LAS VEGAS – Three months ago, Brad Tavares was all set to throw leather with Junyong Park. Then he got off the scale and picked up his phone.
The way Tavares recalled it Wednesday, his manager called not long after he made weight for a middleweight fight with Park on July 20. The commission didn’t clear Park because of a staph infection. And while that seems flukey and forgivable, Tavares might be a little bit salty that he and Park only just now are about to fight in their rebooking.
And that, Tavares (20-9 MMA, 15-9 UFC) thinks, is on Park (17-6 MMA, 7-3 UFC) for not being down with an originally offered Aug. 10 rebooking.
“I wanted to keep the fight, obviously,” Tavares said at media day for UFC Fight Night 244, the new home of their fight, which will be the co-main event at the UFC Apex. “I went through an entire training camp preparing for this specific opponent. I don’t want that to go to waste. … Now we’re going to go through a full camp again. I didn’t understand (Park not agreeing to August) but it is what it is, I guess – God’s plan.
“… But obviously I was frustrated with it. I was pretty irritated with it.”
Tavares speculated that Park had something else going on in his life that would’ve made the first offered rebooking a nuisance. But regardless of the reason, annoyance or irritation isn’t likely to help the longtime Hawaiian fighter Saturday.
Park is about a 2-1 favorite at the betting window. He had a four-fight winning streak that included three straight rear-naked choke finishes snapped by a split-call loss to Andre Muniz this past December.
“He’s very well-rounded and puts MMA together,” Tavares said. “I don’t think he’s a specialist or an expert anywhere, and obviously he doesn’t have the kickboxing or boxing accolades, the wrestling or even the jiu-jitsu. But he does put them all together well. He’s a very complete MMA fighter.
“I think his biggest attribute is his toughness, just how tough he is. I’ve watched him in fights where you think, ‘OK, this this guy is done,’ and he pulls it out – very similar to (middleweight champion) Dricus (Du Plessis). But I don’t think he’s nowhere near as dangerous as Dricus.”
At the end of the day, though, maybe Park could be forgiven the whole rebooking date thing with Tavares if he agreed to a standup fight in the co-feature. Tavares fears, though, that Park will want to head to the canvas.
“I would hope (he wants to trade punches), but honestly I think that he’s going to want to go to the ground where he feels like he has his best advantage,” he said. “But if it ends up being a kickboxing (fight), I’ll take that all day.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC Fight Night 244.
