Joshua Van completed a meteoric rise to the top at UFC 323, but his big win will be scrutinized for some time.<\/p>\n
Heading into UFC 323, Van was one of the hottest fighters in the flyweight division, having gone 8-1 in the UFC at just 24 years old after turning pro in 2021. He faced dominant champion Alexandre Pantoja in Saturday\u2019s co-main event and pulled off a massive upset, but the bout lasted just 26 seconds due to Pantoja suffering a brutal arm injury<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pantoja threw a head kick that Van caught, followed by Van tripping him to the canvas. The champion attempted to post on his arm and the limb immediately gave out, a gruesome scene that was replayed countless times on the broadcast.<\/p>\n The injury marred a wonderful moment for Van, who has risen from prospect to UFC titleholder in the blink of an eye, and not everyone was happy for him.<\/p>\n Bantamweight contender Vinicius Oliveira took a vicious dig at Van, writing on Twitter that Van \u201cdoesn\u2019t deserve to celebrate this belt, he did nothing, he is not worthy of having his belt.\u201d<\/p>\n Dominick Cruz offered a confusing take, suggesting Pantoja should have been given the choice to continue, despite clearly injuring his arm.<\/p>\n See more pros reactions below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua Van completed a meteoric rise to the top at UFC 323, but his big win will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,1347,44,41,39,42,40,787,1396],"class_list":["post-332195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}