Maia: 'Still Can't Believe I Was Chosen'

After a day full of unexpected news -- Vitor Belfort withdrew from his UFC 112 title bout against Anderson Silva -- I thought Friday would be a pretty normal day. It’s Carnival time in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Just like Madonna, Beyonce, Paris Hilton and many soccer stars, the whole country was excited and thousands stopped to see the biggest party in the world.

Before entering into this long holiday, however, I decided to visit Silva at the X-Gym Academy. There, we talked about Belfort’s surgery. Speaking off the record at the time, the champion told me: “I may fight at light heavyweight in Abu Dhabi, probably against Rashad Evans. Nothing is sure yet, and the boss will probably take some time to release that, so please don’t write anything about that.” *

It was around 4 p.m. on Friday, and I started to think I would not have any surprising news. By nighttime, however, I was in the Carnival parade, with almost half a million people, in front of Ipanema Beach, and my Nextel radio rang. It was Demian Maia.

“Alonso, have you heard about the news?” he asked. “I’m going to fight Anderson for the belt.”

I thought he was joking but soon recognized the serious tone in his words.

“I still can’t believe I was chosen,” Maia said. “When my manager called me, I immediately said, ‘Yes.’ After all, I dreamed of that possibility my whole life.”

Maia rebounded from his one-punch knockout loss to Nate Marquardt and outpointed former International Fight League champion Dan Miller in a featured bout at UFC 109 on Feb. 6 in Las Vegas.

“Actually, I feel like a much better fighter today,” Maia said. “After the loss, I learned a lot. I trained a lot of boxing, and I feel much more comfortable fighting against Anderson.”

Maia holds Silva in the highest regard.

“I respect him very much,” he said. “I consider Anderson and B.J. [Penn] the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world, but I’ll train hard to beat him. I don’t want to waste the chance of my life.”

When asked about how he planned to handle delicate situation involving Antonio Rodrigo and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, who find themselves as his friends and Silva’s training partners, Maia put it in clear terms.

“Rodrigo, Rogerio and [Junior] ‘Cigano’ [dos Santos] helped me so much for my last fight,” he said. “They are great friends for me now, but I want to make it clear that I totally understand their decision. If they want to stay in Anderson’s corner, I’ll totally understand, and that will never affect my friendship and respect for them. I want them to be comfortable about that. Actually, that already happened with me many times in jiu-jitsu. I had friends as coaches of my opponents on the other side. I consider that even more normal in a professional sport like MMA.”

Caught by surprise with Belfort’s injury and his sudden chance to fight for the middleweight crown, Maia had not yet mapped out his training plans.

“I’ll decide that during the Carnival holiday,” he said. “By Monday, I’ll have eight weeks until the fight, so I’ll decide when I go to Bahia to train boxing and to San Diego to improve my cardio with [Rafael] Alejarra.”

* Note: This article was updated at 2:45 p.m. ET on Feb. 14 to clarify that Silva gave Marcelo Alonso permission to publish previously off-the-record remarks when Maia was officially named Silva's opponent and the Evans fight was no longer a possibility.