Junior Dos Santos Rips Opponent For Representing Street Fighting
Junior Dos Santos rips Tai Tuivasa for something that the former UFC heavyweight champion is strongly against. The two fighters will compete in a heavyweight main event at the upcoming UFC Adelaide event.
As seen in the main event of UFC Boise, former heavyweight champion ‘Cigano’ was able to pick up a win. He scored a unanimous decision over Blagoy Ivanov. Dos Santos landed more strikes over five rounds to take home the win on the judges’ scorecards.
This was a big win for him for two reasons. It marked his first win since suffering a knockout loss to Stipe Miocic in May of 2017. Also, this was his first fight in over a year.
Now he’s set to take on one of the UFC’s fastest-rising heavyweights in Tuivasa. JDS recently did an interview with Sporting News where he talked about the upcoming fight as well one issue he has with the prospect. Tuivasa beat former heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski via unanimous decision at UFC 225.
That’s where dos Santos noticed that Tuivasa labels himself as representing “street fighting.”
“In his last fight, with Arlovski, when Bruce Buffer was introducing him, he said he represents street fighting,” dos Santos said. “I was watching the fight last night, and saw that and was like ‘what?! That’s not even a martial art.’ I thought I was fighting against a martial artist, but that’s not the case.”
Not A Real Martial Art
The bout marked the first fight of Tuivasa’s career that he didn’t finish his opponent in the first round. Instead, he went the distance. But dos Santos was more concerned with Tuivasa’s lack of a martial art during his intro.
“I want to know more about this, and one day I’ll ask him. To represent street fighting…that’s just stupid. Who fights in the streets? It’s not even fair. That’s a coward. Street fighting is not a martial art – it doesn’t exist. How can someone represent street fighting – that’s bullshit.”
JDS would continue by bringing up that all MMA fighters are fighting against this label and if you claim to be a street fighter, then he thinks you’re a coward.
“Everyone, all the gyms around the world, are fighting against that – against this kind of stupid thing, this coward thing,” dos Santos said. “It doesn’t exist. You’re not a street fighter, you’re a coward.”
Dos Santos closed by proclaiming Tuivasa would have his ‘a** kicked’ by him for being a ‘street fighter.’ In his mind, street fighters are cowardly and aren’t real fighters as a result:
“These people who fight in the streets don’t really know how to fight. Come to a real gym, face a real fighter and you’ll get your ass kicked. And if this guy, Tai Tuivasa, is really a street fighter, that’s what he’s going to have – he’s going to have his ass kicked by me on December 2nd in Adelaide.”
UFC Adelaide (also known as UFC Fight Night 142) is set to take place on Sunday, December 2, 2018 at Adelaide Entertainment Centre in Adelaide, South Australia. The main card will air on FOX Sports 1 while the preliminary card will be split broadcasted on FOX Sports 1 and the promotion’s streaming service, UFC Fight Pass.
