Just six years separate Demian Maia and Ryan LaFlare chronologically, but in their chosen profession, that might as well be a lifetime. The gap between them, stylistically and in the cage, is nearly unfathomable.
Maia is the last of a dying breed in mixed martial arts—the specialist. While most modern fighters come up in the sport perfecting, to various degrees, a number of disciplines and techniques, Maia is the master of just one. Brazilian jiu jitsu has, and always will be, his calling card.
It's an art that led him to much early success in the UFC. Before LaFlare had even begun his own professional career, Maia was in the midst of five consecutive submission finishes. Almost five years ago, he made it to the top of the hill, only to have the king, Anderson Silva, send him plummeting right back down.
Since that loss, Maia has pieced together a 7-4 UFC record. Not bad, but hardly the calling card of excellence. Is there a place in the sport for a 37-year-old man on a one-trick pony? Former UFC bantamweight champion and current Fox Sports 1 analyst Dominic Cruz joins me to discuss both Maia's fight against LaFlare Saturday on Fox Sports 1 and his long-term prospects in the volatile world of MMA .
Jonathan Snowden: While it's easy to disparage a fighter like Demian Maia, the truth is, this sport was built by fighters utilizing a single skill set. That wasn't part of the sport. It was the whole point. Who would win a real fight between a karate guy and kickboxer? Could a taekwondo artist leap into the air to spin kick a wrestler?
We answered those questions in the glorious early years, arriving at a combination of wrestling, submissions and Thai boxing that has formed the "MMA house style." But like most people forced to concentrate on a multitude of things at one time, modern fighters tend to be good at everything but great at nothing.
Demian Maia is different. He's great at Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He's barely passable in any other facet of the game. Can that get it done in 2015? Things were going well seven years ago. What happened?
Dominic Cruz: What happened is, people said, "Screw going to the ground with this guy. He's going to submit me. I'm going to strike with this guy and see how it goes." And once they figured out that he gets tired if you force him to strike for three to five rounds and that he's not comfortable striking on his feet, they started beating him.
That's what this game is. People make adjustments to your style. If you're one-dimensional, this sport will eat you alive. If you can't mix it up and adjust your style accordingly, this sport will expose you.
Everything is evolving super fast. You can't be one-dimensional anymore. You have to be able to do everything and be good at every single facet of this sport to succeed. It goes all the way back to the beginning of the sport.
Royce Gracie was the guy everybody said was unbeatable, even though he was one-dimensional. He was submitting everybody, taking them down and beating them. Even though he didn't have skills anywhere else. He forced the sport to adjust to him.
Other fighters had to evolve. They realized, "I can't just let this guy walk across the cage and submit me." People started working their submission defense. They started getting better at takedown defense. And they started getting better at striking. Evolution. That's what this game is. Demian Maia needs to do the same, or else he's going to get left behind.
| Age | 37 |
| Height | 6'0" |
| Weight | 170 |
| Reach | 72 |
| Record | 19-6 |
| Submissions | 9 |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
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Snowden: What's interesting about specialists is the way they can achieve success in spurts but have a hard time sustaining it. Much of mixed martial arts is a guessing game; fighters and coaches trying their best to figure out what their opponent intends to do, then planning to prevent it or counter it.
With a fighter like Maia, there isn't the same kind of pressure to prepare for an unlimited number of tricks and techniques. He's a known quantity. That makes it easier to plan for him—and harder for him to impose his will on the fight. When you prepare for a fighter like this, one who is so exceptional in one area, I imagine you need to do things a bit differently than usual.
Are you willing to cede the ground entirely to him? Or do you do your level best to meet him in his world?
Cruz: If I'm going against Demian Maia, I can't plan to never take him down and refuse to go to the ground with him at all. That's silly. To be great at this sport, you have to be willing to go into any position, against anybody.
LaFlare does need to get takedowns on Maia. The key, when you're competing against a specialist like Maia, is that you can't give him time on the ground. You have to deny him the chance to set anything up. The longer you sit in a grappling exchange with Maia, the more adjustments he makes and the better his position becomes.
The key for LaFlare is to strike, strike, strike, dump Maia on his butt to break his rhythm, go down to the ground for maybe 30 seconds at most, then jump to his feet and start striking again. He can't catch a submission in just 30 seconds unless LaFlare puts himself into a bad position. If he's playing up and down, up and down, up and down, he'll make Maia uncomfortable, even on the mat.
Snowden: With Maia, it kind of feels to me like he has different modes. He's not a fluid all-around fighter. Instead, it's like his mind is moving a million miles an hour when he's striking. It doesn't feel natural. On the mat, of course, it's a different story entirely.
Cruz: He's been exposed as kind of a one-dimensional fighter. He's learning to strike. He has improved. But it's not been enough to get him the wins that he wants.
He's not mixing his takedowns in with his strikes correctly. He always finishes his forward striking with a shot. But he doesn't force guys to come to him, and he's not timing takedowns because he's not quite comfortable enough striking to see the openings that are there. It has to flow together. He's either striking or grappling. He's not comfortable enough to do both at the same time.
Snowden: I wonder if we're reading too much into this. Maybe it has nothing to do with being a specialist or a generalist. Could the difference in Maia's level of success have everything to do, instead, with the fact he's entering his late 30s?
We know that athletes decline with age. That's just science. But does aging affect grapplers and strikers equally? Striking is a matter of inches and fractions of a second. It seems likely a grappler could remain relevant longer since quickness and reaction time may not be quite as important.
Cruz: I don't think age matters nearly as much with grappling as it does with striking. Striking involves more fluid movement, more explosiveness, more quickness, speed, cardio, everything.
Grappling does have a cardio element, but if you've grappled your entire life the way Maia has, you can basically do it with your eyes shut. You can get knocked out on your feet, fall to the ground and still submit people because he can do it in his sleep he's done it so much.
He can be comfortable forever in a grappling match. That's something Demian Maia will never get tired doing. It doesn't matter if it's 15 minutes or an hour. He can grapple forever. That's his comfort zone.
That's something he needs to concentrate on—keeping it where he's comfortable. Every fighter should focus on that in my opinion. Each fighter needs to keep the fight where he's most comfortable and where the other guy is freaking out.
Some fighters can be comfortable in a variety of places. For Demian Maia, it's one.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
