Joshua Van says a serious knee injury forced his flyweight title defense against Tatsuro Taira to be pushed from UFC 327 to UFC 328, where he ultimately stopped Taira by fifth-round TKO.
According to Van, the injury was severe enough that he and his team agreed to withdraw from the original April 11 date. “It was serious, man. It was bad,” Van said while detailing how the setback shaped his preparation.
Van explained that the knee issue heavily limited his conditioning work in the buildup to UFC 328. “I couldn’t run. Even this camp, I couldn’t run until the last two weeks. Bro, my knee was f--ked,” 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.”
He credited Daniel Pineda and his coaches with making the call to delay the defense. “It was Daniel Pineda and my coaches, they had a little meeting and said, ‘We gotta call it off, man,’” Van said.
The 24-year-old flyweight champion added that competing while hurt is not new to him. “When I fought [Alexandre] Pantoja and when I fought at Noche UFC, I had an LCL tear and I fought through that,” Van said. “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.”
Alexandre Pantoja was cageside for Van’s win at UFC 328 and is described as wanting to regain his belt after a freak injury in their first fight.
