{"id":561904,"date":"2026-03-26T11:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/561904\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T11:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:06:08","slug":"joshua-van-claims-manel-kape-lied-about-ufc-title-fight-falling-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/561904\/","title":{"rendered":"Joshua Van claims Manel Kape lied about UFC title fight falling through"},"content":{"rendered":"

UFC flyweight champion Joshua Van has claimed that Manel Kape lied about their UFC title fight falling through.<\/p>\n

Right now, Joshua Van is on top of the world. He is the king of the flyweight division, and he is gearing up to defend the belt for the first time when he collides with Tatsuro Taira in his next outing. Of course, many felt as if Manel Kape would be the one who got the call, but it didn\u2019t quite come to fruition.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Manel Kape slams Joshua Van after champ accuses him of turning down short-notice UFC 324 bout<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead, Kape will now face Kyoji Horiguchi in his next fight. Prior to that being announced, though, Van and Kape were going back and forth<\/a> at one another on social media and in interviews, claiming that a fight between them didn\u2019t get made for different reasons.<\/p>\n

After Kape suggested that Van was the one who didn\u2019t want the fight, the champ had the following to say in a recent interview.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Van goes back at Kape<\/p>\n

\u201cI like Manel, you know what I mean? He\u2019s a good guy, it\u2019s just that he just lied too much, so I just want to put it out there,\u201d Van told MMA Junkie Radio. \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.<\/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. When they first offered it was two weeks, and then March 7 \u2013 I don\u2019t know what happened with him because my manager hit me up and Mick (Maynard) for the March 7, I was the one saying, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s go.\u2019 You know, it\u2019s whatever.<\/p>\n

\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

Quotes via MMA Junkie<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you make of this war of words? Let us know in the comments below, BJPENN Nation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC flyweight champion Joshua Van has claimed that Manel Kape lied about their UFC title fight falling through.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-561904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561904","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=561904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}