Athletes
Tai Tuivasa: Getting Back To Business
Recent Struggles Have The Australian Heavyweight Refocused Heading Into UFC 305
Few athletes are going to speak about their performances as candidly as Tai Tuivasa, the West Sydney heavyweight and beloved fan favorite who returns to action this weekend at UFC 305 against Jairzinho Rozenstruik.
“Bam Bam” touches down in Perth on a four-fight slide, with each of those losses coming inside the distance, and while he hasn’t exactly been getting beaten by scrubs, the forthright and affable competitor is quick to acknowledge that his mental focus hasn’t been where it needs to be over these last couple outings.
“This game, the fight business requires a lot of — you need to be mentally strong as well as physically strong,” begins Tuivasa, who has touched on distractions outside the cage as a stumbling point during this stretch. “I seem like I can be physically strong pretty much all the time, but you need to have your mind in the game, you need to be focused, and I suppose I haven’t been as focused as I should be, and it’s shown.
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“I always feel like I’m ready to go — I can fight any time, any place; that’s not an issue. But Top 10 in the UFC, we’re not just fighting guys at the pub, so you have to be 100 percent around the board, and I haven’t been that the last few fights.
“Especially in the Top 10 you can’t get away with things like that, but it’s all good,” he adds. “Tough times don’t last, tough people do. We’ll be all right. I feel like I’ve gotten over a lot of that and this is the best I’ve felt for a long time.”
A quick glance at Tuivasa’s record shows a series of clusters, groupings of victories with collections of losses bunched together at different points during what has already been a seven-plus-year journey.
He won his first three outings, then dropped three straight before going a year before returning to the Octagon and the win column at UFC 254 in Abu Dhabi. That victory over Stefan Struve kicked off the best run of the now 31-year-old’s career — a five-fight run of success that carried in him to the fringes of title contention — before things went sideways over his last four fights.
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A big contributor to his last run of success was that Tuivasa shifted his base of operations from his hometown to Dubai. While enacted as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions that came with it, the move also brought the opportunity for Tuivasa to focus exclusively on his preparations, as he left the pull of businesses and family for the solitude of the gym and a greater emphasis on training.
And the results speak for themselves.
Tai Tuivasa Fight Week Interview | UFC 305
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Tai Tuivasa Fight Week Interview | UFC 305
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Starting with his bout against Struve in October 2020 and through UFC 271 in February 2022, Tuivasa went 5-0 with five consecutive stoppage wins, never needing more than seven minutes to get the job done as he added victories over Greg Hardy, Augusto Sakai, and Derrick Lewis to his resume.
He went back to Dubai for this camp, jokingly prompted by a brief training session with light heavyweight champ Alex “Poatan” Pereira.
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“That was my first day training and he punched the f****** s*** out of me,” he says of the session with Pereira. “That was a great wake-up call to get back to training. I think I flew out to Dubai like two days after that. It was a good welcome back. I was like, ’S***, I better get back to work!’
“My winning camps,” he says with a laugh when asked the last time he spent a camp away from home. “I think I did the big Russian (Sergei Pavlovich) over there as well, but that was a bit rushed.
“But it’s all good,” he adds, smiling. “I’m still young. I’m still gonna be around for a little bit. I feel like I’m getting better. It’s just those little areas that I have to clean up and that’s all on me; it’s not on anyone else. My team in Dubai is great, my team back home is great, too, but it’s just my personal s***; we’re normal humans.”
That’s a reality that gets lost all too often as we watch and analyze athletes, and there might not be anyone in the UFC that embodies that more than Tuivasa.
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He is a man of the people — a fun-loving knockout machine that loves nothing more than singing along to tremendous pop anthems on the way to the Octagon and celebrating with the masses by chugging beers out of their shoes once he’s done handling his business, but sometimes, life interferes with his ability to perform to the best of his abilities, just like it does for the rest of us.
Everyone has distractions and challenges, and some handle them better than others, but there is something endearing about the gentle giant acknowledging his struggles that makes him feel so much more relatable.
Tai Tuivasa | Top Finishes
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Tai Tuivasa | Top Finishes
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“I’m a normal guy, man; I’m not super-human,” he says, giggling. “When I’m on, I’m on, but when I’m off, I’m off with the fairies.
“I feel like I’ve just had too much anger the last couple fights, and it’s shown. My Marcin Tybura fight, I shoulda, coulda, woulda and I got my *** choked out. It doesn’t matter (what else was going on or what I could have done differently); at the end of the day, the results are what matter, but it’s just little **** like that.
“I’m in my own head. No one else is in my head; only myself.”
This time around, the only thing he’s thinking about is making the walk and getting himself back into the win column… and maybe enjoying his customary post-victory celebration, as well.
“I’ve got Embedded here and I feel like I’m the most boring I’ve ever been,” offers the charismatic finisher. “I feel that is just because I’m not really worried about anything else; I’m worried about getting this fight done. After that, I’ll turn back into what I do, but I think a lot is on the line. I need to win this fight, man, and I need to win it in “Bam Bam” style.
“The pressure is big, but pressure creates mud or diamonds. I love the pressure, but I think I just need to keep my mind on the job and everything else will fall into place. I love when I get in there — I love the crowd, I love all that — but I need to keep my mind on winning and taking my time.
“I think everyone misses it,” he adds when I mention it’s been too long since fans have seen his signature “shimmy and a shoey” celebration. “I f***** miss it the most, but like I said, I’ve got to be in line myself.
“It’s all on me at the end of the day — I’m the only one that gets in there, I’m the one that goes to work. I’ve trained the best, I feel the best, my team has been the best, and it’s all up to me. I can either go in there and fumble the ball or hear the crowd roar.”
And after more than two years without a victory, the idea of hearing the roar of the partisan crowd in Perth is something that leaves the talkative heavyweight at a momentary loss for words.
“Ah…,” he begins, looking away from the camera, trying to find the words. “F*****’ feel good! I hope that, that’s for sure.
“It’s been a while, and not just for me, it’s been a while for my fans. At the end of the day, I’m here to impress them and they feed me, so I gotta put the work in. I feel like I’ve put the work in and now it’s time to go to work and get the job done.
“I’ve put a lot into this camp, so it’s definitely up to me now. I’ve gotta make it show.”
UFC 305: Du Plessis vs Adesanya took place live from RAC Arena in Perth, Western Australia on August 17, 2024. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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