After watching him with USMAN I gave up on him. He is still my favorite fighter, an I bet he took the fight in short notice because he wanted to show how much he has improved his wrestling. It turns out it wasnt that much. The same way I do not see any mma fighter beating him in bjj even if they get a black belt, I dont see Maia taking down people that have been training wrestling all their life. The best "improvement" I saw when fighting USMAN was when he had him in a abdominal strecht which the ref decided to screw up by separating them.
Can Demian Maia do anything to improve, if so what?
- Thread starter jcgonzmo
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Invent a time machine or find the fountain of youth.
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He's 40 lol
Dude had a good run but it's over now
Time is undefeated in MMA. His wrestling improved a lot but he'll never be good enough at it to get all american level guys down and he doesn't have the gas tank to strike for 5 rounds at all anymore
The tough part about MMA is seeing your heroes get old and lose. At least Maia isn't getting brutally KO'd on his way out like so many other legends
Dude had a good run but it's over now
Time is undefeated in MMA. His wrestling improved a lot but he'll never be good enough at it to get all american level guys down and he doesn't have the gas tank to strike for 5 rounds at all anymore
The tough part about MMA is seeing your heroes get old and lose. At least Maia isn't getting brutally KO'd on his way out like so many other legends
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He is 40 and TRT is banned.
Its too late.
One of the best non champions ever though.
Its too late.
One of the best non champions ever though.
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Maia is almost the same fighter he was 10 years ago
Hasn't really improved in any aspect besides maybe BJJ
Hasn't really improved in any aspect besides maybe BJJ
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UFC: Gi DIvision.
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Recently Maia talked about improving his game to get the submission easier, his grappling for mma is the sharpest in the world, but we already know that.
"During this camp I discovered a new transition to the back control," Maia told AG. Fight for FloCombat. "Besides the transition I made against Condit, I learned a new one that allows my submission to be more efficient. A student and friend gave me a tip, I made some adjustments of my own and mixed it with something Rilion [Gracie] once told me. I'm constantly learning.
"It changes a lot. Especially the back control. What I was doing a year ago is totally different form what I do now. It looks the same, but the details regarding the position of your body, arm control, angle and pressure are constantly being evolved. The difference between my submissions against Brown and Condit are clear. I put a lot of work there. After I fought Brown, I started to study the reason I had lost positions. I always do this kind of stuff and I was much more efficient against Condit."
https://www.flocombat.com/articles/...to-showcase-at-ufc-211-unfazed-by-title-chaos
At this point you can't expect Maia to become a great striker or improving his shoots to the level required to take down consistently the NCAA wrestlers.
"During this camp I discovered a new transition to the back control," Maia told AG. Fight for FloCombat. "Besides the transition I made against Condit, I learned a new one that allows my submission to be more efficient. A student and friend gave me a tip, I made some adjustments of my own and mixed it with something Rilion [Gracie] once told me. I'm constantly learning.
"It changes a lot. Especially the back control. What I was doing a year ago is totally different form what I do now. It looks the same, but the details regarding the position of your body, arm control, angle and pressure are constantly being evolved. The difference between my submissions against Brown and Condit are clear. I put a lot of work there. After I fought Brown, I started to study the reason I had lost positions. I always do this kind of stuff and I was much more efficient against Condit."
https://www.flocombat.com/articles/...to-showcase-at-ufc-211-unfazed-by-title-chaos
At this point you can't expect Maia to become a great striker or improving his shoots to the level required to take down consistently the NCAA wrestlers.
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Father Time taps everyone.
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Which I think was the best approach for him honestly. He tried to work on his striking, and got KO'd by Marquardt for his troubles.
He's had a really impressive career, earning title shots at two different weight classes, for a one dimensional fighter.
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Maia's striking has slowly but steadily improved since the era of "k-1 Maia". If he had more faith in it and used it to set up his shots, instead of shooting from halfway across the cage, he might be able to do something with it. At 40 years old, though, I think what we see is what we get. He's been in this game forever now with really no major changes.
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The only thing he can improve at this point is his English...and to be honest he's already pretty good.
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And even if he did somehow win, I wouldn't want to see him as champion.
It's fun to watch when he's dominating noobs turning them into pretzels, but at that elite level it's gonna be a snooze-fest and stalemate, every. time.
