The first contest between Joshua Van and Alexandre Pantoja turned out to be one of the great disappointments of the past year, as they fought at a torrid pace for 20 seconds before a dislocated elbow ended Pantoja’s night. It was a win that gave Van the Flyweight championship and a win that satisfied nobody. The dominant champion had his belt ripped from him without being outfought, while Van was given a belt he didn’t appear to earn.
Since that day, Pantoja recovered to recapture his title, while Van battered Flyweight’s number one contender, Tatsuro Taira, in hopes of proving the belt truly belonged to him. The stakes for the rematch were much greater than those of a normal title fight. Van needed to win in order to prove his title reign legitimate, lest it be seen as a mere footnote to the Pantoja era with an asterisk attached. For Pantoja, it was a chance to erase his loss and show that the young challenger’s title reign was little more than a fluke.
Their rematch over-delivered on all promises, matching the pace of those 20 frenetic seconds throughout most of its 25 minutes. Both fighters turned in clever, tenacious performances, and Van proved himself worthy of the crown, while the 36-year-old Pantoja showed that a win over him still means a great deal.
Beating The Blitz
Pantoja is a peculiar sort of blitzing striker. Most fighters who attack primarily with blitzes aim to move in and out as quickly as possible. They feint around at long range to disguise their entries, leap through the distance and attack rapidly, then end their attack by moving out at an angle. Time spent inside the blitz itself is compressed, as the longer one spends out of a stable stance, the more likely he is to eat a punishing counter. As a result of the work done on either end of the blitz, it’s much more difficult than it seems to time and counter.
But instead of striking and getting out, Pantoja’s blitzes are continuous. He swarms forward until he either gets close enough to grab onto something or else his opponent falls down or runs into the cage. If they circle away, he turns on the spot and runs after them. It’s a style that appears built around that one Vitor Belfort fight from 1998 wherein he sprinted all the way across the cage to knock Wanderlei Silva out with rapid-fire chain punches.
Pantoja’s striking may appear sloppy at first glance, or however many glances you care to take, but it’s proven a nightmare for his opponents to deal with. He’s extremely open for counters when he’s running at his opponents, but his ungodly durability means that counters scarcely matter to him unless they can be repeated for 25 minutes. And Pantoja’s blitzing attack is responsive. He doesn’t just mindlessly sprint forward, but will adjust his strike selection based on how his opponent responds, chasing their exits with kicks and working around their counters.
The main advantage of Pantoja’s blitzes is that they compensate for his respectable but unspectacular wrestling. His ideal path to victory is a rear naked choke, but he lacks the ability to consistently score takedowns from long range or overcome neutral positions in the clinch. By storming forward and creating chaos, he can get his opponents thinking about anything but defending a takedown while he closes the gap.
Pantoja likes to initiate offense immediately, starting strong from the opening bell before his man has had a chance to settle down and pick up their reads. He landed one of his best grappling chances in the openings seconds of the fight against Van:
The first thing Van saw was Pantoja running at him swinging away. Without any time to get his bearings or sniff out Pantoja’s offensive patterns, he rushed his reaction and whiffed a lead hook across his body, leaving his elbow out of position as Pantoja shifted forward straight into a bodylock, where the takedown became easy.
But even when Van had more time to think, landing the easy counter on a wide open, rushing Pantoja proved to be a sort of trap. Pantoja charging face-first must look to his opponents like a baseball pitcher throwing a juicy meatball straight down the pipe. All one needs to do to score a home run off Pantoja’s chin is plant his feet and let the rear hand go. But nobody has cracked his chin yet, and throwing the rear hand leaves his opponent standing in place, squared up for an easy clinch entry.
It should be a familiar dynamic to anyone around during Ronda Rousey’s heyday. She would look like the worst striker in the UFC for a while, and then as soon as her opponent threw their first right hand, her arm was around their neck and they were traveling through the air. Pantoja has a much more varied attack, however, and there’s more threats than just a clinch throw to worry about.
