Alexandre Pantoja and Joshua Van are already treating UFC 331 like somebody forgot to tell them the cage door does not shut until September. The flyweight title rematch got spicy at Friday’s launch press conference in Philadelphia, where Dana White had to get between the former champion and the current one before the whole thing turned into bonus footage for security.
Pantoja stood up and moved toward Van during the exchange, then fired off the line that made the clip start doing laps around fight Twitter. “Hey kid, when someone talk, you shut your f*cking mouth. You understand?” Pantoja shouted, while White wrapped him up and kept him from closing the distance.
Watch the press conference flare-up below.
UFC 331 Suddenly Has A Little Venom In The Main Event
Van and Pantoja are scheduled to headline UFC 331 on September 19 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The card marks Van’s second defense of the flyweight belt, and it gives Pantoja his first shot to clean up the weirdest title loss of his career.
The first Van-Pantoja meeting at UFC 323 lasted only 26 seconds before Pantoja suffered an arm injury and the belt changed hands in brutal anticlimax. Nobody got the clean answer they wanted, which is why this rematch has been sitting there like a lit match. Since then, Van defended the belt in a wild fifth-round finish over Tatsuro Taira at UFC 328, while Pantoja has been waiting for the reset button.
The press conference gave the rematch a much sharper edge. Van smiled with the belt in front of him, Pantoja looked ready to jump across the room, and White did the familiar promoter-referee shuffle that usually means the matchmaking did its job.
The faceoff stayed controlled, but it was not exactly polite.
UFC 331 is also carrying a heavy co-main event with Arman Tsarukyan vs. Mauricio Ruffy, another matchup that already needed White’s hands in the middle during faceoffs. That gives the September card two different pressure cookers near the top, and neither one feels like fake heat.
White later pushed the main event himself with a short Van-Pantoja clip, keeping the spotlight on the 125-pound title rematch.
For Pantoja, this is about more than yelling at a younger champion in a press room. He lost the belt without getting to truly fight for it, and his call for another Van fight has been sitting in the air since that arm injury. For Van, this is the chance to prove the title run is not built on a freak ending. That is how you get a title rematch with real teeth, and Friday’s press conference made sure nobody could miss it.
