Sine Qua Non: Demian Maia vs. Wrestlers
Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
On the eve of his October 26th clash with Olympic wrestler and collegiate legend Ben Askren, it’s worth reflecting on how Demian Maia has performed against wrestlers throughout his long UFC career.
Maia has for some time been the standard bearer of Brazilian jiu jitsu in the UFC, and while there is certainly no shortage of decorated grapplers in the promotion (Jacare, Sergio Moraes, Gilbert Burns, and Rodolfo Vieria have all won world titles in BJJ), Maia’s style is the most true to the original jiu jitsu vision of taking the fight to the ground and submitting your opponent. In fact, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Maia’s style consists only of doing that, and when he can’t at least push the fight in that direction he suffers convincing losses.
As such, Maia tends to look his worst not against slick strikers (ATG Anderson Silva not withstanding), but against wrestlers who can neutralize his game. But what form does that neutralization take? Historically, wrestlers have beaten up jiu jitsu players by taking them down, denying their submission attempts, and slowly grinding them down with crushing top pressure. That however is not the case at all with Maia. Both his wins and his losses against wrestlers take a very different shape.
The Wins
It’s not all been suffering and shame for Maia against very good wrestlers. He’s beaten former collegiate wrestlers Jon Fitch and Rick Story, and one of his signature wins was against NCAA D1 All-American and internationally competitive Greco-Roman wrestler Chael Sonnen. The Sonnen fight is particularly instructive. Maia comes out early in R1 and shoots a takedown, which Chael stuffs. Maia goes to half guard and almost comes up on a single leg, but Sonnen is able to disengage, do a little damage on the way up, and then get back to striking. This pattern repeats itself a few more times in the opening minutes, until Maia is able to drive Sonnen up against the cage into an over/under clinch.
Maia pushes forward and throws a knee to the gut, eliciting forward movement from Sonnen. Maia then hits a beautiful lateral drop with a foot block, sasae tsuri komi ashi in Judo terminology. Landing on top already in position to lock in a triangle, Maia doesn’t take long to finish the notoriously submission-prone American Gangster
Against Fitch and Story, as well as against other competent if not elite wrestlers like Dan Miller and Ryan LaFlare, Maia was able to do much the same: get the takedown, stay on top, and either rinse and repeat to a UD or finish with a submission.
All those fights have one thing in common: Maia was able to get at least one takedown, and once on top he stayed on top. While his striking is functional, it really exists to set up his grappling. He doesn’t beat wrestlers (or anyone else) by outstriking them, but by sticking with his A game of takedowns and top control.
That Maia desperately needs to get his opponents down is evidenced by the most important stat line in his recent losses to excellent wrestlers Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, and Tyron Woodley: 0-15, 0-13, and 0-21.
That’s how many takedowns Maia completed against each fighter vs. how many he attempted.
The Losses
Demian Maia loses to wrestlers when he can’t take them down. While there are few absolutes in MMA, this is about as close to a truism as you can get, and the sine qua non of the title.
In addition to the aforementioned three-fight skid where Maia attempted between 13 and 21 takedowns each fight, completing none of them, he also notched a big 0 in successful takedowns in losses to Chris Weidman and Mark Munoz. Those fights differed in that those fighters took him down and maintained top control, but Maia had his chances in each and couldn’t convert his own attempts into extended time on top.
Demian did strike competitively with Usman and Covington early in those fights, but while competent, he’s not an especially fast or powerful striker and his gas tank at age 40 leaves a lot to be desired. Maia even got off some good takedown entries, but against the beasts on top of the WW division, it wasn’t enough.
Maia catches a kick against Usman and immediately transitions into a shot. He gets a good bite on Kamaru’s hips, but Usman is able to use a combination of a chest lock and sprawl to scramble out of Maia’s finishing attempts.
So what does this tell us about how his fight with Askren is likely to go? To answer that question we need to look at one of the outliers of his fights against good wrestlers, his 2013 split decision loss to Jake Shields.
The Mirror Matches
Jake Shields has an argument for being placed alongside Demian Maia on the short list of guys who have found a way to combine wrestling and BJJ to maximal effectiveness in MMA, despite not being blessed with overwhelming physical gifts.
Like Maia, Shields is slow of hand and foot but has managed to cobble together a functional striking game to complement his strong wrestling and grappling. Against Maia the question was always going to be who could get the takedown and get on top. As it turned out, the answer was ‘both of them’, which made for a very competitive fight. Credit goes to Luke Thomas of Showtime and Sirius XM for pointing out that this fight was the one to examine closely for insight into how the Askren matchup might play out.
In the first round, Maia was able to get the TD pretty easily. At one point Demian made it to Jake’s back, but wasn’t able to finish and ended the round on bottom after getting shucked off. Shields controlled rounds 2 and 3, Maia regained the momentum in R4, and R5 was a tossup.
