Claudia Gadelha is one of the key figures behind UFC BJJ and although the promotion has gotten off to a good start with it’s first two events, she’s already had to have words with top competitors like Kennedy Maciel. Maciel made his promotional debut at UFC BJJ 2 and he won a decision against a tough opponents in Ademir Barreto, but that wasn’t good enough for Gadelha. Getting a win over someone like Barreto is big and doing it at the early stages of this promotion could have been enough to get him a title-shot, particularly as the reigning lightweight champion Carlos Henrique is still looking to make his first defense.
Gadelha revealed that Maciel actually had the same thoughts himself, but she disagreed:
“Sometimes we have athletes that have a lot of good titles and a lot of good competition but they are not fast enough, they don’t bring the pace that we need for our event. Today, I had to go to the back and talk to Kennedy Maciel. Like, ‘Kennedy, you are great, you are a world champion, but we need a faster pace from you.’ He was expecting to fight for the title next, but we have to go back to the lab and think about what we are going to do with him, because he needs to move faster for us to continue to bring him back in…”
Gadelha went on to explain that isn’t anything against Maciel personally, the promotion is just looking to get a specific type of competitor for their shows:
“Jiu-Jitsu can be methodical and slow, and it can also be very exciting and very fast. We are looking for the fast-paced athletes that get in there and fight and compete the whole time.”
The full UFC BJJ post-event interview with Claudia Gadelha where she talks about Kennedy Maciel was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the UFC:
