{"id":627855,"date":"2026-04-24T12:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/627855\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T12:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:37:08","slug":"tai-tuivasa-gets-late-replacement-opponent-for-ufc-perth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/627855\/","title":{"rendered":"Tai Tuivasa gets late replacement opponent for UFC Perth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Sean Sharaf is out. Louie Sutherland is in to face Tai Tuivasa at UFC Perth on May 2nd.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Like a number of recent UFC fight night cards in Australia, this one is a bit light on name power. Jack Della Maddalena vs. Carlos Prates is the main event and a certified banger. Beyond that? There\u2019s not a ton of star power, which is where Tai Tuivasa comes in. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/2024\/2\/24\/24081957\/ufc-heavyweight-tai-tuivasa-crashes-wwes-elimination-chamber-with-golden-shoey-video\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">shoey drinking<\/a> joker hasn\u2019t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/latest-news\/417993\/motivated-tai-tuivasa-returning-to-ufc-325-to-save-the-heavysh-t-division-i-had-to-miss-it\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won a fight<\/a> since 2022, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-325-results-volkanovski-lopes-2\/419920\/tai-tuivasa-reacts-to-ufc-record-sixth-straight-loss-at-ufc-325-hurts-the-soul\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">going 0-6<\/a> since then. But he\u2019s still one of the most popular Australians out there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The UFC looked ready to squeeze the last dregs out of Tuivasa\u2019s career when they booked him against surging monster Tallison Teixeira at UFC 325. 8 of Teixeira\u2019s 9 fights had ended via first round knockout for \u201cXicao,\u201d but Tuivasa survived and nearly pulled off the upset win. He was rewarded with a soft rebound: Sean Sharaf, who is 0-2 at heavyweight, both KO losses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Now the UFC has rectified that. Tai will fight another fighter who is 0-2 in the UFC: Scottish fighter Louie \u201cVanilla Gorilla\u201d Sutherland. To be fair, Sutherland has had a tough go of things. He was supposed to fight the very beatable Justin Tafa in his UFC debut, only for that fight to fall out and for him to get shifted into a match against \u201cClean Monster\u201d Valter Walker (resulting in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mmamania.com\/ufc-results\/399086\/rookie-report-card-grading-the-lone-octagon-newcomer-ufc-321-post-mortem\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first round loss via heel hook).<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">We\u2019ll see how his most recent loss to Brando Pericic ages (Pericic fights Shamil Gaziev in Perth), but there\u2019s still people who think Sutherland is worth watching out for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">We\u2019ll get an idea when Sutherland fights Tuivasa at UFC Perth. Both men have a lot to prove, and while Tuivasa dug deep against Teixeira there\u2019s still big issues regarding his gas tank and fight IQ, which both failed him in his last fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Sharaf is out. Louie Sutherland is in to face Tai Tuivasa at UFC Perth on May 2nd.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,61604,1396],"class_list":["post-627855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-fight-announcements","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627855","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=627855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}