Athletes
Jairzinho Rozenstruik: Out To Start A Streak
Heavyweight Mainstay Discusses Important Of Confidence Ahead Of UFC 305 Clash With Tai Tuivasa
Jairzinho Rozenstruik wasn’t initially keen on the idea of making the lengthy aerial voyage from Miami to Perth, and when he first touched down in the Western Australian city that plays host to UFC 305 this weekend, the weather was a surprise, as well.
“It’s colder than usual for me,” the heavyweight said with a smile, just a couple days out from his heavyweight clash with local favorite Tai Tuivasa on Saturday’s main card. “Florida, Suriname is not cold. Everywhere else is summer, but Australia and Perth, it’s winter.”
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While the veteran kickboxer is more accustomed to warm climates, he said he adjusted quickly, a process that was aided by connecting with a couple fellow natives of Suriname.
“I think you have close to two million people (in Perth) — eight of them are Suriname people,” offered Rozenstruik. “I’ve been around with them, went to the zoo, had some great times.
“I met three of them now, but they’ll come to the fight, and after the fight, we’ll do something together. I can’t wait to make all this happen. I feel great to be here; it’s a great place.”
Along with acclimating and connecting with the small Surinamese contingent in Perth, the 36-year-old’s spirits are also bolstered by the fact that he heads into this weekend’s contest off a quality win, with designs on putting together his first winning streak in far longer than he would like.
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Last time out, Rozenstruik served as the veteran test for Dana White’s Contender Series graduate Shamil Gaziev, who stopped Martin Buday in his debut to maintain his unbeaten record and earn an accelerated opportunity to potential scale the heavyweight ranks.
Gaziev started quickly, looking to swarm and bury Rozenstruik early, but when that didn’t happen, he began to falter, and “Bigi Boy” began to put it on him. By the time the end of the fourth round arrived, Gaziev was exhausted; his energy reserves long gone and the steady diet of clean shots he’d absorbed leaving him uninterested in continuing on in the bout.
Jairzinho Rozenstruik | Top Finishes
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Jairzinho Rozenstruik | Top Finishes
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“First off, it feels great to go out there and perform like that,” Rozenstruik said of his early March effort. “You know you want to (win) but how you’re gonna do it, you never know; it depends on the opponent, how he reacts, where he wanted to go. It felt great to get a win like that and I’m looking for some more.
“I felt it, but, at the same time, I was sticking to the game plan. We were working on what we wanted to do and the fight played out the way we thought it would: he will come, want to wrestle, be aggressive, try to bully, but you make him miss, make him tired, and start picking him off.
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“I felt great!” He added when asked about venturing into the fourth round, uncommon territory for a man that had only been beyond the second round three times in his previous dozen appearances inside the Octagon. “I had good cardio, didn’t feel like I was tired at all. I was like ‘Let me get some more rounds in, let me get the pace higher.’”
As much as he felt good physically in the fight, it’s how he’s felt mentally since that is most important to the combat sports veteran, who has logged over one hundred appearances between kickboxing and mixed martial arts.
Rozenstruik burst onto the scene in 2019, stopping Junior Albini in his promotional debut before needing 38 seconds combined to dispatch Allen Crowder and Andrei Arlovski to earn his second and third wins of the year. A month later, he finished Alistair Overeem on the buzzer of his first main event assignment, advancing to 4-0 in the UFC, 10-0 as a pro, and establishing himself as a new player in the heavyweight ranks.
Since then, his results have been consistently inconsistent, having failed to win consecutive outings while mustering a 4-5 record.
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“Mentally, it means a lot,” began Rozenstruik. “Besides a fighter, you’re also human, so you’re going through a lot of things as a person, on top of what you go through as a fighter. Your ego is damaged and you’ve got to go back out there and try to fix things that didn’t go your way.
“It felt really good (getting that win) and that’s what we’re looking for — to keep the winning streak going. It gives you a lot of confidence, motivation to train hard, go again very soon, instead of staying eight months or nine months out.
“You’ve been training, you’ve been fighting for years and you win one, you lose one, or you win one and you lose two, you start doubting yourself, and sometimes that doubt gets deep in you and you start thinking you can’t fight any more,” he said when asked to expand on the confidence piece of the puzzle. “It’s not ‘you can’t do this,’ but it’s always, ‘Maybe I’m too slow with this punch. I’m still putting my foot in the wrong position. How do I keep it in the right spot?’
“There are so many details we can get into about fighting and technique and over-thinking, but it goes deep!” He added, shaking his head at the layers of mental battling a fighter can experience when things aren’t going their way. “But it’s just you against you, so go in there, get loose, and get your hand raised — that's the only way to have that confidence!”
While Rozenstruik enters Saturday’s contest feeling good, his opponent could very well be dealing with the crisis of confidence and questions of self-doubt he described.
Tuivasa heads into battle this weekend in the worst funk of his career — a four-fight slide where each of those defeats has come inside the distance, all while he’s taken a slight step backwards in the rankings in each successive appearance.
Though there is no shame in falling at the hands of Ciryl Gane, Sergei Pavlovich, Alexander Volkov, and Marcin Tybura, every subsequent loss can add to those questions Rozenstruik detailed, and being put in a position where the next opportunity to get things moving in the right direction comes on home soil could ratchet up the pressure even more.
And “Bigi Boy” intends to add to that pressure as soon as the fight begins.
“I have to,” he said when asked about trying to force Tuivasa to question himself immediately by getting right in his face and trying to attack. “I have to because it’s a three-round fight and it can be over before you think.
“It’s not a five-round fight where I can be relaxed in the first round and start to pick it up in the second — it’s a three-round fight. You’ve gotta be high paced, and that’s where the openings start coming; people get tired, the bad habits start showing.
“I’m gonna tell you one thing I know for sure: when you fight at home, the pressure is high,” added the Top 15 mainstay. “You might feel comfortable, you might feel better because your friends, your family, everybody is there, and it gives you a push to go harder.
“But the thing is, it’s a fight. (I will) go in there, find where his weakness is, find where the sweet spot is, see where he thinks he can be comfortable, and then go in there and take advantage of what he doesn’t think you can.
“I will not spill too many secrets, but this fight is gonna be a good one,” he added with a smile. “I can’t wait until Saturday. It’s gonna be a good fight.”
And if all goes well, he’ll be heading out to do a little more sightseeing and grabbing a bite to eat with his new friends from Suriname on his first winning streak since his dynamic rookie campaign five years ago.
Don't miss a moment of UFC 305: Du Plessis vs Adesanya, live from RAC Arena in Perth, Western Australia on August 17, 2024. Prelims start at 8pm ET/5pm PT, while the main card kicks off live on PPV at 10pm ET/7pm PT.
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