Common opponent Brandon Royval breaks down Van vs. Pantoja rematch at UFC 331 - MMA Junkie
Brandon Royval has unique insight on the UFC 331 main event.
Royval has suffered decision losses to both Joshua Van (17-2 MMA, 10-1 UFC) and Alexandre Pantoja (30-6 MMA, 14-4 UFC), who run things back in Saturday's main event (Paramount+) at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Van claimed the flyweight title at UFC 323 when longtime champ Pantoja injured his shoulder just 26 seconds into the fight.
Van has since defended his title by finishing Tatsuro Taira by TKO at UFC 328. He survived Taira's early ground attack to eventually finish him in Round 5. Royval admits he now looks at the rematch differently after Van got a successful title defense on his resume.
"I kind of thought Pantoja was just going to run through him," Royval told One on One. "And even in the little sequence, I thought Pantoja was getting the better of the 10 seconds of striking they had, but it is what it is. I love how they started it. Here's one thing that I do know for sure is this will be Fight of the Night. They're going to steal the show. Joshua Van is probably getting better increasingly by the second. I think he has such a natural fighting talent of just being calm, cool, and collected inside the chaos, and you could see it in him getting dominated in the first round and a half against Taira.
"It was full-on mount and he made a comeback, and just kept picking it up from there. I would say Pantoja is not the opposite, but Pantoja's like, 'Oh, we're going right now.' So, if he could survive those first two and a half rounds, then I think Pantoja might slow down significantly, and I think Joshua Van will pour it on. Joshua Van does something unique that I don't think any of us really do as far as like, when I fought Pantoja, I was going straight after his head. I don't even know if I threw a body shot, whereas Joshua Van attacks the body pretty heavily. If I could go back in some of those, especially the fifth round when I fought Pantoja, I would have went after the body."
Pantoja, 36, is 12 years the senior of Van, 24, and will be returning from an injury. While Royval worries about the amount of damage the Brazilian has suffered through countless number of wars, he views him as a unique entity.
"Pantoja eats a lot of shots and he walks through them," Royval said. "But, it's like there has to be a point where a guy like that, you're like, 'Oh, that's the end of that.' You can only do that so much in your career before you're getting dropped or something of the above, and Pantoja just eats it all. I might have hit him with the hardest knee I've ever hit anybody with and he finished with a takedown and I was like, 'What the hell just happened?' But I really do believe if anyone can come back at this age, it's Pantoja."
