Fresh from a learning experience he recommends all UFC athletes should heed, former heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos says his return to the top is a mere formality, with Tai Tuivasa little more than a speed bump at the UFC Fight Night in Adelaide, South Australia, on Sunday (Saturday night, U.S. time).
Following a six-month suspension for a failed drug test, Dos Santos returned to the Octagon in July and defeated Blagoy Ivanov via judges’ decision. But he hasn’t completely moved on from the 2017 positive test for the banned diuretic hydrocholorothiazide, which the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency later found to be the result of Brazilian pharmacies selling him contaminated supplements. Dos Santos says what happened to him should be a lesson for all.
“I know it’s their job — USADA is there to protect us — but everything with my case, for me it was kind of weird; I don’t really like to think about [it],” Dos Santos told ESPN when asked if he thought he’d been treated unfairly. “Because even the amount, they found a very cheap diuretic on me. Even if they found a lot of that thing on me, it wouldn’t be enough to hide anything. They found like a trace of that thing on me.
“So of course it was a contamination, and they still took me out of the fight. But I think it was a big opportunity for all of us — for USADA, for me, for all of us — to learn from that and, in the future, don’t allow those type of situations to happen again.”
Dos Santos’ explanation has not stopped Tuivasa from firing off some prefight barbs. In a social media exchange, the 24-year-old Australian referred to his looming opponent as “Junior dos Steroids” and a “steroid injecting little muppet.”
“Actually, we didn’t talk too much,” dos Santos said when asked about the Instagram back-and-forth. “I was answering some stupid thing that he was saying, and social media today, there is too [many] people that they believe everything that they see there. Everything that they hear there, they believe.
“So sometimes we have to clarify the things, and that’s what I tried to do there, and I was giving him an answer. And now I’m here to give this answer to him in person next Sunday morning.”
The lure of the UFC heavyweight championship remains as strong as ever for dos Santos, particularly given he fell just short of reclaiming the belt he wore in 2011 and 2012 in a loss to Stipe Miocic last year.
Currently at No. 9 in ESPN’s heavyweight rankings, dos Santos likely would need another victory, on top of the formality he sees his showdown with Tuivasa as being, before another title shot would arrive.
“It’s my biggest goal to become champion. I think it’s everybody’s goal here in the UFC,” he said. “We are fighting to become the champion one day. It’s going to happen, man. For me, it’s so clear, it’s so right, it’s going to happen.
“There is no how it’s not going to happen. Like I said, the only thing I need to do is to put the things together during the fight and we win all the fights against all these guys. There is no one in this division that I cannot beat.”
Still, he recognizes that one lapse in concentration is all it takes to be lying prone on the canvas.
“The heavyweight division is always very intriguing. These are the heavy hitters, you know? Every time when you do a mistake, it’s the end of the fight. So you have to be careful all the time, and this is what makes this division so intriguing, so exciting for the fans.”
The showdown with Tuivasa will be a meeting of similar styles. Both men like to stand up and bang, as dos Santos puts it. So fight fans should prepare for an explosive opening to what looms as a brutal contest.
“I’ve been studying his style and I think he’s very aggressive, he throws some hard punches,” dos Santos told ESPN. “But the thing is, I’m a very confident guy. It’s not about him, it’s about me, myself. If I do everything that I can to fight well, and if I follow the strategy and if I’m able to impose myself during the fight, I’m going to get the victory. There’s no doubt about that.
“If I put things together inside the Octagon, I have everything to be No.1 in the world. I know that and I’m trying to show that to everybody. … I’m going to be there to put 100 percent of me to make that fight a big show for Adelaide. And it doesn’t matter who they’re rooting for, it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, [after] the fight, we all will be having only one party: my victory.”