After a rough year inside the cage last year, this Saturday at Eternal MMA 108, Tasar “The Machine” Malone will look to grab his second win of 2026. The 29-year-old takes on Eternal vet Justin Van Heerden in a rematch, as Malone looks to get revenge for the loss Van Heerden gave him just under a year ago.
For all of Malone’s fights, excluding a single amateur bout, he has fought under the Eternal MMA banner. He racked up a record of 6-4, with all his wins coming by finish, during his three-year stint as an amateur. Just about six months after his last amateur bout in September of 2022, Malone made the jump to be a professional. He got off to a hot start, winning his first four fights and finishing two of them via submission. After the great start, Malone got a big jump in competition level, taking on Road to UFC finalist Sebastian Szalay and veteran Justin Van Heerden consecutively. Malone lost both fights via decision, but has since bounced back and is currently on a two-fight win streak.
With the exception of his submission defense, up to this point, I have found his overall defensive skillset quite underwhelming. On the feet, he doesn’t really move his head much and tends to shell up as he moves straight backwards. He doesn’t react to pressure all that well, which has led to easy takedown opportunities for his opponents. Against most of his opponents, it hasn’t really been a problem, as he can be hard to keep down. However, when he ran into a decent grappler in Van Heerden, Malone could not keep him off for the first two rounds.
Offensively, Malone’s game is based around his seemingly endless gas tank and his relentlessness. His striking leaves a lot to be desired, but has definitely gotten better recently. The strong point of his striking comes in his kicking game. In his usual orthodox stance, he throws a powerful leg kick with his back leg and has a fast lead head kick. Most of Malone’s leg kicks are thrown naked, and I do worry that, against better strikers, it will be taken advantage of. The occasional moments when he switches into southpaw, he is typically ripping a hard body kick.
Boxing is the biggest hole in his striking, and he seems to try to throw everything full power to counteract that. Malone mostly throws punches out of the orthodox stance and tends to wing big overhands or full-power hooks. In more recent fights, he has mixed it up a bit more, adding in an uppercut as well as throwing a left overhand out of the southpaw stance.
When he is successful and winning a fight, a lot of the work Malone does is up against the cage. Whether it is off a takedown attempt or forward pressure, he ends up pushing his opponents against the cage a lot. From this position, he is pretty active, looking for elbows and knees. As he continues to grind and wear on opponents, his takedowns begin to become more successful. When in advantageous positions, he is also pretty active, always looking to finish the fight. Lately, Malone hasn’t been able to find finishes, but he is hunting for submissions as well as trying to land ground and pound.
Since the start of 2025, Justin Van Heerden hasn’t been able to put back-to-back wins together. While he did get the win over Malone in their first fight, this does seem like a winnable fight for “The Machine.” His takedown defense early on was his downfall, but if Malone can keep Van Heerden off him while applying his own forward pressure, I think Malone can extend his win streak to three.
