Demian Maia has made a career out of squeezing people’s necks in a cage to earn two title shots in the UFC, and now uses all that knowledge and skill in a new role as MMA coach. After being part of Charles Oliveira’s camp for a one-sided victory over Max Holloway earlier this year, it’s time for Ian Machado Garry to shock the world against welterweight champion Islam Makhachev.
Garry challenges Makhachev in the main event of UFC 330, which goes down Saturday night in Philadelphia, and attempt to snap what would be a record-breaking 17th straight UFC victory. For Maia, it’s a fascinating “puzzle at an extremely high level of fighting.”
“You have a guy with elite wrestling — and why not say a level of jiu-jitsu mixed in with the wrestling of Sambo, at an exceptional level —, along with a champion’s mindset,” Maia told MMA Fighting. “He’s going to fight another guy who also has tremendous tactical intelligence, a very high level of striking, exceptional distance control, and increasingly better jiu-jitsu.”
Garry earned his shot by beating Carlos Prates and ex-champion Bella Muhammad in back-to-back fights, losing only once as a profession in a short-notice clash with Shavkat Rakhmonov. The welterweight Irishman has a long reach and height advantage over the champion, and Maia sees that as a potential key to victory.
“I think it’s a very open fight,” Maia said. “I think Ian has the size advantage. He’s bigger and — and this is kind of obvious to say — the advantage in the striking. I think he has an advantage because that’s his area. He’s very technical, but he has distance control that very few guys have. We saw that in the Carlos Prates fight and in the MVP fight, which is an extremely difficult matchup, and in the fight with Belal, a former champion.
“And Makhachev has that champion’s aura. He has very good jiu-jitsu. Sometimes people look at him as the complete MMA fighter that he is, but when you see him on the ground, when he takes someone down, his jiu-jitsu is actually very similar to high-level sport jiu-jitsu. He’s not overly concerned with hurting people with strikes. He wants to advance, get to the positions he’s good at, and find the right submissions. His jiu-jitsu is adaptable, and he could probably even compete at a high level in jiu-jitsu competitions.”
Garry’s Chute Boxe teammate Charles Oliveira recently told MMA Fighting his “intelligence” will be the deciding factor at UFC 330, having fought the Russian in the past, and Maia echoes that sentiment.
“Technically speaking, I think Ian has tremendous fight IQ, which makes things difficult for anyone in the division,” Maia said. “But there’s a factor we don’t always pay as much attention to, and it’s very important: size. Makhachev fought at 170 against Jack Della Maddalena. Jack is a 170-pounder, a world champion, an exceptional fighter, but he isn’t a huge 170-pounder like Carlos Prates, Ian Garry, Morales or Shavkat. The first thing we have to understand is that Makhachev is going to be dealing with a different size, and we have to see how he adapts to that.”
Maia admits he has never intended to become a MMA coach. Already busy juggling his jiu-jitsu team with seminars and writing a book — expected to come out in the United States during the World Master IBJJF Championship in early September —, he was somewhat “dragged” to this role after being constantly approached by fighters.
First, Virna Jandiroba. From that the list kept getting bigger, with Garry being the onde responsible for the link between Maia and Diego Lima’s Chute Boxe group. Since then, Maia has started to train other MMA talents like Larissa Pacheco and Tainara Lisboa.
“I met Garry when I went to Europe to teach a seminar, and he asked to attend the seminar,” Maia said. “We trained together for two days, and he told me he was going to Brazil. I didn’t believe him, but one day Garry actually showed up. I didn’t even know he had a relationship with Chute Boxe and Diego Lima. Because of that connection, I ended up becoming really good friends with Diego.”
“It wasn’t really something I was focusing on,” he continued. “I have the gym that I run, my affiliations, I do seminars, I have the UFC, where I work as a [commentator], and I give lectures from time to time. My life is crazy, but I like it, because otherwise everything I’ve absorbed over all these years would eventually get lost, and it’s cool to pass that knowledge on.”
Maia backs Garry to win at the Xfinity Mobile Arena, but won’t go into details as to how he expects it to end.
“It definitely could go either way,” Maia said. “But that prediction is very difficult to make whether the fight goes the distance or ends early. It’s a fight where both guys have the weapons and the ability to go all five rounds if necessary, but either one could knock the other out or get a submission somewhere in the middle. It’s not the kind of fight where it’s clear that it will end early, or that if it does end early, it favors one guy over the other. And it’s not necessarily better for one of them if the fight goes longer, either. I think at the level they’re at, it’s very evenly matched.”