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#1 Worst: Pedro and Tuivasa slip on the learning curve
It was a big night for the young Aussie duo Tyson Pedro and Tai Tuivasa, as both men were faced with ageing legends in the form of Shogun Rua and Junior Dos Santos. If I’m honest I expected Pedro to have far less difficulty with Shogun than Tuivasa would with JDS, but in the end, both men came up short and will learn valuable lessons from these losses.
Firstly Tuivasa’s loss came down essentially to the fact that he had too much confidence in his chin and became too reckless after an impressive first round. That stanza saw him walk through big shots from JDS to hurt the Brazilian with clubbing blows and a nasty low kick, but when he attempted to do the same in the second round, he simply ate too many clean punches and was subsequently TKO’d. Whether he could’ve survived had he shown a better ground game is debatable, too.
Tuivasa is young enough to bounce back from this, but at Heavyweight he simply needs to know that he probably can’t afford to take big punches from the division’s top fighters. If he can learn to protect himself and get less wild, he could be a contender yet, but this was a disappointing setback given the nature of the defeat.
As for Pedro, you could argue he was largely unlucky to lose to Shogun – who didn’t appear to be veering into Chuck Liddell circa 2010 territory as I feared – as an ankle injury led to his third round downfall. But he also has lessons to learn – namely when to avoid going to the ground.
The same mistake cost him a fight against Ovince St. Preux in the summer, and last night after badly hurting Shogun in the first, it was his hunt for a kimura that led to the Brazilian dominating him on the ground in the second.
Like with Tuivasa, Pedro will undoubtedly learn from the loss and come back stronger, but perhaps the UFC need to match him with someone lower down the ladder now – he has two losses in a row and a third could put him on shaky ground.
