It turns out Alexandre Pantoja could have returned to fight Joshua Van at UFC 327 for his former flyweight title.<\/p>\n
Pantoja lost his title to Van at UFC 323 after his arm folded back on itself<\/a> off a Van takedown. The match was called just 26 seconds in, and all of a sudden Pantoja\u2019s impressive four title defense streak was over.<\/p>\n Many expected \u201cThe Cannibal\u201d to be out for a long time given how nasty the highlights of his dislocated elbow injury were. But he and his team kept insisting that he\u2019d be back quickly<\/a> and could take an immediate rematch against Joshua Van. That didn\u2019t end up happening \u2014 Van will now face Tatsuro Taira<\/a> in the co-main of UFC 327<\/a> in Miami. But according to Pantoja, he\u2019s now feeling good to go and could have made the April 11th date.<\/p>\n \u201dThe UFC asked me about the fight, but if I can remember, it was the last days of January,\u201d Pantoja told Ariel Helwani in a new interview. \u201cIn that time, two months ago, I said \u2018No, maybe I can fight in June.\u2019 But after that, after one month, February, March, beginning of March, I think I\u2019m ready to fight. If the guys asked me, maybe I\u2019m ready to fight in Miami.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s OK. I can enjoy watching the fight. I think for that fight, it\u2019s a real chance for Joshua Van to prove he\u2019s the champion of the world. That\u2019s the real fight for the belt because with me, he didn\u2019t have a fight \u2026 If the [UFC] calls me and says \u2018Hey, someone\u2019s out.\u2019 Maybe I say \u2018I\u2019m in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n While Pantoja clearly wants to get a chance to avenge that loss on his record to Van, he holds no negative feelings towards the new flyweight champion for celebrating after winning the belt.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the only way for him that Joshua Van wins this fight,\u201d Pantoja said. \u201cHis celebration, of course he won the belt. But he won the opportunity to not fight with me. The first 30 seconds of the fight, I scored on him so many times that he tried grappling with me. And that\u2019s what happened. I think he celebrated because of all that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019m not judging because that\u2019s the dream for everybody. It was in his destiny to have this belt, and now everybody has the opportunity to see if Joshua Van is the real champion of the world or if he just won a ticket from Willy Wonka. F–k, man, that kid is very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n Joshua Van fights Tatsuro Taira on April 11th at UFC 327. If the 24 year old wins and keeps up with his rapid fight schedule (he fought four times in 2025), we could see Van vs. Pantoja 2 pretty soon, possibly even before the end of summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It turns out Alexandre Pantoja could have returned to fight Joshua Van at UFC 327 for his former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-575196","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-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575196","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=575196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}