When Justin Tafa isn’t knocking out other fighters in the Octagon, it turns out sometimes you can also find him on a rugby league field.
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He won’t be knocking the other players out, even if they give him every reason to, like one did last year.
One player decided to square up against Tafa, who was playing in division two for the Eagleby Giants, obviously not knowing he was challenging a UFC heavyweight.
“He was like, ‘What are you gonna do?’ and I was like, ‘Oh, man’. He had no idea,” Tafa laughed, speaking to Main Event’s Niko Pajarillo at Wednesday’s media day.
“God was looking over him that day.”
Of course, there were other players who did recognise the 31-year-old.
“This one guy bumped me off,” Tafa recalled.
“I was on my back, I was like, ‘Oh s***, this guy just rolled over me’. He was like, ‘Bro can we get a photo after the game?’.”
Tafa was happy to oblige. “Just pick me off the ground,” he said.
Tafa chucked on the boots primarily because the team was in need of numbers, but it was also a good way to stay fit in between fights.
That was particularly true for Tafa last year, when he was forced out of fights at UFC 298 and UFC 308 due to injury.
Strickland the fan favourite in Sydney | 01:59
First it was a knee injury which denied him a shot at Karl Williams and then a sparring mishap that saw him pull out against Kennedy Nzechukwu too.
Tafa had two major surgeries, a shoulder reconstruction and a biceps repair, before that scheduled fight against Nzechukwu and while the injuries were “frustrating”, the Australian said he learned a valuable lesson from it all.
“I think these kind of things happen for a reason. I feel that’s a lesson I learned over the last year,” he said.
“… Honestly, I think that’s been the greatest thing about this last year is building my mental strength and understanding that you can’t dwell on the things that you can’t control.
“As much as it sucks, if you just ease up on it and just go with what you can control, life becomes a lot easier.”
Tafa returns to the octagon on Sunday with a big opportunity, facing Dana White’s Contender Series signee Tallison Teixeira in the last fight before the two title bouts close out the day.
While not one to look too far ahead, Tafa said that with a “bit of momentum” a spot in the UFC’s top-10 rankings at heavyweight could be on the cards.
He still believes he can hang with the best of the bunch, including current champ Jon Jones along with interim champ Tom Aspinall and top contender Ciryl Gane.
But building that momentum starts with a win against Teixeira on Sunday, and Tafa is expecting fireworks.
“I expect him to come try finish me and I want to do the same,” he said.
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