Kamaru Usman Expected More From Taitana Suarez

On a recent episode of “Pound for Pound w/Kamaru and Henry,” Kamaru Usman was honest in his assessment of Tatiana Suarez’s showing against Zhang Weili.

“It didn’t look good, Henry, let me just say,” Usman said. “I love Tatiana, but that didn’t look great from her. I know she’s better than that.”

Usman took note of Suarez not doing enough striking to set up her takedowns.

“You just got to knuckle up and you just got to go make it happen,” Usman said. “It looked like Tatiana’s corner was telling her, ‘Hey, let’s just go make it happen. Stand with her if you have to. Stand with her  because maybe that’ll give you an opportunity potentially to get that takedown again,’ and she just, for some reason, she hit that wall and she just didn’t want any part of that standup.”

At one point during the fight, Suarez suffered a nasty gash on her leg after hitting the fence on a takedown attempt. The wound bothered Suarez, who didn’t even want to look at the damage when speaking to her cornermen. She recently received stitches to close the gnarly cut, and one has to wonder if that moment impacted her mobility.

Another factor was Weili’s striking power. The 115-pound champion rocked Suarez with a hook and had the challenger wobbly momentarily. While many factors contributed to Suarez’s loss, Usman believes the previously unbeaten strawweight is better than what she put on display.

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