Joshua Van won five in a row in a span of nine months to earn a shot at the UFC flyweight championship, and the only fighter to ever knock him out believes he can upset 125-pound king Alexandre Pantoja this weekend in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Charles Johnson, who finished Van 20 seconds into the third round of their UFC Denver clash back in July 2024, expects \u201ca great fight\u201d between the two in the co-main event of UFC 323 at the T-Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s anyone\u2019s fight, honestly. Whoever shows up that night,\u201d Johnson told MMA Fighting. \u201cI think they\u2019re great, good fighters. Van\u2019s been a champion in another promotion, Pantoja has been a champion in another promotion and in the UFC, so they\u2019re not afraid of each other. Styles make fights, man. You watch Pantoja fight, this dude is not afraid to get hit. He\u2019s going to go forward, he\u2019s going to be a whirlwind of everything and you\u2019re going to have to deal with it. And a lot of guys break. I think that Joshua Van is young enough, and he\u2019s seen enough, that he won\u2019t break.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about, is he going to be skilled enough to keep him off his back and keep the fight in the center? I think that\u2019s the fun fight to see, that\u2019s the fight that\u2019s going to be taking place that night and whoever is able to make their game work. It\u2019ll be a great fight though, man. I\u2019m excited to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pantoja has never been finished in 35 professional bouts over nearly two decades, suffering only one knockdown in 17 UFC bouts \u2014 against Deiveson Figueiredo in 2019. He successfully defended the UFC title four times over Brandon Royval, Steve Erceg, Kai Asakura and Kai Kara-France, stopping his past two opponents with rear-naked chokes.<\/p>\n
Pantoja turns 36 in April and sometimes stands and trades in wars instead of looking for grappling opportunities, but Johnson doesn\u2019t expect that to be an issue at UFC 323. Four of Van\u2019s past five wins were decisions, with a knockout over Bruno Silva just three weeks prior to his recent win over Royval.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that Josh is a great fighter,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI think Pantoja\u2019s seen enough guys. If you\u2019re gonna fight you\u2019re gonna fight, doesn\u2019t matter your age. He hasn\u2019t shown \u2014 people like pointing out age when you get in 30s. I\u2019m in the same boat but like, do that when you see the performances change, when you see guys don\u2019t look better. Everything about Pantoja, he\u2019s shown that he\u2019s looked better over time. He\u2019s not taking risks, he\u2019s just better than these guys. And it\u2019s not a risk to him, he\u2019s already beat most of them before. So for him, it\u2019s just about going out there, being himself and putting together and implementing whatever they put together in camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson believes that the path to victory for the champion is to \u201cbe himself\u201d because \u201che can win the fight wherever he chooses,\u201d and Van has the chance to \u201cshine\u201d if he doesn\u2019t fall under the pressure of competing for UFC gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always like watching Pantoja fight, honestly, because he gets it done,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cRegardless of the fight, he gets it done. It\u2019s not always easy. \u2026 Pantoja hasn\u2019t had any big injuries, never really been hurt in the fight. And Van hasn\u2019t been a knockout artist, he\u2019s a volume guy. It\u2019s hard to box a guy who\u2019s grappling you to the cage. It\u2019s gonna be a lot of things to deal with on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson won five of his past six, the only defeat being a decision against a fighter that months later tested positive for banned substances<\/a> so Johnson considers himself to be on a six-fight winning streak<\/a>. Johnson will return to action on Jan. 24, facing top-ranked Alex Perez at UFC 324, and believes that a win for Van over Pantoja elevates himself even more in the 125-pound division.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s cool,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI mean, in one way it shows that opportunities matter, and if you\u2019re given opportunities, and you make the most of them what you can do. So that\u2019s always inspiring to see what he\u2019s done and to know that I\u2019m right there as well. For me, it\u2019s a lot of good energy about it. I don\u2019t have to defend myself, because I\u2019ve already had a fight with the guy, and I already know improving what I can do, so it\u2019s just about me going out here and winning a couple of fights and putting myself in the same position that he did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua Van won five in a row in a span of nine months to earn a shot at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-329053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}