Jairzinho Rozenstruik defeats Tai Tuivasa at UFC 305
The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to us tonight, August 17, 2024, for UFC 305, going down live from the RAC Arena in Perth, Australia.
Headlining the event is a title bout at 185 lbs between UFC middleweight champion between Dricus Du Plessis (21-2) and former two-time UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya (24-3).
Co-headlining the event is a title eliminator bout in the flyweight division between no. 4 ranked Kai Kara-France (24-12) and no. 7 ranked Steve Erceg (12-2).
Our second bout going down on the UFC 305 main card tonight came in the heavyweight division between Tai Tuivasa (14-8) and Jairzinho Rozenstruik (15-5).
Each of these dangerous strikers had 13 knockouts in 14 total MMA wins, and each of them fought as professional kickboxers in the past: Tuivasa going 14-2 with 10 knockouts in the sport across 16 bouts, and Rozenstruik going 76-8-1 across 85 bouts with 64 knockouts.
Continue reading to see how this heavyweight bout went down:
Official Result: Jairzinho Rozenstruik def. Tai Tuivasa via split decision (29-28, 27-30, 30-27)
Tuivasa had a very hard time finding his range throughout the opening five minutes, landing a few leg kicks without much of anything else, eating a heavy right hand after landing his first one. Tuivasa began to control the center midway through the round but was getting picked apart with good leg kicks and counter straight punches by the Suriname native.
Tuivasa bit down and started throwing in the second, landing a couple good punches in there though Rozenstruik fired back and landed heavy combinations of his own.
The Aussie hurt his foot on Rozenstruik’s knee after throwing a leg kick, forcing him to hobble backwards as Rozenstruik unloaded on him, which wasn’t a great look for Tuivasa after a good start to the second.
Rozenstruik continued to out-strike Tuivasa throughout the third and final round, defending most of what came his way and landing good counters, totaling up nearly five times more head strikes than Tuivasa across three rounds.
This one was a tough break for Tai Tuivasa; it was in his home country of Australia, and it was his fifth-straight defeat after a five fight knockout streak from 2020 to 2022.
As for Jairzinho Rozenstruik, he just won two in a row for the first time since 2019.
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