The Bottom Line: MMA Could Use More Demian Maias

Demian Maia on Saturday was framed as a throwback and an outlier in today’s MMA scene during the UFC on Fox 21 telecast, moments before he took Carlos Condit to the mat with ease and submitted him in less than two minutes. Maia was described this way because of the perception that he, like many fighters in the earlier days of the sport, is a specialist heavily reliant on one specific discipline. While Maia is indeed a throwback and an outlier, it’s for slightly different reasons. Maia’s jiu-jitsu is his greatest strength, but he’s far from a one-note specialist like fighters from the past. Maia has improved his striking markedly over the years, standing for most of many of his fights and demonstrating solid kickboxing. He’s not a world beater on the feet, but you don’t stand 25 minutes with Anderson Silva if you can’t defend yourself there. He’s also a very good wrestler, putting solid wrestlers on their backs and setting up his submissions.More importantly, today’s MMA landscape is filled with fighters who rely heavily on a specific discipline. Chuck Liddell has become the template for so many of today’s fighters, utilizing a wrestling background in order to strike without being taken down. Fighters like Georges St. Pierre and Fedor Emelianenko, who switched up their game plans wildly from fight to fight depending on their opponent, have given way to more fighters who tend to do the same things in most fights. In this landscape, Maia is the throwback — and not because he relies strongly on a particular discipline. Rather, he’s a throwback because the discipline he relies on is jiu-jitsu. Sadly, jiu-jitsu is …

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