UFC 118 preview: Demian Maia vs Mario Miranda
Demian Maia’s last fight received both a tremendous amount of press coverage before the match and afterwards. Headlining the first ever UFC card in the Middle East at UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, he stepped up to replace injured Vitor Belfort for a shot at Anderson Silva’s title.
What transpired was perhaps the most infamous title fight debacle in UFC history, as Silva chose not to engage Maia except for rarely, instead dancing around and yelling insults at Maia the whole time, both utterly humiliating Maia and hurting his own fan base in the process. At UFC 118 on Saturday, Maia will look to wash away the bad taste from that fight as he takes on fellow Brazilian Mario Miranda.
Style
Maia’s style is simple: Brazilian jiu-jitsu. There are many BJJ black belts in the UFC, but describing Maia as a black belt doesn’t begin to describe his skill. Simply put, he’s arguably the best BJJ practitioner in all of MMA, and his record proves it. His first five fights in the UFC all ended in submission victories for Maia, and four of those were awarded “Submission of the Night” bonuses from the UFC.
He also has shown improved boxing and stand-up recently, and unlike other BJJ experts does also possess a pretty good takedown game. He can use the clinch effectively to take down his opponents, and once they’re on the ground with Maia, they’re in huge trouble.
Miranda is also a BJJ black belt who possesses good submissions, though he’s not at Maia’s level. What he does possess is good stand-up though, and that’s where he’ll probably have the advantage. He has five TKO victories on his resume, including most recently at UFC 115 in Vancouver against David “The Crow” Loiseau.
Recent form
Before suffering his loss to Silva, Maia had outboxed Dan Miller for a three-round unanimous decision victory. Before that though, he’d suffered the first loss of his career, getting knocked out in 21 seconds to contender Nate Marquardt. Just one fight before though, he pulled off one of the best submission victories of the year against current divisional number two Chael Sonnen, applying a beautiful combination of a takedown to mount, and then a triangle choke.
Miranda is only a two-fight UFC veteran. He lost his debut to Gerald Harris succumbing to a first-round knockout. He was give a bounce-back fight against over-the-hill former contender Loiseau, whom he dispatched late in the second round.
But frankly Loiseau was not a UFC calibre fighter at the time, and had been brought back simply because he’s a popular Canadian fighter on a card in Vancouver. That makes Miranda’s UFC record stand at one easy win and one quick loss, which doesn’t inspire great confidence.
Betting advice
Maia was embarrassed in his last fight, but that doesn’t mean he’s not one of the best fighters in the division, which he still is. Miranda on the other hand is a lower-tier fighter. Maia is around a -200 favourite for this fight, which makes him a bargain.
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