{"id":565865,"date":"2026-03-26T15:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565865\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:37:15","slug":"liar-ufc-champ-joshua-van-refutes-manel-kapes-stupid-title-shot-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565865\/","title":{"rendered":"Liar! UFC champ Joshua Van refutes Manel Kape\u2019s stupid title shot story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI like Manel, you know what I mean? He\u2019s a good guy, it\u2019s just that he lied too much, so I just want to put it out there,\u201d Van told MMA Junkie Radio<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t hate no fighters or nothing. I like the guy, I respect him. He\u2019s been in the game a long time, so I respect what he brings to the table, but in case of getting this fight and all this stuff he lied about, I just want to put it out there, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe tried to act like I\u2019m the one that didn\u2019t want the fight and this and that, you know what I mean? Even when they first offered and stuff like that,\u201d Van added. \u201cHe tried to turn it around on me and this and that. It\u2019s stupid, man. If you don\u2019t want to fight, just say you need more time or something. I don\u2019t like the fact that he\u2019s going around and saying all these things on Twitter or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kape (22-7) has won seven of his last eight and would certainly qualify for a division title shot; however, UFC matchmakers have been known to hold grudges against fighters with reliability issues<\/a>. Even if \u201cStarboy\u201d manages to avenge his loss to Horiguchi, he still needs to leapfrog this returning ex-champion<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI like Manel, you know what I mean? He\u2019s a good guy, it\u2019s just that he lied too…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396,179146,1647],"class_list":["post-565865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-on-paramount","tag-upcoming-ufc-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565865","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=565865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}