Months removed from their backstage altercation at UFC Adelaide, Tai Tuivasa still has a grudge against Willis that won’t be settled until they throw down.
There’s no shortage of bad blood between UFC heavyweights Tai Tuivasa and Justin Willis. The two started feuding at the weigh-ins for UFC Fight Night 142 in Adelaide, Australia back in December of 2018 when Willis got into a verbal altercation backstage with Tai’s training partner and friend Mark Hunt. Willis would go on to pick apart Hunt in smart but boring fashion during their fight that weekend, and since then Tuivasa’s been looking for revenge.
Willis is coming off of an extremely one sided decision loss to Curtis Blaydes that saw him get outwrestled badly. On the latest episode of Submission Radio, Tuivasa lambasted the AKA fighter for talking loads of smack about Blaydes and then getting got in the cage.
“Man, he is the definition of a f**king idiot, the definition of f**kwit, the definition of – I can’t even speak when I think about him,” Tuivasa said. “Like how do you talk (so much?) I know yous in the media, so your probably used to it. I actually just was watching some of his stuff he was saying before the fight. Oh my God. At least come with… at least throw a punch. Like, f**k me, that’s embarrassing. If I was his coach I would have walked off.”
Some kind of incident just happened backstage at the weigh-in face-offs after Mark Hunt and Justin Willis had a heated face off.
Security sprung to action and Tai Tuivasa could be heard yelling: “Who the fuck do you think you are?!”, “I’ll fucken smash yous both!”. pic.twitter.com/dG8WkiGn6z
— Submission Radio (@SubmissionRadio) November 30, 2018
Even with Willis dropping that fight, Tuivasa is still looking to make a bout between them happen.
“I’m gonna fight him regardless,” he said. “If I see him, I’m slapping the f**king s**t out of him. It’s on. Like, he disrespected my culture, he disrespected me. So, where I’m from that’s not really that cool. And if it is, at least back it up. Don’t come like that and then get your ass handed to you. He got raped. I was gonna ring the police. I thought they were naked for a minute there. Like, have you see him the photo where they blur him out? That’s f**king hilarious.”
”Man, like I said, he’s doing his thing, I’m doing my thing, I’m gonna catch up with him whenever I catch up with him. At the end of the day, he’s killing his own career, I think, talking s**t and then coming out being s**t. So that’s really up to him. My advice to Justin is, enjoy the last couple of months in the UFC, because after this it’s gonna be done for you.”
Tuivasa’s next fight is already lined up: he’ll be facing off against Sambo specialist Blagoy Ivanov at UFC 238 on June 8th. He’s very aware that his own ground chops are going to be tested, but it’s not going to stop him from going for some big moves.
“Ah, I got some new s**t I want to try and do,” he said. “I don’t know if it will work. Probably end up with me on the bottom. But of course I’m in there to try some s**t. But you know me, I’m coming to fight, and if happens early, it happens early. If it doesn’t happen early, doesn’t happen early.”