Issue 105
September 2013
Brazilian jiu-jitsu standout Demian Maia is back and doing what he does best: tying up opponents and climbing back into UFC title contention
Demian Maia’s finish of Chael Sonnen at UFC 95, throwing him almost overhead from the clinch and landing atop him with a triangle choke already locked in, neatly sums up the Brazilian’s early UFC career. With four ‘Submission of the Night’ awards from five fights, Maia’s UFC introduction was a matter of ‘when’ a submission would happen rather than ‘if.’
His upward trajectory seemed unstoppable and the Brazilian appeared to be the fighter destined to put jiu-jitsu back on the mixed martial arts map. But then his UFC 112 title shot against middleweight king Anderson Silva changed everything. The embarrassingly one-sided defeat brutally exposed Maia’s lack of striking skills, and he couldn’t get the takedown he needed. Silva basically spent 25 minutes making a mockery of him.
Morale crushed, Maia went 3-2 in his five subsequent fights with each one going to decision. He became obsessed with stand-up and, by his January 2012 fight with Chris Weidman, the transformation was complete. Maia, the best pound-for-pound grappler in MMA, went looking for a kickboxing match.
It didn’t work out; he lost a decision and, worse still, looked like he had lost his jiu-jitsu roots as well. His displays even inspired a feature in FO, Jiu-Jitsu Lobotomy (Nov. 2012), where we questioned why Maia specifically was ignoring his strengths.
“Yeah, I think maybe that’s true. For a while I did,” he confides to FO after a long pause for thought. “It’s true. But not consciously I think. I was focusing a lot on my stand-up. It’s not conscious, but if you have focus on one thing in training then you’re going to go into a fight and do that. It’s not a conscious thing, it just happens.
“The thing is, I had been training to fight Michael Bisping, but he got moved to fight Chael Sonnen after Mark Munoz got hurt. So I had been training a lot of stand-up. Also, I didn’t think Weidman could knock me out. But I think strategically there were some mistakes in the camp.”
Stand-up obsession wasn’t the only thing Silva left Maia with. For a while afterwards Maia burned with the anger of humiliation. When a Brazilian TV show had them both as guests at the same time, Silva’s presence being a surprise, Maia could barely bring himself to look in the champion’s direction, and his politeness was visibly forced.
Is Anderson not the nice guy his public façade would have us believe? “I prefer not to talk about what he is or isn’t. I cannot really talk about him. Nowadays there’s no problem between me and him. Life is good and I don’t have any issue these days. I cannot say how he is because I don’t really know him that well.”
Losing to Weidman prompted Maia to give consideration not only to his weight class but to the strategies and direction he was employing. And in the end he handed control of all his training camps to Eduardo Alonso, former manager of Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua. “It’s hard to explain the difference he makes but he does. He works out the frequency of the training and focus of the training sessions. It makes all the difference,” he says.
Stand-up wasn’t the only deficiency exposed in the fight with Anderson. Being unable to get the fight to the floor, Maia began working on his wrestling. According to the former middleweight contender he has traveled extensively to get the best training, working with the likes of Jake Herbert, a former member of the US Olympic team, and some top Canadians and Brazilians as well. The results have been fairly spectacular and were neatly showcased by Maia’s complete domination of Jon Fitch in February. Noted for his own high-level takedown game, Fitch was comprehensively outwrestled and dragged to the floor repeatedly by the Brazilian in what was perhaps the most dominating display of his career.
“I’ve focused on wrestling since the Anderson fight. I found various wrestling camps to train at. And now it’s coming out, it comes out with the right stimulus. But I think what I do is not wrestling but kind of a mix,” the 35-year-old southpaw explains.
“I mix it with different types of takedowns and mix up how I grapple with the guys. I am a jiu-jitsu fighter with some good takedowns. The thing is, I really enjoy wrestling, it’s a very playful thing to train.
“I like the double, the single, a couple of takedowns from the clinch. I don’t have any one specific favorite. The favorite one is when you get the right timing and you take the guy down, that’s always the best. That one against Chael Sonnen was a good one because I didn’t use that much energy. That one was kind of a trick rather than pure strength, and I landed in a great position.”
In his current three-fight, three-win run at 170lb there has been a sense we are witnessing Maia 2.0, a fighter living up to his potential at last. The path towards evolution has ironically required him to revisit a road he previously left. Once again, Maia is floor-focused and taking the fight where he’s strongest.
But with submission wins an increasing rarity, we are constantly being told Brazilian jiu-jitsu’s effectiveness is waning in MMA. Is Maia returning to roots that are becoming less effective at entangling people? He doesn’t think so, and he doesn’t agree that we are seeing BJJ being phased out or rendered ineffective inside the Octagon.
He says: “We saw at a recent UFC event in Brazil there was a record number of submissions, eight submissions from 13 fights. There were armbars and triangles from guard. The sport changes all the time. Maybe now we will see submissions start to appear again and then in two years it changes more to knockouts again.
“MMA is such a young sport that it’s hard to look at patterns, two or three years is too short a time to look at it and understand what is happening in the game. It will always change. If we see no submissions from bottom for 20 or 30 years then we can say something, but right now we cannot evaluate things over such a short period.”
At UFC 163 on August 3rd, Maia will face former welterweight title challenger Josh Koscheck. It’s another crucial moment in Maia’s career. Victory would put him on a four-fight win streak and surely place him in line to fight for the welterweight title currently held by Georges St Pierre. Yet Maia isn’t taking anything for granted.
“Koscheck is a pretty tough opponent,” he adds. “A lot of people say he’s fallen a bit, but he’s still one of the best in the game; everybody has their bad days. Of course, I am chasing the title shot and that’s why it’s such an important fight for me. If I beat him I am on a four-fight win streak and that maybe makes me the number one contender.
“But St Pierre is the toughest fighter in the division. It’s so hard to beat him, he is such a strategic fighter. He always tries to do the things that the opponent is weakest at… But right now I am trying not to think about him, only Koscheck.”
NEXT BRAZILIAN HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP?
“It’s hard to say. Junior is, of course, a friend of mine but I also know Fabricio from our jiu-jitsu times. Right now Junior is probably in the best position, but Fabricio has a good chance also. One thing with Werdum is he has a good guard, he can play from the bottom very well. Junior can also do this, but he prefers to stand up so it’s a different style. Junior is more experienced in the UFC, having been the champion already, so I believe his mind-set is more ready for the title challenge.”
MAIA ON CHAEL SONNEN
“For me, I know Sonnen is a character and is just playing. Actually he is a nice guy and so everyone who asks me about him here in Brazil, I tell them he is a nice guy, very smart and is just playing a role. Of course, some people take him serious and they don’t like it and they think he’s really being serious when he is just making jokes. But I think it’s obvious he is just joking.”
MAIA ON LIFE IN THE UFC
“Life has changed very much. Now a lot of people recognize me in the street, people who don’t even have anything to do with martial arts. They come and take pictures and talk to you. Sometimes, actually, it can be tiring when you have many things to do, but it’s very nice to have. It’s always great. I like it, but I am kind of shy I guess, yet I get over it because it’s so nice to please a fan with a picture or something. They are the guys who are watching us so it’s no problem at all for me to do something for them.”
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