{"id":202288,"date":"2025-10-10T06:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T06:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/202288\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T06:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T06:28:07","slug":"justin-tafa-sounds-off-on-ufc-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/202288\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Tafa sounds off on UFC release"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian heavyweight Justin Tafa has been released from the UFC roster and will be stepping away from mixed martial arts competition indefinitely.<\/p>\n

It was reported<\/a> that the 31-year-old was let go by the promotion after he withdrew from Fight Night Perth with\u00a0an illness during the weigh-ins.<\/p>\n

Tafa notched four wins, five losses and one no-contest in his six-year UFC run, scoring highlight-reel knockouts over Juan Adams, Harry Hunsucker, Parker Porter and Austen Lane.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0How New Zealand’s best hope for UFC gold may have lost his fast track to the title<\/a><\/p>\n

The NTG Fight and Fitness product took to social media after the news was reported to address his fans.<\/p>\n

“Taking time out of this fight game,” Tafa wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n

“The body and mind needs time to recover, six major surgeries in the last three years does that to you.<\/p>\n

“Time to enjoy the other fruits of life for now and enjoy watching my kids grow. Thank you UFC, had some good times in there.<\/p>\n

While his short-term future in the sport has come to an end, ‘Bad Man’ Tafa hasn’t ruled out a potential return to the cage once his body rebounds to full fitness.<\/p>\n

“God willing If I return to fight again I will be a lot healthier and able to show you my true potential.<\/p>\n

“If not then God has something else planned in store for me. I appreciate all the support and love, you guys pushed me on when I thought I couldn\u2019t.”<\/p>\n

Justin’s brother Junior remains a fixture of the light heavyweight division despite also pulling out of UFC Perth with a suspected injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian heavyweight Justin Tafa has been released from the UFC roster and will be stepping away from mixed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-202288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}