for a look at how he managed to take down and submit the decorated Greco-Roman wrestler Chael Sonnen in the full entry. Con animated gifs and a break down of Maia’s wrestling by Earl Smith of the great Division 1 College Wrestling web site.
by Kid Nate on Apr 9, 2010 4:00 PM EDT in Technique
Tags: Anderson, BJJ Black belt, Chael, chop, Dan, Demian, Garcia, Gracie, grappler, Henderson, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Judo Chop, Leites, Lutter, Maia, Marcelo, Marquardt, Nate, Palhares, Ribeiro, Roger, Ronaldo, Rousimar, Silva, Sonnen, Souza, Thales, Travis, ufc, UFC 112, Xande