Colby Convington set his sights on Demian Maia and he believes the bjj ace could bring him just one step away from the title.
Covington recently set down and dissected Maia’s game with bloody elbow:
“I don’t want to giveaway my gameplan too much from that position. You just got to beat a guy like that to the underhooks. He’s looking to get to the underhooks, and get the arm around the back so he can do a half guard sweep and do all of that kind of stuff. I’ve seen that; he’s a one-trick pony. He only has one set of moves that he uses to get to the back, and that’s about all he’s got. I mean, he’s got some good Jiu-Jitsu, but this is 2017, guys know how to stop Jiu-Jitsu.”
Maia most recently defeated his teammate Jorge Masvidal – Covington called the fight a big learning experience:
“I learned a lot from that fight, and there’s a lot of things I took away from it. We sat down when he got back, and he was pretty bummed about it, but we sat down and put everything on the table. We talked about what went wrong, what he could have worked on, where he felt like Maia’s strength is at, which is mainly the half guard and the Jiu-Jitsu game. We’ve moved past that and I learned a lot from that. I’m also a different fighter than Jorge, so getting to my back and taking me down is a whole other level of skill that you’re going to have to have. I learned a lot from that loss from Jorge, and I’m going to make him pay for blocking my boy from getting a title shot. I promise you that. It’s going to be Maia’s retirement, and it’s near Halloween, so they’re going to call it the Nightmare in Sao Paulo.”
And Covington even touched on the bouts location – Brazil:
I trained to finish Demian Maia, so I’m not going to leave it in the judges hands. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to finish Demian Maia.
In the end Covington, who comes from a wrestling background is very confident in his striking:
He has J.V. [junior varsity] level takedowns. Those takedowns aren’t going to work against an All American wrestler who’s been defending takedowns since he was 5 years old. I’m a completely evolved fighter. I dropped Dong Hyun Kim, last fight, 3 times, almost finished him with a knockout. He’s a pretty vicious striker; he’s knocked out a lot of good fighters and a lot of good strikers in the UFC. My striking is sneaky good, people are sleeping on it, and that’s what’s going to happen this fight; I’m going to sleep Demian Maia for all the people that have slept on your striking in the past
