Joshua Van has revealed the injury that pushed his title defense against Tatsuro Taira from last month’s UFC 327 to last night’s UFC 328.
Van beat Taira via fifth round TKO, battering the Japanese challenger badly until the referee decided he’d seen enough. If there were any lingering effects of the mystery injury that forced “Fearless” to delay their fight, we couldn’t see it. In a new interview with Full Send MMA after his win, Van laid out what had happened.
“It was serious, man. It was bad,” Van
said. “I couldn’t run. Even this camp, I couldn’t run until the last two weeks. Bro, my knee was f–ked.”
The 24 year old flyweight champ admitted it wasn’t his decision to pull out of the April 11th date.
“It was Daniel Pineda and my coaches, they had a little meeting and said, ‘We gotta call it off, man,'” he said. “There was nothing I could do for cardio. I did the bike and stuff like that, sparred sometimes, but my knee was f–ked, bro.”
This isn’t the first time Van has had knee issues, although it was the first time he didn’t compete due to them.
“When I fought [Alexandre] Pantoja and when I fought at Noche UFC, I had an LCL tear and I fought through that,” he revealed. “So this is nothing new. But the coaches saw me take a day off. To them, that never happens. I’m the guy they tell to take a rest, so that’s probably why they called off the fight.”
The decision seeks like a sound one in retrospect. While Van laid some serious damage down on Taira, the Japanese fighter never quit and continued to engage for the entire fight. If Van’s movement or cardio was off, it might have cost him the fight.
Now we’ll have to see how long the defending champion takes to turn around and compete again. Alexandre Pantoja was cageside for Joshua Van’s win at UFC 328 and clearly wants a chance to regain his belt after the freak injury from their first fight. But could it be time for Van to take a rest and let his knee heal up properly? Even if it’s just a more typical four month stretch, you can’t argue Joshua doesn’t deserve a break.
