UFC heavyweight star Tai Tuivasa was born one of eleven children in a rough Sydney neighborhood. ‘Bam Bam’ was always athletically gifted having been quite good at rugby as a child. How good? So good that, as a teen, he was offered a professional contract by Sydney Roosters to play in the national league!

Along with rugby, however, there was another activity that the Aussie excelled at fighting. Growing up, Tuivasa had many a violent run-in with other kids, which he almost relished because of how easily fighting came to him. This was his only connection to fighting until he started kickboxing as a teen. Eventually, this would lead him down the rabbit hole until he decided to become a professional mixed martial artist. And in his corner (both metaphorical and literal) throughout this journey has been one man.

Meet Shaun Sullivan, Tai Tuivasa’s long-time coach

Tai Tuivassa started his MMA career with a bang. Literally. After knocking out his first opponent on his professional MMA debut in 2012, the Aussie went on a five-fight win streak, establishing himself as a fighter to watch out for in the local Australian MMA circuit.

Since the beginning of his MMA journey, the one constant in his life has been his long-time coach and friend Shaun Sullivan. The coach actually started his MMA career around the same time as ‘Bam Bam’. But, since Sullivan didn’t quite have the same gifts nor found the same success as the UFC heavyweight, he decided to take advantage of his teaching background and transitioned to becoming a coach.

For most of his career, Tuivasa has trained under Sullivan, who was probably the first to recognize the special talent of the heavyweight. In fact, the whole reason Sullivan started coaching at all was so that he could make sure ‘Bam Bam’ could ‘reach his full potential.’

“Tai was just naturally gifted and did really well at it — myself not so much. I had to work hard at it to get some tips and tricks to get a couple of wins on the board. But I had a teaching background and that made it an easy progression to fall into a coaching role and you could tell from an early age that Tai had something special. That’s when I took more of a role in making sure he could reach his full potential,” he said.

Their relationship has had its ups and downs due to both men’s stubborn and headstrong nature. Tuivasa likes to have a good time and is especially fond of drinking a few beers with the boys and having some good food. Sullivan always resented this and felt ‘Bam Bam’ should be more disciplined or his performance would suffer. Issues like these almost led the two to part ways during the Covid-19 pandemic. But, in the end, both men loved and cared for each other too much to actually part ways, even as Tuivasa has found a new gym for his fight camps.

‘Bam Bam’s gym and teammates

Tai Tuivasa used to train at the Lions High Performance Center in his native Sydney along with fellow UFC star Tyson Pedro. However, since 2020, the Australian has started to do his fight camps at other gyms, especially the legendary American Kickboxing Academy in California led by Javier Mendez.

The stomping grounds of legendary heavyweight champions Daniel Cormier and Cain Velasquez, AKA also hosts Khabib Nuramgomedov‘s Dagestani camp, including lightweight champion Islam Makhachev, Umar, and Usman Nurmagomedov. The reason for this move was simple: the quality of fighters at AKA compared to that in his Sydney gym, as ‘Bam Bam’ admitted in an interview.

“It was a bit of a wake-up call. It kind of shows you where you’re at. My fighting’s good, I’m a good fighter but when it comes to MMA, Being in Australia you might be in a room with three killers or one killer and you walk into a room with one hundred and it opens your eyes and gives you a benchmark of where you’re at,” he said. Do you expect to see a new and improved Tuivasa this weekend? Let us know in the comments.