Contributor: Ben Kohn
This Wednesday, on October 9th at Ultimate Fight Night 29, two of the best submission grapplers in MMA history will face off in the main event in a fight that can turn into one of the best grappling matches in UFC history or into the traditional “when two grapplers meet, it becomes a kickboxing match”. Personally, I feel we will see an excellent display of submission grappling between two differently styled grappling specialists.
Demian Maia comes from a strict Brazilian Jiu Jitsu background and is an ADCC champion in 07 and runner up in 06 as well as a Pan Ams champion in 2006. 9 of his 18 wins have come by way of submission and 3 by KO and he has shown the ability to go the distance with 6 wins by decision. His four losses have shown he is very tough and durable with only one coming by way of KO against Nate Marquart. His other losses have come to former champ Anderson Silva, current champ Chris Weidman, and top 10 Middleweight Mark Munoz. Maia holds wins over Chael Sonnen, Ed Herman, Kendall Grove, and Jorge Santiago at Middleweight with wins over Jon Fitch, Rick Story, and Dong Hyun Kim at Welterweight. His run at Welterweight has been one of complete and utter dominance in his quick injury TKO of Kim, dominating and beautiful submission over Story, and incredible fitching (otherwise known as smothering grappling display) over Jon Fitch has had many people calling for a title shot with a win over Jake Shields. It would be hard to argue with people as Maia has looked like a reborn fighter since dropping to Welterweight and at 35 years old, he is not getting any younger. Completely dominating Fitch was impressive but if he can do the same to Shields, he would be right in the mix of title challengers at 170. The question is if he can outgrapple the man who has single-handedly sucked the life and will out of so many fighters in his career in Jake Shields.
Jake Shields’s style of grappling can best be described as suffocation. Letting Shields grab a hold of you is tantamount to rolling around in a big pool of super glue for 5 minute rounds. Shields has some impressive submission grappling credentials with a 3rd place finish in the 2005 ADCC and a Pan Ams 1st place finish in 2005. Before going on, Jake’s accomplishments in submission grappling did not come at the blackbelt level which would make the exponentially more impressive.
Jake has achieved his place atop the MMA grappling world not just through his submission prowess but in combining his wrestling background together with his BJJ to become a multi-dimensional grappling threat that makes him such a difficult fight for any man at 170 or 185. His grappling style however is much less dynamic than Maia’s is (especially since his drop to 170). Shields 28 wins have come by decision for the most part with 15 wins by decision, 10 by submission, and 3 KO. While not the most fan-friendly style, Jake has victories over top competition such as Dan Henderson, Jason Miller, Martin Kampmann, and Robbie Lawler. His only recent losses have come to champion GSP and to top 10 fighter Jake Ellenberger. Despite his lack of an exciting style, Jake is undeniably a top fighter at 170 and should he beat the steamrolling version of Maia we have seen at 170, his stock and standing at Welterweight will drastically rise and place him firmly in the top ten.
Since this fight will hopefully turn into a grappling heavy matchup, let’s start by taking a look at the difference in styles between these two fighters and how they will stack up to each other in the cage. Every fight begins standing and to be able to take it to the ground, you need to have some decent wrestling abilities. Although Jake has the much better credentials wrestling-wise, Maia in his complete domination of wrestlers like Chael Sonnen, Rick Story, and Jon Fitch has shown himself to be more than capable in the wrestling department. Let’s take a look at the methods Maia uses to impose his stellar and deadly grappling game.
Since dropping to 170, Maia is no longer at a size disadvantage and indeed has a consistent strength advantage for the first time in his career. In his fight with Rick Story, Maia immediately shot for a double leg, immediately switched to a single leg and drove the hopping Story back into the fence where he switched back to a double before dumping him on his ass. Right off the bat, Maia shows what many fighters lack and that’s the willingness to switch from one takedown to another when the first or second attempt didn’t work. After Story got up, Maia hit a beautiful outside trip, and trips in general is something Maia excels at and really are amazingly well done, that got Story down and kept him there until the submission. Maia’s excellent trip takedowns were on full display in his fight against Jon Fitch where he immediately shot a double leg that Fitch defended before switching to an outside trip and dragging Fitch to the ground. Maia’s tripping ability was really impressive since Fitch is one of the best takedown artists in Welterweight history and indeed Maia scored the same amount of takedowns on Fitch tying with GSP with 7 takedowns. Maia’s excellent trip game also applies to when he has your back where you must pick your poison of him getting the hooks or dragging you back down to the ground. Maia’s trip based takedown game is at its most effective when he has his opponent against the fence which nowadays is considered disadvantage for the man trying to get the fight to the ground as most fighters have become incredibly adept at using the fence to avoid the takedown. Maia’s ability to shut down 
this option makes his wrestling much more dangerous than your typical blast double guy. His most memorable moment though is definitely his beautiful lateral throw of Chael Sonnen, a highly decorated Greco-Roman Wrestler that Maia tossed on his head directly into a mounted triangle position. Maia used his double-overhooks and used an outside trip to toss Sonnen directly on his head. Maia’s wrestling, despite coming from a BJJ background, has proven to be quite potent and has been more than effective in getting the fight where he wants it. The question is will he have similar success against the human blanket in Jake Shields?
