Joshua Van lived the dream at UFC 323, but the moment didn’t unfold the way any fighter hopes. He became champion just 26 seconds into the fight after Alexandre Pantoja suffered a gruesome arm injury. As soon as the referee waved it off, Van wrapped the flyweight belt around his waist and celebrated like a man who had climbed the mountain.
That celebration sparked a wave of backlash. Many fans and fighters felt he shouldn’t have strutted around with the belt when he didn’t actually beat Alexander Pantoja in combat. However, UFC legend Matt Brown sees the moment differently and he’s not here to judge the young champion.
“To be honest when it’s for a title like that, I don’t want to hate on Joshua Van for it,” Brown said on The Fighter vs. The Writer. “Because here’s what the fact is — this dude has spent his whole life, a very short life of his, about half of mine — even if not his whole life for the last however many years, his entire life has been on getting to this single goal, which is an exceptionally high goal.”
“This isn’t ‘I want to have a million dollar net worth by the time I’m 30’ or some shit. This is an insanely hard to reach goal and he got it. How he got it, does it really matter? They put a belt around his waist. This is what he dreamed about. This is what he visualized. This is what he put the work in for. So I can understand that side.”
Brown never captured a UFC title himself, but he earned his respect the violent way, including the iconic elbow that folded Diego Sanchez. He knows exactly what it feels like to be overwhelmed with emotion while an opponent is still down.
That’s why he doesn’t blame Van for celebrating, even if he admits he wouldn’t have reacted the same way.
“On a personal note, I would like to think as myself wouldn’t be so happy,” Brown said. “Because you want to win the fight for it. But I can understand him being as happy as he is.
“I would like to think I would not do that. I think on the inside he’s not as happy as he would be if he went out there and beat him. But you’re in the moment. You’re in an arena full of 20,000 drunk ass bloodthirsty fans and your adrenaline is skyrocketed and it all happened for you. I can understand it. I’d like to think I wouldn’t do it, but I can understand where you would be so excited.”
Van has already said he hopes Pantoja heals soon so they can run it back properly. However, Brown believes the real frustration is that Van is now the champion without being widely considered the best flyweight in the world.
“It kind of reminds me of Anderson Silva broke his [leg] on Chris Weidman, and he was kind of celebrating. It’s the same type of thing,” Brown said. “If you go walking around talking about how you beat him… I love Chris Weidman, no disrespect to him, I love him, but I think it kind of rubbed some people the wrong way when he was saying he did that intentionally. What did he call the technique? Some term for it. That’s a little silly, in my opinion.”
Brown stresses that a champion’s journey isn’t always clean and history rarely remembers the details.
“But the fact that you reached the mountain that you’ve been trying to climb for so long, it doesn’t really matter how it happens. The fact that you got there is something to celebrate, something to be happy about.”
Pantoja still awaits the full diagnosis of his injury. Until then, Van will defend the title and try to prove he belongs at the top not because the belt was wrapped around his waist, but because he earned it in combat. Brown summed up the entire moment with brutal honesty.
“What I would like to think I would do myself, I would be stoic about it and relax. I’m the champion so f*ck you, but there’s not a ton to celebrate here.
The belt is supposed to signify that you are the baddest dude in the weight class in the world. If you don’t beat the dude who has been recognized as the baddest dude in that weight class in the world, then are you really?
However, when it goes down in the history books, and people look at the records 100 years from now, they’re not going to know what happened. They’re going to see Joshua Van’s name and see he was a champion.”
