How being dominated by Anderson Silva changed Demian Maia’s career

Back in 2010, Demian Maia competed against Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight championship in just his 14th professional MMA fight. The fight went the full 5 rounds, and drew quite a bit of criticism for Silva, who taunted Maia throughout the entire fight while appearing to never look to ‘pull the trigger’ and knock his opponent out. Despite that, Silva dominated the fight, earning himself a unanimous decision win.

Now, 6 years later, Maia is gearing up for his UFC 198 fight against Matt Brown tonight. Ahead of that fight, he spoke on The MMA Hour to discuss how his fight against Silva changed his career.

“That fight changed my career. At that time, Anderson never had any real challenge. That fight went five rounds, and I didn’t do well, but in the end I was a little bit better, was trying to fight. A lot of people started to recognize me as a fighter, even (though) I lost. A lot of good feedback.

“But what I mean is that it doesn’t matter the feedback, everybody spoke about that fight because of Anderson. These other people were talking about the fight, and that I think put me in a different level. People started to recognize me more because I was that guy that fought Anderson.

“But, yeah, maybe your theory is right, maybe I’m still paying for that. I lost some fights also after that, too.”

Maia, who now competes at welterweight, could very well find himself in the 170 pound title mix with a win over Matt Brown tonight in Curitiba. Do you think he can pull it off?