5 fighters with the most submission wins in UFC history

#3 Demian Maia – 9 submission wins

When Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Demian Maia signed with the UFC in 2007, he wasn’t just bringing an impressive MMA record – 6 wins, zero losses and 3 submissions – with him. He was bringing one of the most stellar grappling records too, as he’d won the famed Abu Dhabi grappling championships earlier in the year to cap off a stellar list of achievements.

Over the years that have followed, Maia’s grappling prowess has always set him apart from his fellow Middleweights – and eventually Welterweights. Since his arrival in the UFC, he’s won by submission 9 times, meaning almost half of his 19 Octagon wins have come via tap out. In his initial run, he finished 5 straight fights via submission – earning comparisons to the legendary Royce Gracie.

In a fascinating fact, Maia is one of the few UFC fighters to have never won a fight via strikes – his lone TKO win came in 2012 over Dong Hyun Kim when the Korean fighter was forced to quit due to muscle spasms. Essentially, throughout his career, he’s tried to live up to the creed that he stated when he arrived in the UFC – to submit his opponent without hurting them, but without them hurting him either.

Tell that to Rick Story, though – Maia choked him out in 2012 and the submission was compared to someone squeezing juice from a fruit!