By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Marcelo Fraguas

Demian Maia was close to fight for the belt, but the knock out loss to Nate Marquard changed his plans. After the first defeat in the career, Demian is back to trainings, looking to the fight against Dan Miller on UFC 109, in February. “I’m training, doing my preparation, training Jiu-Jitsu, boxing and strength training. He’s a complete guy, fights standing up, on the ground, won a lot of fights by submission and has a good Wrestling”, the black belt said, who trained with Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira, Junior “Cigano” dos Santos and Rogério “Minotouro” Nogueira.

“I had already trained with Rogério and Rodrigo, they’re excellent on Jiu-Jitsu. I had never trained with Cigano, but I got surprised. He still have a lot to develop, but he has a good ground and he’s very talented, learns very fast, I think that in a little while he’s gonna be excellent… The guys are amazing”, complements Damian, who sent TATAME.com some images of the big train in his gym (click here to see the photo gallery).

And Maia praises Dos Santos’s ground game. “I think he has all the conditions to become champion. He’s excellent, has a good boxing and he moves as a lightweight with heavyweight punch, and he has a good ground”, analyzes, celebrating Minotouro’s victory, who debuted with a knockout on UFC.

“It was excellent, man. He’s my friend, we train together and I was supporting him a lot. I was very happy because he won, and won very well. He’s an excellent athlete”, said, surprised by the fact that the fight ended is less than two minutes. “Banha (Luis Cane) didn’t found himself, I thought Banha was going to find himself a little bit more. I thought that Rogério was going to win, but Banha got pretty lost. Rogério’s game is complicated, he’s boxing is not easy to understand”, finished.