Poor Tuivasa

Kyojiro Kagenuma

Kyojiro Kagenuma

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He was really on a run for a while, and I thought he was legitimately getting better at the sport. He was clearly outmatched when he took on Gane but he had a punchers chance. Ever since then its been straight downhill for the guy.

They really should've given him a lower level guy than Roze for his fight after four straight losses. Sucks.
 
It's always tough with heavyweights and especially tough when they're brawler types. When a guy starts doing well like Tai did, it becomes a question of, did they really turn a corner, or did the gambler just hit a hot streak where their chances/ability to win weren't actually up at all?

For my money, I lean towards saying he does seem to get hurt more often now than before (not a case like Lewis where he's always been vulnerable to the body no matter how many KO's he got) so maybe Tai did just get hot before but it's on the decline now? But to be fair, he did say he was going through some bad stuff that threw him off in past fights and this fight was more a sudden injury, so the jury's not out on that.

Roze was definitely a tough out. Still looked like something Taoli could win, but yeah, it's much better to take a bigger step back just up reset himself and his momentum
 
I never thought highly of the guy but honestly I was probably underrating him at one point. He did manage to get five KOs in a row and he did drop Gane so he is better than I initially gave him credit for. However I think he's had his best run and he'll be lucky if he picks up another win or two over a top HW and at best will float around the middle of the pack in one of the least talent stacked divisions in the UFC.
 
Fact Checker said:
Roze IS a lower level guy though, how much lower could they get? Mo Usman low?
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Like, not ranked. Tai was #10 on a big losing streak, Roze was just 2 spots below him and had a spotty record but on a win. Fight someone like Don'Tale Mayes, or just anyone else who lost to someone just in or near the rankings
 
The problem with these type of brawlers, is that they never improve. He wen to AKA for a short time, and didn't stay there. Tuivasa, Tufa, Mark Hunt....your ceiling for staying a brawler at HW with a marginal improvement is very low. He doesn't even have power like Derick Lewis, so at best he can just earn a decent paycheck for a while due to the division he is fighting in. A hot streak will be replaced by a cold streak, that's really all he has.
 
His hot streak was fun and I was rooting for him against gane but realistically he over achieved with his skill set and you shouldn't feel bad at all.
 
I think the big issue with Tai is that he doesn't seem to improve from fight to fight.

He will always have a punchers chance against anybody, but he's very similar to Darren Till in that he never worked on the areas he is weak in.

Tom Aspinall said it best on his event breakdown post fight. Anybody with some level of skill AND fight IQ is going to beat Tuivasa. He can beat guys with one or the other, but if you have any level of both then Tai is going to be an easy fight.
 
I'm sure he's getting a decent fight purse from that 5 ko winstreak, I'd imagine his base is somewhere around 100k
 
Fact Checker said:
Roze IS a lower level guy though, how much lower could they get? Mo Usman low?
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Not really low level for HW division standards. The 5 notable losses Roz has in UFC are Ngannou, Gane, Blaydes, Volkov, and Almeida. Francis left as champ and those other fighters are all in the Top 6.

Tai should definitely take a step back in competition.
 
BigTruck said:
His hot streak was fun and I was rooting for him against gane but realistically he over achieved with his skill set and you shouldn't feel bad at all.
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I don't think he over achieved.

I think if he fought the same guys he beat on his win streak again he'd have a great shot of beating them again. If he rematched the guys he lost to he'd likely lose again. His rise was fun but manufactured in the sense that he was given ideal matchups all the way through.
 
I think his losing streak is attributed to his training discipline, and it shows now that swinging and banging can only get him so far.

The fight with Rozen show that his fitness was improved but striking skill is still the same but with more faints.

I do honestly feel like he needs to comeback to the USA when DC trained him. Those 4 months were valuable to Tai. I get he doesn't want to leave home anymore.
 
Domitian said:
Not really low level for HW division standards. The 5 notable losses Roz has in UFC are Ngannou, Gane, Blaydes, Volkov, and Almeida. Francis left as champ and those other fighters are all in the Top 6.

Tai should definitely take a step back in competition.
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This is true... Rozen is probably the 8th best HW, only Almeida, Volkov, Palovich, Gane, Aspinall, Blaydes and Spivak are better than him. There are 30 HWs on the ufc roster, yet they gave him the 8th best HW.
 
Kyojiro Kagenuma said:
He was really on a run for a while, and I thought he was legitimately getting better at the sport. He was clearly outmatched when he took on Gane but he had a punchers chance. Ever since then its been straight downhill for the guy.

They really should've given him a lower level guy than Roze for his fight after four straight losses. Sucks.
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He was choked out in the previous fight so the best they could do to get him back on track was to give him a fellow striker and not of Gane's caliber.

Fights against Despaigne or Cortes Acosta could've ended even worse. And we no longer have Vanderaa or Sakai around.
 
At some point the beatings he's taken is a detriment to his ability to perform.
 
Greyscale said:
He was choked out in the previous fight so the best they could do to get him back on track was to give him a fellow striker and not of Gane's caliber.

Fights against Despaigne or Cortes Acosta could've ended even worse. And we no longer have Vanderaa or Sakai around.
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LOL, tuivasa smokes guys like cortes acosta and Despaigne, especially someone like Despaigne, who doesn't even know how to throw a punch and his defense is to block punches with his face.
 
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