UFC 328: Joshua Van embracing the chance to prove he’s the lord of the flies

Joshua Van (L) makes the first defense of his UFC flyweight title this Saturday.

(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)

Van will face off with the 26-year-old Japanese contender, Tatsuro Taira, this Saturday in Newark, New Jersey at UFC 328, in what is officially the youngest title fight in UFC history. (They are a combined 50 years old — Jim Miller, who appears earlier on the card, is 42.) Since losing to Johnson, Van has won six straight fights. The last time he was in Newark he finished Bruno Gustavo da Silva at UFC 316 in the third round with a volley of punches. Three weeks later he put on a Fight of the Year candidate against Brandon Royval at UFC 317, a back-and-forth affair in which Van showed a full arsenal of striking.

It all led to a showdown with longstanding champion, Alexandre Pantoja.

If Van’s rapid rise has been under-sung to this point, it’s because of that fight, which came crashing down in an anticlimactic thud. Almost as quickly as his big moment against Pantoja got started at UFC 323, it ended, as Pantoja’s arm buckled under his weight the as now-former champ braced for a fall only 26 seconds in. Pantoja couldn’t continue, and Van walked away with the title.

It wasn’t the way anyone envisioned the fight going, but injuries are part of the game. In the aftermath that night, when people began to downplay his feat on social media, Van addressed the noise the only way he could.

“F*** them,” he said at the post-fight media conference. “If you do good, they will talk s***, and if you do bad, they will talk s***, so do what makes you happy. It don’t matter what they think. I won.”

Five months later, as he makes the walk in the red corner for the first time in a UFC title fight, that’s about where Van stands.

“I see myself as a champion,” he says, “and I’m about to defend my belt right now. Living the life.”

The big difference between today’s flyweight division and the days when Demetrious Johnson ruled the class (2012-2018) is that the current ranks are teeming with contenders. There’s Pantoja, who is sharpening the edges of the asterisk hovering over his first fight with Van, waiting in the wings. He had four title defenses and was a mainstay on pound-for-pound lists before losing his title.

Then there’s Manel Kape and Kyoji Horiguchi, who fight each other next month in Las Vegas. Since returning to the UFC, Horiguchi looks like a world-beater, having scored dominant wins over Tagir Ulanbekov and Amir Albazi.

“Bro, we got me, Tatsuro, and then look at the top 10 guys in the flyweight [division],” Van says. “They’re all like the who's who, you know what I mean? So it's very exciting for the flyweight division.”

The excitement runs through Van himself, who — as a dynamic striker who fights at a blistering pace — has emerged as a singular force through his run. He landed more than 200 strikes on Royval in showing he could take a good many shots, as well, and he more than doubled up Cody Durden in strikes. When he stands in the pocket and trades, it’s clear why he has a nickname of “The Fearless.”

Tatsuro Taira is 8-1 in his nine UFC appearances.

(Ian Maule via Getty Images)

In Taira he will take on one of the division’s most urgent finishers, as the Japanese phenom has finished opponents in six of his eight victories. Taira is coming off a second-round destruction of former champion Brandon Moreno, whom he put away with strikes in December.

Van sees his first title defense as a battle between the league’s greatest young guns.

“Bro, he's amazing — he's amazing,” he says of Taira. “He got the strike game, he got the ground, and he's the type of guy that I want to test myself against. He's going to show me how great I am, you know what I mean? I need a guy like him that is good on the ground and good with striking. Come fight day, man, I'm just excited to show the world that I am the best.”

When you’re 24 years old and a world champion life can come at you pretty fast. Van says his mom and his coaches have kept him grounded throughout the process. (“If I get big head, they f***ing humble the f*** up quick,” he says.) Yet the audacity of youth can’t be suppressed, not when you’re the UFC’s youngest active champion with a future that’s wide open.

“My next goal is to beat the s*** out of Tatsuro,” Van says, “and then we defend this belt until I retire.”