Jake’s wrestling pedigree is littered with lots of titles yet few of any true significance. Despite that, Jake has used his wrestling background and combined it with his excellent submission game to create what he has called in the past “American Jiu Jitsu” which he has called more aggressive and exciting than traditional Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (L.O.L.). Jake’s primary wrestling attack revolves around his head-outside single leg takedown which he has used to some decent success for the most part. When he doesn’t get the takedown though, Jake will force his opponent back and relentlessly pursue it until his opponent will be pressed against the cage. Once there, Jake will clinch and smother his opponent, tiring them out while periodically attempting trip 
takedowns. It’s quite surprising though that he is not more successful than Maia in the wrestling department considering his pedigree. In his last 5 fights, Jake has attempted 47 takedowns and succeeded on a mere 5 attempts. Think about that for a second and understand that in his last 47 attempts, Jake has gotten the takedown 11% of the time. If however we look deeper into those numbers, 4 of the 5 opponents have a takedown defense rate of 90% or above with Ed Herman having a still very good rate of 66%. While this does give us perspective on the horrible stats, shooting for so many takedowns puts Jake in a very compromising position. The last person to take down Maia was Chris Weidman who could not control him on the ground for any extended period of time. Chris is a massive All-American wrestler and Jake is not nearly as strong or technical a wrestler as Weidman is. Viewed all together, the wrestling aspect, where one would view Shields to have the advantage, he has none to speak of. Maia is so damn good off of his back, taking him down is something he doesn’t mind necessarily and he will allow himself to be put into disadvantageous grappling situations because he knows he can reverse the position. Jake has to know that Maia is the better pure grappler (which we will get to in a moment) and must therefore use his wrestling in reverse to keep the fight away from Maia’s deadly submission game. The problem is, Maia has 5 rounds with which to drag him to the mat and I don’t see any way Jake can avoid it for that long. Edge in Wrestling and the Clinch go to Maia.
Demian Maia’s grappling, at least for me and for many BJJ MMA guys, is seriously beautiful to watch. The control and fluidity with which he slices through his opponents defenses is just masterful in execution and sublime to behold (give me a minute to get rid of my grapple-boner….alright I’m back). Seriously though, despite obvious being a complete overall threat on the ground, Maia’s back control is what I really want to talk about. Take a look at his control of both Rick Story and Jon Fitch. Maia isn’t as athletic or dynamic as someone like Jacare and his ground game exhibits that. Maia will not try and frantically try and get a dominant position but will patiently hold on and creep up your body. After his immediate takedown, Maia was not in a position to really control Rick so he instead let Rick begin to wall walk and used that to get a body lock on him from behind. 
Rick recognized this and tried using the whizzer to shake him off but Maia calmly released the body lock and established the clinch again before hitting another trip on Rick. He then peeled Rick off the cage and began a simple knee slide guard pass. Rick switched his hips and Maia appears to have literally floated over this switch right back into a body lock from behind leading to another trip takedown. This time knowing he was high enough, he slid right into the mount and as Story turned to try and stand, he slid his left leg across his hips preventing Story from getting back to any sort of guard. From there, Maia slid the second hook in and began to punch and slide and worm his hands under the chin of Story who was defending well. Maia than realizing he wouldn’t get the choke switched tactics and grabbed a hold of one brutal looking neck crank that famously turned Story’s nose into a blood faucet.
