Joshua Van may not have won the UFC flyweight title the way he had hoped, but the newly crowned 125-pound king is ready and willing to defend his strap right away.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, Van put the finishing touches on his flyweight ascension by knocking off UFC champion Alexandre Pantoja at UFC 323 in Las Vegas, Nevada, to claim the 125-pound title. The only problem is that Van won the belt after Pantoja suffered a nasty injury to his arm<\/a> just 26 seconds into the fight. Pantoja was unable to continue and Van walked away with the UFC flyweight title by default.<\/p>\n After the fight, Van caught some flack because he initially celebrated the victory. Many fight fans thought he should have been more concerned with Pantoja\u2019s well-being, but in Van\u2019s defense he didn\u2019t know what had happened until after the fact.<\/p>\n \u201dAt first I was just celebrating the win of me getting the belt,\u201d said Van during a recent interview with ESPN MMA<\/a> (shown in the above player). \u201cWhen I looked back at Pantoja, I walked up to him and I said, \u2018Hey man, I\u2019m sorry the fight went this way.\u2019 But at the same time, I was happy with me fulfilling my dream. It was mixed feelings, but I do want to run it back with him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t see his hand at first when the ref stopped it. I just celebrated,\u201d he added. \u201cAfter that, I saw the screen of his arm just popping out of place. So that\u2019s when I walked over to him and said that I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n Van, who now enters 2026 as UFC\u2019s flyweight champion and undefeated over his last six trips to the Octagon, has a variety of options at his disposal. UFC CEO, Dana White, already confirmed that Van will defend his 125-pound crown before a rematch with Pantoja<\/a>, which could mean a matchup with Tatsuro Taira or the winner of Brandon Royval vs. Manel Kape this weekend (results HERE<\/a>).<\/p>\n Either way, Van will be ready to defend his UFC title (sooner rather than later).<\/p>\n \u201cI want to fight in February,\u201d he said. \u201cCome to Houston if they want to get the belt that bad. Come fight me for it.<\/p>\n \u201cI do want to give the former champ a rematch, but it\u2019s whoever wants the belt come fight me for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua Van may not have won the UFC flyweight title the way he had hoped, but the newly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,174978,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-346282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc-323","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346282","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=346282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}