UFC flyweight Joshua Van recounts only street fight he ever lost: ‘I pulled up, he’s 6-foot-tall and I was like oh s***, I f***** up’

Joshua Van may be considered one of the top prospects in the UFC flyweight division, but his journey to discover the sport of MMA was anything but conventional.

The 22-year-old fighter grew up in Myanmar before his family eventually relocated to the United States before he could even speak the language. As he attempted to adapt to his new surroundings, Van often found himself the victim of bullying and kids just picking on him in general, which in turn led to him lashing out.

“After I moved to the United States, I didn’t speak English or nothing and I was a small kid, too,” Van told MMA Fighting. “As a kid, people pick on you because you don’t speak the language or you’re a different race or something and you’re built small.

“I didn’t like that so I stood my ground and fought, especially because I couldn’t say nothing back.”

Despite a smaller stature, he never backed down from a challenge. Pretty soon, he discovered that the bullies not only backed off when he punched them in the mouth but he was actually rather good at fighting.

Van also started to realize that fighting and winning got him recognition in a way he’d never seen before, which was like throwing gasoline on a raging, five alarm fire.

“It would get to the point where I enjoyed fighting,” Van said. “That’s the only way I could get attention.”

Looking back now, Van admits he used to go looking for trouble just so he could get into a fight. At the time, he had no plans to become a professional fighter but he still liked to challenge himself whenever he got into a scrap on the streets.

“Every time I would try something new,” Van explained. “I would go to the basketball court just to pick a fight. If I wanted to try southpaw, I would say let me fight this guy southpaw and see how it goes. I wanted to test myself with things like that.”

Van doesn’t exactly account for how many street fights he had during his life, but it definitely sounds like a lot. In fact, Van happily touted his undefeated record on the streets until he remembered the one time an opponent got the better of him.

The situation revolved around a girl he was dating at the time and an invitation he received to fight from her ex-boyfriend.

“I took his girl so he was mad,” Van said. “He hit me up on Snapchat, I think that was like 2016 or 2017 so he hit me up and I ain’t no b****. So I pulled up, he’s 6-foot-tall and I was like oh s***, I f***** up. Can’t back out now. So we had to bang it out and thank god, he didn’t know how to fight.”

At 5-foot-5, Van was giving up a lot of size but he still got the better of the ex-boyfriend until seven minutes had expired and his bigger, unskilled opponent simply refused to stop.

“I was banging the dude out, cutting him up and the dude just kept coming,” Van said. “I had to throw up and I told him, you win. That was probably the only fight I lost. I hit him, I threw up right after and I said look, let’s be friends, you win. That was the longest street fight I ever had.

“He shook my hand. He got two of his friends, and I had one of my friends, and we all shook hands and we just sat there.”

It wasn’t long after that particular street fight that Van realized he could find a better outlet to employ his skills and aggression.

“One day, a couple of my friends and my auntie told me ‘You have talent for fighting, why don’t you try doing it in a cage for your country or for your people and make a name for yourself,’” Van said. “That’s when I decided I wanted to do this.

“My last street fight was probably in 2017, right before I dropped out of school. Ever since I went to the gym, I stopped getting into street fights.”

The only sport that Van really played as a kid was soccer so he didn’t come from any traditional martial arts background that gave him a foundation when trying MMA for the first time.

He was learning on the job but he loved fighting and after only three months of training, Van took his first amateur bout. It took him only 96 seconds to score a knockout and that was followed by three more wins — all within the next six months — and Van decided it was time to turn pro.

Much like his street fight against the angry ex-boyfriend, Van faced another harsh reality in his professional MMA debut, which was the first time he went from rounds that lasted five minutes instead of only three.

“Even before I started, I used to play soccer so my cardio was good. Even in street fights, I never got tired,” Van said. “I ain’t going to lie, my first pro fight I had to question myself mid-fight in the first round. We just talked about it two days ago with my friends. I thought about why am I doing this s***? Three minutes [in amateur] and five minutes [in pro], it doesn’t look like that much of a difference but when you’re in there, like my first professional fight, I was like f***, this s*** is long!

“I actually got the second-round finish and I was like s*** that’s nice! That’s when I said I wanted to take this serious.”

Van faced another humbling experience two fights later when faced off with an opponent coming from a wrestling background. That now serves as the only loss on his resume.

“I was thinking I was better than everyone else because I hadn’t lost a fight in forever,” Van said. “I beat two guys at the professional level and they had been doing it way longer than me and I beat them without even trying. So I thought I could walk through all these guys.

“I found out when I fought a good wrestler and that humbled me. It made me a better fighter after that loss.”

Since that lone setback, Van has gone 7-0 with five finishes including two wins in the UFC. He hasn’t stopped anybody in the octagon just yet but he hopes to change that when he clashes with Felipe Bunes at UFC Vegas 84 on Saturday.

From there, Van expects only bigger and better things in the future.

“Hopefully I get the top 15 guys in my next fight,” Van said. “I’m just that good.”