Charles, Demian, Sousa or Werdum: Which of them applied grappling in MMA better?

DanDragon Machi said:
I would rank them like this:

Demian
Souza
Charles
Werdum

Demian had the best ground control and take downs, Souza had more physical strength and Werdum and Charles the best submissions
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Charles has great offense been smashed from the top and subbed too many times.

Souza had the best wrestling, but his MMA game didn't seem as diverse as Maia. Maia developed good wrestling later, he's definitely number 1 overall.

Werdum had weak wrestling but great at everything else.


Maia
Werdum
Souza
Oliveira
 
Damian won like 3 fights in a row without throwing more than 10 strikes. No one was more of a pure grappler than him in recent mma

Charles has a great blend of grabbing subs off or transition and or from striking to grappling.

But as far as winning fights at a high level and doing it basically only grappling Damian is king.
 
Maia. Grappling was absolutely the crux and core of his game and his approach in nearly every single fight. Out of all those guys, Maia was the closest to a "specialist" in his approach. Guys like charles, werdum, and jacare all had a very real B side to their game (striking) and they relied on it far more than maia did. A lot of their wins were due to their striking and their more diverse approach to the game. Maia on the other hand, while he did improve his striking throughout his career, was overall nowhere near as reliant on his striking as the other bjj guys you mentioned were, yet he still had great success with his dogmatic grappling approach.
 
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Charles and Werdum obviously have had the most success, but as others have mentioned, they largely used striking to get the job done too - especially Charles. A lot of the finishes Charles has via sub, only presented themselves due to his striking game being so good.

Maia is quite easily the best if we're talking about who applied pure grappling to win fights.
 
I like how Werdum used his Bjj in mma. Once he developed his striking his guard freed him up from takedown threats and he was able to throw kicks and knees much more freely than anyone else. Jacare should have done even better than he already did, he was the most credentialed out of all of them and had in theory the best style for mma. Being in that strikeforce mw division was brutal though, that was one of the best divisions of all time IMHO
 
Easily Maia. The other guys had a plan B and won lots of fights without grappling, Maia had nothing to fall back on.
 
Cameron said:
Clearly didn’t read the question.
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Absolutely did read the question would still put Maia last on this list. Even Jake shields is a better MMA grappler than maia.

Just because Maia's skill set is limited to ONLY grappling, doesnt make him the best on this list.
 
They all had their flaws. Jacare was actually probably the best overall of them but only looking at it from a certain standpoint. He wasn't really a guy you could completely shutout his grappling but he also wasn't the most effective grappling finisher either.

Maia and Werdum are the only ones that didn't get subbed. Maia got completely shutout trying to grapple several times. Werdum couldn't do shit to Overeem with grappling in numerous fights as 1 example. Charles got smashed several times from guard and subbed.

I could see valid arguments for any of them, depending how you look at it.
 
I’m going

Werdum
Charles
Jacare
Maia

The top three all won and held major titles (Jacare in Strikeforce), whereas Maia lost in both his title fights. Accolades matter, and Werdum is top because he beat Fedor, Nog and Cain all by submission
 
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