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For the second time in his mixed martial arts career, heavyweight slugger Tai Tuivasa is staring down the barrel of three straight defeats in the UFC cage.

In front of fiercely partisan crowd in Sydney at UFC 293 last weekend, Tuivasa succumbed to a second-round Ezekeiel choke applied by Russian giant Alexande Volkov; a defeat now added to successive losses against Ciryl Gane and Sergei Pavlovich. Earlier in his UFC career, Tuivasa was bested in three bouts in a row against Junior Dos Santos, Blagoy Ivanov and Sergey Spivak — after which he embarked of a run of five wins in a row before running into the aforementioned Gane in September of last year.

And in the hours after the defeat, a war-wounded Tuivasa took to Instagram to offer his thought on his performance and congratulate Volkov in what was the Russian’s third UFC win in a row.

“Walked out to SCAR @missyhigginsmusic I was the one who ended up with the scar,” he wrote. “Live to fight another day. ALL LOVE TO MY FANS. SORRY AUSTRALIA I WENT OUT TRIED MY BEST FELL SHORT LOVE YAHS

“Great work @volkov_alex was a pleasure.”