Demian Maia set to return to BJJ Competition

Demian Maia held the banner for BJJ in the UFC until he retired in 2021. Maia went on to amass an MMA record consisting of 28 wins and 11 losses during a career that spanned for two decades.

He went out on top of his game, still ranked an against a promising contender, Belal Muhammad. Despite the fact he’s 45, Maia still competes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Maia will be returning in four days at Spyder BJJ. He’s booked to face Sangwook Kim.

Kim is another MMA professional with the recrod consisting of 7 wins and 2 losses. He is a part of Angel FC out of Asia. Kim was most recently seen in the Netflix reality show Physical 100 where he was initially eliminated in a group challenge, but came back when he was one of the 5 who survived a 25 person “consolation challege” – which involved holding up a suspended bust of a contestant’s torso that weighed 40% of their weight.

Maia previously competed in BJJ against Benson Henderson. The two grappled to a judges decision at Polaris 20. Prior to that, Maia faced Alex Cowboy Oliveira at BJJ Stars in 2022 when he restarted his competitive grappling career.

It’s worth noting that Maia isn’t officially retired from MMA – his career with the UFC ended when he finished out his contract. He expressed hope as far back as last summer he would be invited back.

Maia told Luke Thomas:

“No, I’m not officially retired,”

“I want to do one more fight in the UFC, but I don’t want to fight any other event, because UFC’s my house. It’s been my house for the last 15 years. So if I get another chance I would do one more fight there.”

“I still train MMA. I’m still doing some boxing and Thai-boxing with takedowns and this kind of thing, so I keep this sharp if I need to do one more fight,” Maia said. “But at the same time I’m focused a lot on sport jiu-jitsu again, because I want to compete more in this kind of rules.”