The reason I went through a blow-by-blow account of that fight is to show you how absolutely incredibly brilliant Maia is on the ground. He is going against an athletic and dynamic wrestler like Story and knows he can’t out-athlete him. He let Story lead and merely reacted to whatever Story would do, countering his movements and escape attempts and using them to advance his own position. In his fight with Jon Fitch, he never allowed Fitch to get any space or air to breathe actually making Fitch looking by the third round in frustration at referee Kim Winslow as if saying “help me” which is hysterically ironic. The bottom line is that Maia he realized that he now at Welterweight has the ability to not be bullied by bigger men and can use his amazing grappling skills by outworking his opponents in the clinch and once he has an advantageous position on you, you are either getting subbed or going to have a very heavy and very-chokey load on your back for the rest of the round. Jake however is so damn good at getting people into very slow and grinding matches and if he can do it to someone like Maia, he will be right up at the top of the division again.
Jake’s grappling is incredibly slow compared to most other MMA submission grapplers. Jake is the epitome of position over submission, and will not give up an advantageous position on top or bottom for anything other than a sure thing. When he gets on top, moving him is damn near impossible and he slows everything down to a crawl, every move and twitch done with precision. The way he easily passed Ed Herman’s guard was really nice, establishing a strong base and using his right hand to open up Herman’s legs. Herman than reached down and Jake used this to grab a kimura attempt which allowed him to completely pass Herman’s guard but he let go as soon as he felt he lacked control. I don’t really want to talk about the fight anymore because it was really not a good fight but Jake is just really good at being a human blanket with suffocating top control. The thing is, against someone as good as Maia, it just won’t work. Both Maia and Shields have competed against Marcelo Garcia and the difference between an MMA submission specialist and a BJJ submission specialist is really apparent. Look at the videos online of them both rolling and competing and one can see that Maia is just another level compared to Shields. Shields just can’t expect to have any real success on the ground against Maia, even on top, as Maia’s triangle and guard sweeps are just fucking awesome. Throw in the fact that Maia actually has more effective ground and pound and Shields is fucked if it hits the ground. Edge in the grappling goes to Maia.
The final phase of combat where every fight begins is the standup game. Despite being a part of the Cesar Gracie camp for years and training with the likes of the Diaz brothers and Gilbert Melendez, Jake Shields’s striking is really bad. Before talking about his stand-up tactics, I want to make sure that everyone understands right off the bat that Jake Shields has literally almost no 
power at all on the feet. His punches and kicks deal virtually no damage and he is the definition of a point fighter on the feet. The problem is, it’s not exactly by choice. Moving past that, Shields uses lots and lots of kicks to the leg, body, and head. He also will spam jabs and straights with little pop behind them while attempting to enter the clinch. Whenever Jake begins using his hands, he will usually attempt to tie his opponent up and back them into the fence working the clinch or dropping for a takedown. His defense is not terrible and he defends a little more than half the strikes thrown at him usually. Once in the clinch, he will throw very weak punches to the body and knee you with the weakest knees I’ve ever seen a professional fighter throw. Alright I think I had enough of this because the bottom line is that Jake Shields’s striking is just atrocious for someone who has been a high level MMA fighter for so long. Jake really can’t threaten Maia on the feet but luckily for him, Maia isn’t exactly a high level striker either.
Despite making steady improvements in his striking at Middleweight, Maia’s stand-up game is pretty limited to throwing left overhands and left roundhouse kicks. His right side is really not used much in his striking attack and while he can hurt you standing, most of his punches are thrown without any elaborate set up. He will pretty much spam overhands and roundhouse kicks while closing the distance little by little. Against someone who will for sure have no advantage over him on the feet and no threat of a KO, Maia will be able to confidently get inside of Shields and force the clinch on him. After that, if his Welterweight fights give us any clue, he will do whatever he can to drag Shields to the ground. Edge in the striking goes to Maia.
Normally I spend a lot more time on the striking but the truth is, neither of these men have much complexity to their stand-up games. Maia uses the same techniques for the most part over and over while Shields will throw in volume because he can’t hurt you and needs to both score points, and also close the distance. The problem is that closing the distance is exactly what Maia wants to do. He wants to grab a hold and drag Shields to the ground. I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen as well and not only that, I believe Demian Maia will be the first man to submit Jake Shields. Yep and barring him gassing out or something, which after seeing him not slow down at all in the Fitch fight is doubtful, Maia is going to own Shields and get a title shot.
Final Prediction: Demian Maia by Submission Rd 3
-Ben can be reached at [email protected] or @agentbenten.
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