Maia poised to tie 23 year old UFC submission record

The build up to UFC on FOX 24 heavily emphasized the potential for Demetrious ‘Mighty Mouse’ Johnson to make history and tie Anderson Silva’s title defense record (10).

Similar to Johnson’s feat, Demian Maia is also presented with an opportunity to write history at UFC 211. As it currently stands, Maia is only one submission shy of tying Royce Gracie’s record of most submission wins in UFC history. Gracie has 10 submission wins, which has gone untouched since it was set way back in 1994 at UFC 4.

While Maia can only tie Gracie’s record this weekend, some would argue that he has already surpassed Gracie as the greatest Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner/submission expert in UFC history. What makes Maia’s accomplishments so impressive is his ability to pull them off in modern MMA, which has several unique challenges:

1. BJJ Knowledge: The early UFC’s were really meant to showcase the effectiveness of BJJ, and as such, each show was billed as a style vs. style event, with many fighters clueless to what an Armhold? even was. In comparison to these opponents, Maia is constantly fighting highly knowledgeable MMA fighters, including BJJ black belts (Carlos Condit, Gunnar Nelson, Jorge Santiago, Kendall Grove, Mario Miranda, Dan Miller, Jason MacDonald, Ed Herman, etc.) who have 3+ months to prepare for and SPECIFICALLY defend his style.

2. Time Constraints: As Rickson Gracie said in an interview with xyzzy [In] MMA today, there is no time for strategy. It’s three 5 minute rounds. You’re talking about the individual: How tough, how strong, how he can receive and inflict power and strength. It’s not about when [you] get tired what [are you] going to do. They’re not going to get tired. In that kind of rules it’s very hard to develop that kind of technique, strategy, and patience. Jiu-Jitsu can give up a lot of things. It can give up size, it can give up strength, it can give up speed, but it cannot give up time.

What makes Maia so special is his ability to give up TIME. Despite only having three 5 minute rounds (being reset in the standing position after each round), Maia has shown a unparalleled ability to take his opponents down, work to a dominant position, and secure a submission.

3. Stand ups: In addition to the time constraints grapplers like Maia face, they also face the potential of being stood up during the round itself due to inactivity – or in Roy Nelson’s case being stood up because you just secured a Kimura hold… This gives Maia’s opponents an incentive to simply train anti-jiu jitsu, where holding/stalling from the bottom position is beneficial and taught as an effective technique that can result in a stand up from the referee.
4. Gloves: For grapplers like Maia, the UFC gloves are a two-edged sword of disadvantages. On one edge, the gloves are thick and bulky which take away space which can make chokes more difficult to secure. On the other edge, the gloves protect and secure a strikers hand, allowing more efficient and effective strikes.

Throughout his decade-spanning UFC career, Maia has shown a consistent ability to overcome these barriers to dominant and/or submit his opponents.

Will Maia be able to do with Masvidal what he has done to so many before him? Will history will be made on May 13th at UFC 211?

Author Wade Hamilton is an avid follower of everything mixed martial arts. Born and raised in British Columbia, Canada he is an especially keen observer of the Canadian MMA scene. If you liked this article, follow him on Twitte