Demian Maia won\u2019t close the door on a return to competition in grappling or mixed martial arts, but one sport seems more viable at the moment.<\/p>\n
A former UFC title contender at middleweight and welterweight, the jiu-jitsu phenom entered the octagon for the final time in June 2021, when he lost a decision to future champion Belal Muhammad. He never meant for that to be his final fight, but that\u2019s how things played out.<\/p>\n
At 48, Maia is staying busy with his jiu-jitsu gym in Sao Paulo, working as color commentary work for the UFC on Paramount+, coaching fighters like Ian Machado Garry and Charles Oliveira, and also teaching seminars around the world. Still, he would still re-focus on training for one last UFC bout.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The door] is closing, but I\u2019d be lying if I said that, if the UFC came to me with an offer for a meaningful fight, in the right setting, I wouldn\u2019t do it,\u201d Maia told MMA Fighting, \u201cIf it made sense and it was in a place like Rio de Janeiro or Las Vegas, where I\u2019ve fought so many times and have so much history, I would definitely consider it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maia competed 33 times under the UFC banner with half of his 22 victories coming by way of submission against the likes of Carlos Condit, Chael Sonnen, Ben Askren, Matt Brown and Neil Magny. He was on a three-fight winning streak before losing to Gilbert Burns and Muhammad in his final appearances.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do feel like I never got a proper farewell, you know?\u201d Maia said. \u201cIt all ended in a bit of an anticlimactic way. I lost to Belal Muhammad in 2021. I won one round, he won two. It wasn\u2019t a particularly exciting fight. Even back then, I already wanted one more fight so I could retire. I was already thinking about stepping away, but it never happened. So there\u2019s always that feeling of, \u2018Man, I wish I had been able to close that chapter,\u2019 and I never got the chance. I think it\u2019s very unlikely the UFC would want to make something like that happen, but this sport surprises us every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maia has competed three times in grappling matches since his last UFC fight, tapping out Alex Oliveira and Sang Wook Kim with a decision win over Benson Henderson in between. Maia revealed he gets offers \u201call the time by pretty much every organization\u201d for more matches, but nothing has sounded interesting enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just haven\u2019t signed anything yet because nothing has really made my eyes light up,\u201d Maia said. \u201cThere hasn\u2019t been an opponent where I thought, \u2018That\u2019s the guy I want, that\u2019s the money I want.\u2019 I\u2019m not worried about it because I\u2019ll compete if it\u2019s something that makes sense, something I enjoy, and something I think is cool, and offers keep coming all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA really fun match would be against Nate or Nick Diaz, the Diaz brothers, because those guys bring a ton of hype,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019re both very good at jiu-jitsu and they\u2019ll attract a huge audience. That\u2019s interesting because I\u2019d get to benefit from the buzz they generate. And there\u2019s Georges St-Pierre. That goes without saying. He\u2019s an incredibly tough competitor, an outstanding jiu-jitsu practitioner under Danaher, one of the best coaches in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maia revealed he was approached by Hype with an offer to face Arman Tsarukyan this past March in Rio de Janeiro, but the call came with less than a week\u2019s notice while he was out of the country on a seminar tour. Tsarukyan ended up choking out Muhammad Mokaev instead.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s seriously impressive, his grappling is top-notch,\u201d Maia said when asked if Tsarukyan would be an opponent of interest in the future. \u201cIt would\u2019ve had to be for a lot of money because that guy is tough as hell [laughs].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Demian Maia won\u2019t close the door on a return to competition in grappling or mixed martial arts, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-783310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}