When Pantoja wasn’t able to quickly find a position that opened up the takedown, he would use the transition to land strikes as Van looked to find space:
Whenever Van sat down on his rear hand as Pantoja shifted into southpaw, Pantoja’s right hand turned into an easy collar tie and he would pepper Van with knees, often catching him as he tried to duck out of the clinch.
So if holding ground and putting one between Pantoja’s eyes like a charging rhinoceros isn’t a high percentage strategy, how are opponents meant to deal with his blitzing attacks? One tried and true method of countering a linear forward shift is with a backwards shift.
Pantoja’s rapid forward shifting works on the assumption that, by breaking the orthodoxy of stepping with his punches nearest-foot-first, he will take more ground than his opponent can give and end up with the initiative as they collide. Backstepping into the opposite stance as the opponent runs forward mirrors his forward shift, keeping the distance regular, and seizing the initiative, as the fighter in retreat is now the one who is better able to anticipate the new stance configuration.
The problem with backstepping as a counter to linear rushes is that it’s easy to get sucked into running backwards if the opponent keeps going after their initial forward shift. If it turns into a race, the one running forward will usually end up winning.
Jairzinho Rozenstruik demonstrates the problem, landing three backstepping counters on a charging Francis Ngannou even as he retreats to his inevitable doom against the cage.
To make backstepping counters work consistently against a fighter as aggressive and durable as Pantoja, you need an off ramp. Van picked up on Pantoja’s blitzes quickly and started countering with a backstepping lead hook that took him out on a diagonal:
Instead of performing a standard check hook, which would leave him at risk of eating a charging Pantoja’s right hand or ending up in his clinch, Van steps his lead foot behind his rear as he throws his hook. He maintains the pocket of distance and denies Pantoja his desired chest to chest contact, and because his lead foot falls back at an angle, he gets outside the next right hand Pantoja throws. Pantoja ends up blitzing right past Van and has to stop and turn before he can re-engage.
As Van saw Pantoja’s rear hand enough to get comfortable with the distance, his footwork became tighter and he would bring his lead foot back almost parallel with his rear, shifting to southpaw as he slid out the side door. This little shift allowed him to break the line of Pantoja rush while staying close enough to land his own combinations - you may recognize the footwork from Floyd Mayweather’s check hook against Ricky Hatton, or Anderson Silva getting out of the way of Vitor Belfort’s linear rush.
Pantoja is skilled at kicking out of his rushes, with a broad arsenal of kicks depending on how his opponent moves. When Kai Asakura responded to his punches by backstepping into southpaw at long range, Pantoja would stick a body kick behind it to land on the new open side. Leg kicks are one of the better tools to attack lateral movement toward the lead side, but by stepping his lead foot behind his rear as he turned, Van lengthened the distance and made them trickier to land.
Still, Pantoja found success using the seldom-seen body kicks to the closed side to gain ground and herd Van:
Initially, Pantoja would throw the body kicks from range with the expectation of Van leaving his ribs exposed, using his lead hand to jab or throw a counter hook as Pantoja attacked, then shifting forward off his kick into the clinch. Later on, Pantoja began attacking Van’s lateral movement more directly, showing a rush and kicking the leg as Van tried to pivot out. One thing that may have hurt Pantoja here is that he seems most comfortable throwing his kicks off his lead hook, but his jab-straight blitzes were his main offensive tool against Van. If he’d been able to put leg kicks behind his rear hand, he may have succeeded more in dissuading Van’s backstepping hook and settling his lateral movement.
Keeping an aggressive and iron-chinned Pantoja at bay for five rounds required not only skill and grit from Van, but incredible discipline as well. He was at his best when he fought behind his jab and lead hook, using his rear hand carefully, but it’s a difficult plan to stick to for someone who so enjoys banging out his man in the pocket.
After a comfortable third round, Van started settling into boxing exchanges, confident he had picked up enough on Pantoja’s patterns to light him up on the counter. But Pantoja only needs a small opening to capitalize on a mistake.