The split decision went to Shields, and while Maia arguably had the case for winning based on the better grappling in 3 of 5 rounds in a fight that mostly took place on the mat, Shields did outland him on the feet 35 to 24 (though many of those were throwaway leg kicks). While it’s interesting to observe how closely the fight was contested, the two big takeaways are:
Maia does not ever try to avoid grappling exchanges. He always tried to turn them to his advantage.
Maia does not approach grappling exchanges as a BJJ guy first, he approaches them as a wrestler.
What are the implications of those two observations? The first is that predictions of Maia lighting Ben Askren up on the feet are highly overblown. That Maia would do so was this writer’s initial take on the fight, but while it’s true that Maia is a better striker than Askren and would probably win a match on the feet ten times out of ten, there’s nothing in Maia’s fight history that suggests he has the sort of striking that lends itself to shutting down wrestlers. He doesn’t take a lot of angles, he doesn’t frame guys off to defend the shot or clinch, and he doesn’t fight off the back foot. His striking is designed to bring him forward and set up his takedowns as you’d expect from a grappling first fighter.
In this matchup look for him to come forward and readily engage with Askren in a wrestling contest. He might hit Funky on the way in, but ultimately this fight will be contested in the wrestling and grappling, not the striking.
The second observation, that Maia wrestles first and grapples second, is really key when determining what the dynamic of the fight is going to look like. Normally when we think of a wrestler fighting a BJJ ace we think of the wrestler shooting in and having to avoid guillotines, kimuras, and all the other threats a submission specialist normally presents. But if the wrestler manages to avoid those submissions, he gets to be on top of an opponent who has willingly gone to his back in pursuit of the finish.
Maia doesn’t fight like that.
His reaction to the level change is to sprawl and play the front headlock like a wrestler would, digging for underhooks, framing, and looking to go behind or reshoot.
Against Shields Maia shows strong takedown defense and reshooting ability. Shields comes in on a head outside single. Maia sprawls, moves from a crotch lock to a front headlock, and then as Shields tries to disengage takes an outside angle to shoot his own single.
That Maia approaches takedown defense in this way implies that Askren will have to work hard for the finish against one of the better wrestlers he’s faced. He won’t just have to avoid submissions against an opponent dropping to his back, he’ll have to complete takedowns against a man looking to actively counter off his shots with wrestling of his own. And while Maia has certainly been stopped from taking the fight to the mat, it’s been against guys like Usman with incredibly strong hips and sprawls.
Askren has never defended takedowns like that. During his wrestling days he was famous for funking, which basically amounts to letting opponents in on your hips and then countering their attempts to put you on your back. What happens when Maia stuffs a shot, reshoots, and Askren goes into his funk series? If fans are lucky, some all time great grappling scrambles of the highest technical level you’re ever likely to see in MMA.
On the flip side, if Maia can’t stop the takedown, his work off his back is not encouraging. Maia has a terrific half guard series leading to a single leg, but he typically only works it off his own failed shots. When Shields was able to get on top, he mostly held Demian down for long stretches of time. Maia took little damage during those moments of the fight as he was constantly disrupting Jake’s balance and looking to sweep forcing Shields to focus on maintaining position, but he also wasn’t trying to actively disengage back to his feet or get his half guard game going. So what does all this mean for the Askren fight?
Maia vs. Askren
My strongest prediction is that this fight will go to the mat very, very fast at the start of each round. If Maia is able to stuff the shot and get his own offense going, I think it’s very likely he gets Askren down. Maia is more physically imposing than Askren and I expect he can take him down with what may seem surprising ease if he can get into a body lock or deep on a single. If Maia does get Ben on his back, expect him to either pass relatively quickly or more likely to take Funky’s back as Askren goes to his knees to try and get back to his feet. If Maia does get the back with a few minutes on the clock a RNC finish is more likely than not.
If Askren is able to put Maia on his back consistently I’d expect it to be a long night for the Brazilian veteran. Askren has always excelled at maintaining top position and doing attritional damage, and Maia is vulnerable to defensive passivity as well as getting tired out from playing off his back.
The best case scenario for this fight is that we get to see many technical scrambles as the combatants struggle for top position, shooting and reshooting, funking and sweeping until one man is able to get the edge and finish with strikes or a submission. Worst case (in terms of entertainment), Askren proves his wrestling credentials matter and is able to consistently hold Maia down and win rounds, though I don’t expect him to be able to seriously hurt Demian even if he spends most of the fight on top.
In this writer’s opinion, it's a 50/50 fight between Demian finishing Askren by RNC and Askren winning a UD over an utterly exhausted Maia. Since a pick must be made, I’ll take Maia’s much stronger competitive experience over a long career at the highest level and his size and physicality edge (Maia was competitive as a MW whereas Askren could probably make LW with more discipline) over Askren’s superb wrestling credentials but career spent largely can crushing in the B leagues. Demian Maia by RNC late in round 2.