Maia is the better striker. Shields has a terrific chin, but Maia is better technically, and also has more power.
Anderson remarked after their fight that he was surprised by Maia's power, and Wanderlei who trained with Maia also stated that he has surprising power. And of course we know he wobbled Munoz pretty bad.
That terrible fight with Weidman also looks better in retrospect, Maia was sick and Weidman drained from a terrible weight cut so I'm not sure how much that fight actually means, but not getting schooled by Weidman on the feet does mean something IMO. Evan a drained Weidman packs big power and Maia didn't get outstruck that bad.
Demian is a decent striker, but everyone is forgetting something about shields.
Shields isn't a powerful striker, nor a great striker, but he is very active. If I remember correctly, he outlanded woodley in the clinch, in their uneventful fight. I feel maia knocking out shields is out of the question, and I feel shields can actively outstrike him should it stay on the feet.
Pulling for Maia though.
Yes this is true. Shields striking looks absolutely terrible - yet somehow he's actually effective with it sometimes.
He did outland GSP (in terms of pure volume), although the eyepokes obviously contributed to that. Still, most fighters wouldn't be able to do that to GSP even with the eyepokes. None of his non-eyepoke strikes hurt GSP of course, while GSP did hurt Shields so GSP outstruck him overall, but Shields had a bit more volume of strikes landed than GSP. Shields normally has very good cardio - the Kampmann fight was an exception because of the terrible weight cut -so he's able to put a lot of volume out there, with his weak jabs and awkward yet effective kicks.
That volume attack also caused him to outstrike Akiyama. Which logically simply should not have happened, yet somehow it did :icon_conf
Much of Shields' effectiveness though comes from people being so afraid of his ground game, and that's not something Maia has to worry about.
So I expect Maia to both outstrike and outgrapple Shields. Maia won't be worried about Shields' ground game, in fact he'll probably look for takedowns. So - I assume anyway! - he won't freeze up like so many of Shields' opponents do.
Shields' main way of winning this fight is if he can get top position and hug for dear life - which I doubt, because Maia actually has excellent TDD, and he probably has better takedowns than Jake as well. Maia also has an excellent clinch game so I don't think Jake can wall and stall Maia either.
I'd be surprised if Maia loses this fight. I will give some credit to Jake though and say he always manages to outperform what he "should" do. Him beating Hendo was unbelievable (though Hendo's back injury likely played a large role, I mean Hendo easily stuffed Rashad but couldn't stop Shields, clearly something was up there).
Also he won a round or two off GSP, outstruck Akiyama, and beat Woodley in a fight he had no business winning stylistically. Woodley froze up though which I don't think Maia will, so I think Maia will do what he should do, and win this fight.
