Joshua Van retained his flyweight title with a thrilling points win over Alexandre Pantoja on Saturday, capping off UFC 331 in Los Angeles.
Van dethroned Pantoja in strange circumstances in December, when the latter suffered an early injury, but the Myanmar native sealed a clearer win in their rematch.
After a typically scintillating start by Pantoja, who took down Van in the opening 10 seconds, the 24-year-old champion began to find the space to execute his fine boxing skills.
As such, the fight seemed to be tied up at 1-1 after the first two rounds, the second of which saw a brief pause while a bloodied Pantoja complained of a headbutt. A replay seemed to show an accidental clash of heads, however.
What ensued was a razor-close third round, in which Pantoja, 36, stacked up more control time and landed plenty of strikes in frantic exchanges, while Van continued to box sharply.
Brazil’s Pantoja was dominant with his grappling in round four, leaving the fight seemingly up in the air going into the fifth round, but Van came up clutch.
The champion outstruck Pantoja and even dropped him with a clean right cross late on, before the scorecards all went his way.
They were surprisingly one-sided (49-46, 49-47, 50-45), as Van recorded a second successful title defence, having stopped Tatsuro Taira in an instant classic in May.
In the co-main event, Arman Tsarukyan beat Mauricio Ruffy in what was billed as a lightweight-title eliminator.
The Armenian survived some testing moments – and noticeable damage to his left eye – to stop Ruffy at the end of round one, crumpling him with an elbow against the fence. Tsarukyan, 29, even landed a second elbow as his Brazilian opponent collapsed.
Next for Tsarukyan may be champion Justin Gaethje, who watched from cageside on Saturday.
