post-fight scrum<\/a>, Horiguchi was asked if he\u2019d prefer to fight teammate Alexandre Pantoja for the belt, and he responded that he has no preference.<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d Horiguchi said. \u201cI want a belt. If the champion is Pantoja, yes Pantoja. If it\u2019s other guy, yes other guy. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course [Pantoja gets the first shot],\u201d Horiguchi added when asked who he\u2019ll face if he wins the title. \u201cHe defended it many times. I think he\u2019s a true champion. It was an accident. I think he\u2019s a true champion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201caccident\u201d Horiguchi referred to was Pantoja breaking his arm just 26 seconds into his flyweight championship bout against Joshua Van at UFC 323 n December. The freak injury stopped Pantoja\u2019s streak of four consecutive title defenses and made Van the new champion in shocking fashion. Van\u2019s first challenger is yet to be announced, though Tatsura Taira, Manel Kape, and Pantoja (if he heals quickly enough) are all strong candidates.<\/p>\n
Horiguchi spoke about his time away from the UFC, and what he learned as he rose to the top of Japan\u2019s RIZIN promotion as well as the now-defunct Bellator MMA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m better at everything,\u201d Horiguchi said. \u201cFighting fear, scared, everything, I learn. That\u2019s why I\u2019m strong right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSoon, I will get soon, that belt,\u201d he added when asked how it would feel to add a UFC title to his RIZIN and Bellator belts.<\/p>\n
Horiguchi showed up to Saturday\u2019s post-fight scrum with a noticeable hand injury. The extent of the injury is still to be determined, though Horiguchi thinks it broke during the fight. As soon as he\u2019s healed up, he expects the matchmakers to call upon his services once more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure because maybe my hand is a little broke, but when I fix this, it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d Horiguchi said. \u201cAnywhere, anytime, I can fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyoji Horiguchi came back to the UFC for one reason: To finally capture the promotion\u2019s elusive flyweight title.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-466900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466900","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=466900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}