Costello van Steenis knew the moment he wrapped up a buzzer-beating rear-naked choke to put Johnny Eblen to sleep and become PFL middleweight champion that his first title defense was going to end up as a rematch.<\/p>\n
Undefeated prior to that stunning submission loss, Eblen seemed like a frontrunner to get another shot at van Steenis, especially given the attention their first fight received. The highlight reel finish was MMA Fighting\u2019s Submission of the Year and even van Steenis has learned to embrace that moment after seemingly seeing it hundreds of times now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen it everywhere,\u201d van Steenis said about the finish when speaking to MMA Fighting. \u201cI\u2019ve seen GIF\u2019s of it, I\u2019ve seen stickers, I\u2019ve seen poster. I even got a poster in Spain \u2014 one of my friends gave me a poster with me choking Johnny Eblen out so it\u2019s there on the wall with our faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine doing it any better. Defending a title in the fifth round, the last 10 seconds and losing that fight and then winning that fight at the end of the round like that, I believe it\u2019s from a movie. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
While he was open to a rematch, van Steenis instead runs it back with Fabian Edwards on Friday\u2019s PFL event from Spain where the middleweights headline the card. Van Steenis already holds a split decision win over Edwards but more than anything, he really likes the stylistic matchup compared to back-to-back fights against Eblen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like give me whoever but I believe Fabian did have good fights as the tournament champion,\u201d van Steenis said. \u201cHe did fight three times and it\u2019s more than fair enough. Making the tournament champion fight the champion, even though it\u2019s for the third time this guy is getting a shot at the belt. That\u2019s pretty crazy but it was either Fabian or Johnny Eblen. I didn\u2019t really mind who got who. I just did the social media and the PFL picked whoever they picked and they gave me Fabian.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was beautiful because the dancing partner with Fabian is a lot better than Johnny Eblen. Johnny Eblen is a hard guy to fight because he makes the fight very boring. He wants to take you down and hold you there and Fabian is more \u2018I\u2019m going to hit you and I\u2019m going to get hit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a lot of tension and some trash talking ahead of the first fight but van Steenis admits he hasn\u2019t heard Edwards chirping as much leading to the rematch.<\/p>\n
He believes part of that comes down to Edwards realizing he\u2019s about to get his third crack at becoming a world champion after two past losses to Eblen and earning a fourth title shot might seem unlikely.<\/p>\n
Add to that, van Steenis believes that Edwards knows he\u2019s forever living in his brother\u2019s shadow when it comes to accomplishments in combat sports and that\u2019s a mighty tough pill to swallow.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t heard him talk a lot,\u201d van Steenis said. \u201cHe does respect me a little bit more now. I believe so. If he starts throwing fire, I\u2019ll throw fire back but I\u2019ve got all the weapons in the world to not only beat him in a fight but even speaking back [to him].<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the third time he\u2019s fighting for a world title. There\u2019s only one real world champion in his family and that\u2019s Leon Edwards. He\u2019s never going to be a world champion. He can\u2019t really say anything., He can only shut his mouth and have his fingers crossed to see if I get some bad luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knowing that the first fight ended in a razor-close decision also gives van Steenis even more motivation to show how much he\u2019s improved since that matchup in 2020.<\/p>\n
He expects Edwards to try and do the same but van Steenis knows he\u2019s exceeded and surpassed his upcoming opponent in every metric that matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack six years ago, we were two kids in the MMA game,\u201d van Steenis said. \u201cWe had some bad vibes, we had some bad history together. I remember him being fast, long reach and that of course hasn\u2019t changed. He\u2019s a better fighter than he used to be. I\u2019m a lot better fighter than I used to be.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe I\u2019ve grown levels way above that he has been growing. I know I\u2019m fighting a different man. He must know \u2014 and if he doesn\u2019t he\u2019s stupid \u2014 but he must know that he\u2019s fighting a totally different man. We\u2019re going to show each other on March 20 how much we\u2019ve grown these past couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Costello van Steenis knew the moment he wrapped up a buzzer-beating rear-naked choke to put Johnny Eblen to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,5963,7613,85],"class_list":["post-549327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-pfl","tag-pfl-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549327","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=549327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}