For those of you who follow MMA, you obviously know who Anderson Silva is. He’s the UFC’s 23-4 middleweight champ, and generally accepted best pound-for-pound fighter in the world right now. But who you may not know is Demian Maia, a 9-0 up and coming jiu jitsu ace. And by "jiu jitsu ace", i mean ri-fucking-diculous at jiu jitsu… probably one of the top 3 grapplers in the world.

I was blown away by his submission of Nate Quarry last weekend at UFC 91 — not because Nate Quarry is great fighter, he’s not — but simply because he pulled half-guard, swept him, took the back and choked him out in a total of about 30 seconds.

So does he have a fight with Anderson Silva coming up? Well… no, he’s got at least one more fight (potentially against Michael Bisping) before he gets his title shot. So why am I talking about it?  Well, because as far off as it is, I actually think Demian Maia can and — dare I say it… WILL — beat Anderson Silva in the future!

People say that the best style against Silva is wrestling… wrong. The problem with wrestlers is that they’re generally bad at finishing fights. They might catch you with some strikes if you have weak stand-up, or they might lay on top of you for 3 rounds and grind out a decision if you have a weak ground game — but Silva isn’t weak in either of those areas, plus you get him for 5 rounds. No, the best style against Anderson Silva is elite level jiu jitsu, elite enough to control someone who has a black belt themselves.

There are a couple guys with that elite level jiu jitsu in the middle weight division: Paulo Fihlo, Rousimar Palhares, maybe even Travis Lutter. The problem with these guys is that they have horrible conditioning. If they don’t get a submission in the first round, they basically give up. Demian Maia doesn’t have that problem — and he’s even a notch above these guys skill-wise.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling. If you’re still reading at this point, just remember this: Assuming the middle weight title race pans out as I expect, I’m going on record and saying that Demian Maia will work his way up to a title shot and beat Anderson silva ~8 months from now. Now here’s some sweet footage of Maia owning people on the mats. Love this music…