Royval's high-octane loss to the current champ made him numerous fans, but now he has to rebound Saturday against Manel Kape.
It’s of perhaps no small distinction the final UFC fight of 2025 — and the last of ESPN’s partnership with the promotion — will feature Brandon Royval in the main event against Manel Kape. Royval’s name should be mentioned plenty later this month as outlets assemble their end-of-year lists, as he and new flyweight champion Joshua Van put on a Fight of the Year candidate in June.
If you don’t recall the circumstances, Royval was slated to face Kape at UFC 317, yet Kape was forced to withdraw with a broken foot, which made way for Van to step in on short notice. The then-23-year-old Van had just scored a third-round knockout of Bruno Gustavo da Silva earlier that month, which gave him big-time baller status in the division to turnaround so quickly.
Van’s daring move might’ve hogged the narratives going in, but it was Royval’s defiant stand that night in Las Vegas that made it one of the most memorable fights of the year. For three solid rounds, Royval stood and traded with Van, who happens to be one of the best boxers going.
It felt like a nonstop game of wheelhouse roulette.
“I’ve only watched it twice, and as far as ranking a good fight, I thought it was pretty sick,” Royval told Uncrowned this week. “Of course, I’m watching it from a strictly critical point of view, as far as everything I wanted to do. I told my corner as soon as the matchup was made, I said, 'I'm going to go box him. I’m going to go box him in the pocket.' That’s what I wanted to do more than anything. They were strongly advising against that, of course.”
Sometimes a little caution to the wind is what establishes a fan favorite, and Royval — a former LFA champion who fought for the UFC flyweight title against Alexandre Pantoja in 2023 — scored some points by chin-checking the division’s phenom.
There were more wow moments packed into that one fight than some fighters have in a full year.
“I obviously wouldn't have got dropped in the last 10 seconds [if I’d played it smarter], but I wanted to go in there and put hands on him and try to outpace him,” Royval says. “I think Joshua Van goes out there and puts big numbers on everybody else, and I wanted to out-volume him, I wanted to touch him up. I wanted to not get hit in the body, and I kind of just wanted to take away the things that he was good at and try to be better than him.”
Here the Colorado native can chuckle at the decision to enter the leather trade so willingly with a sniper like Van, who won the flyweight title at UFC 323 after Pantoja dislocated his elbow early in the fight.
“From a strategical standpoint, if I’m my own coach, I would've been really pissed at myself and just being like, that was the dumbest way to fight,” Royval says. “I am not trying to offend the current champion, but I’m a way better kicker than him. I was way longer than him, I could fight out at range a lot easier than him, and I’ve done that a lot in my career.
“So, if we're being critical of the technique portion of it, yeah, I feel like I f***ed up real bad.”
With the flyweight division currently teeming with contenders, it’s murky as to whether Royval can make up ground Saturday against Kape at the UFC APEX for UFC Vegas 112. He was supposed to fight the Angolan flyweight on a couple of occasions over the past year, yet injuries and health issues have delayed the fight until now. Kape sits a little lower in the UFC’s pecking order, ranked No. 6 on the UFC’s official rankings, while Royval is hovering at No. 2.
However, Japan’s Tatsuro Taira scored a big victory over Brandon Moreno this past weekend at UFC 323 to land front and center in the evolving title picture, and the veteran Kyoji Horiguchi had a triumphant return against Tagir Ulanbekov a couple of weeks back to give him a claim for a shot as well. Then, of course, there’s the former champion, Pantoja, who needs to recover from the gruesome injury he suffered before he’ll be ready to run it back with Van (should Van still hold the title when that happens).
The one thing none of those contenders has that Royval does are those FOTY credentials. Who wouldn’t want to see Royval and Van do it again at some point in the near future, this time with proper training camps?
“I hope so,” Royval says, “but I feel like Dana White's already trying to book the Tatsuro fight, and it's like, I get it. I already lost to Van, but that was a crazy fight. The last 10 seconds I think is really what made the loss. That being said, I already beat Tatsuro, and I did a little bit of the same thing that I wanted do with him, too. I almost submitted him, I had his back and I did what he was best at — I finished that fight on his back going for a submission.
“I don't know, not to talk down on anybody in the division necessarily or at least something I care about, but that being said ... I think that's the better fight to make.”
With Royval having the unique vantage point of having faced both Pantoja and Van in the past — and knowing both have a tendency to put on highly entertaining fights — he was as bummed as anyone their fight ended before it really got started.
“I just wanted to see how it would've played out, you know?” he says. “What sucks is it would've been fun. I think the first 10 seconds were wild. It was going to be a fun little fight. But I’m not going to say I'm glad, because obviously nobody wants to see Pantoja get hurt, but I'm relieved they didn't steal Fight of the Year from us. I’m glad I’m still in the running right now.”
That he is.
And Royval’s hoping he can drag a good fight out of Kape to close out the ESPN era and 2025 with a bang. He said he had designs to put “hundreds of punches on Van” when they fought six months ago, but he’s not as optimistic there’ll be the same chances against “Starboy.”
Styles make fights, and Royval has been studying his assignment carefully for a long time.
“I think he's super flashy, and he does some super cool s*** against lesser opponents, if I'm being honest,” he says. “It's like, you see high-level opponents get in there against him — guys like Matheus Nicolau, Muhammad Mokaev and Pantoja — and they make for some boring fights. He's just too afraid to commit to anything and all that stuff.
“But against smaller guys, the 5-foot-2 guys in the division and the guys that don't strike, he looks super cool against. I just don't think he's going to look the same against me, who's long and fast and likes to strike. I can do all the above. So I think he's good, but I've been trying to prepare for this guy for the last year. I saw him as a super intelligent MMA fighter, and I thought he had a super strong MMA IQ, but I think that's where I’ve probably gained less respect for him in this go-around for this camp. It’s like, 'Oh, he does some dumb s***.”
Not that doing dumb s*** doesn’t sometimes deliver, too.
Category: General Sports
