The heavyweight division is in absolute shambles in UFC at the moment. We have a champion who has only somewhat defending his belt one time and got poked in the eyes while doing so, we have a hand-selected champion in Jon Jones that was basically given the belt and then refused to defend it for nearly 2 years then walked away on it without ever even addressing to possibility of fighting eye-pokey Tom Aspinall.
We have Tom bitching and whining and complaining about the eye poke that was legitimate and he has a real grievance there but so many other people have just sucked it up buttercup and finished the fight and he instead took the walk-away victory. Yeah yeah, the doctors have said he has had to have multiple surgeries and the poke was quite serious but let's be real here... how much of this do you think is PR because everyone was pissed off the fight was ruled a Non Contest? hmmmmm?
Anyway, Tai Tuivasa is a heavyweight with the UFC and while a lot of other people really liked him I always thought he was a louse and was being pushed on us for all the wrong reasons.
I want you to take notice the next time you are in the bathroom with your shirt off (if you are a dude) and see if you have more or less chest definition than this top-20 heavyweight MMA fighter in the UFC. This fat fuck is top 20, or that is what UFC will have us believe. He has been handed easy fights because of geography and because he was good on the microphone and had a gimmick.
Since the UFC is basically WWE with real punching this worked out for him for a while.
Tai would do this thing after a victory (and even some losses) where he would have a beer thrown to him like Stone Cold Steve Austin and he would drink it, but not just slam it like the Texas Rattlesnake... no, he would pour it in a shoe and drink the beer out of that. It was called a "shoey" and it was his callsign.
It was stupid and disgusting but everyone really wanted him to win so they could see him do this again. They wanted to see the out of shape fat fuck drink a beer out of a shoe. They weren't really all that interested in whether or not the guy could actually fight.. they wanted to see him drink beer out of a stranger's shoe.
in his most recent fight, which was about a rigged as the UFC could make it, he lost to Tallison Teixeira (who?) and it was just embarrassing to watch. Both of these guys were completely gassed out and had no energy after about 90 second of the fight.
I get that it is probably tough to do almost anything when you weigh near 300 lbs, but these guys are paid pretty good money to be good at fighting, not just to be good at drinking beer out of shoes.
When the post-fight interview happened in Australia and they allowed Tai to talk because he was sort of supposed to win that day, he mentioned going to get a beer with his opponent and then someone in the crowd rustled up a shoe for him to drink out of....
Of course the crowd kind of liked that but the gimmick is done dude. This fat prick doesn't have skills to fight.
The reason why we liked Mark Hunt and Roy Nelson was because they were "everymen" that we could kind of see a bit of ourselves in if we were a bit overweight.
These guys also have been ready and capable of going the distance if their fight went 3 rounds or even more than 3 rounds for Roy on 1 occasion.
Tai Tuivasa is a gimmick that was specifically chosen for the sake of having an Aussie in the lineup... His fights have been hand selected in the hopes that he would win. Every fighter that you have ever heard of that he has fought against has defeated him and now we are at 6 losses in a row that the crowd is sitting there hoping they can see the fat guy drink a beer out of a shoe.
While Dana White has said nothing about this yet, I can all but guarantee that Tai is not going to have his contract renewed. The heavyweight division desperately needs some new life in it and the likes of a redneck who barely ever wins that drinks beer out of a shoe is not the sort of athlete they should be aiming for if they ever want people to care about that division again.
I guess I kind of feel bad for him but also hope that he made some money with the stupid shoey idea while he had the chance. I wouldn't want to fight the guy IRL, but as far as being competitive is concerned, he was never top class and the UFC simply rigged the situations to make it appear as though he was top-tier. Good bye fatty, you will not be missed.