Promising up-and-coming UFC flyweight prospect Joshua Van has promised he will be the first UFC champion from the beleaguered country of Myanmar. And while every fighter says they want to be champion, ‘The Fearless’ is deadly serious. So much so that he trains all the time and has admitted that he doesn’t even have much fun even when not in camp for a fight.

Not because he doesn’t like to kick back and relax like every other 22-year-old, but because he feels this is a sacrifice that will set him apart from other fighters. Mike Tyson, fans will remember, had a similar approach to training and once famously remarked that he used to run at four in the morning because “I know my opponent is sleeping. It gives me an edge.” And Jones seems to have a similar mindset to his training, as we will see in more detail later.

Where is Joshua Van from? His ethnicity and nationality

As we have mentioned, Joshua Van hails from Myanmar. However, because of the political situation in his homeland, he immigrated, along with his family, to Malaysia at the tender age of ten in search of better education and professional opportunities.

Myanmar, of course, has had a very tumultuous political history, with a tussle between the civilians and army a feature of the country ever since it gained independence in 1948. And this conflict has only gotten over the past few years, blowing up into a full-blown civil war in early 2021. This situation is precisely what compelled his family to emigrate first to Malaysia and then to Houston, Texas, in the United States just three years later.

“The military in Myanmar is always bad. It got worse. At that time, my parents were looking for a better education and a better job, things like that. They were thinking about us, the kids. They wanted to come over here and were looking for a bigger education and freedom,” the flyweight would recount in a recent interview.

It was in Houston that the Burmese started his martial arts journey and began training at 19, “to feed my competitive side,” according to Van. The Burmese hasn’t looked back since and proudly represents his beleaguered homeland in the combat sports world, where he quickly made a big impact.

How did Joshua Van enter the UFC?

As we have mentioned, Van works extremely hard and makes a lot of sacrifices to make sure he’s always ready for fights. This, of course, means he is virtually always in camp and only ratchets up his training two weeks from a fight.

“The two weeks before [a fight], we pick it up. You know how people, when they don’t have a fight, barely train, and then when they have a fight, they pick it up zero to a hundred. It’s not like that with me. We stay consistent with it,” he told the UFC in an interview.

And hard work, as they say, pays off. And that is exactly what his discipline and blood, sweat, and tears have done for him. There is a reason that the Burmese were signed to the biggest combat sports promotion in the world after only the right fights in Fury FC. The flyweight, after all, has a championship pedigree and has won the Fury flyweight title in the pro as well as the amateur category.

With a well-rounded game based around his fantastic striking and supplemented by his ground game, ‘The Fearless’ five of his seven Fury FC wins came via knockouts. With his talent and warrior spirit apparent for everyone to see, it was hardly surprising to anyone who followed him to see him signed to the Dana White-led promotion at the age of 22, only three years after he started properly training to be a fighter.

But while he may have started to train at a formal age after becoming an adult, the Burmese has always been a fighter.

More about Joshua Van’s early life

Josua Van, on moving to Houston at twelve, found himself the smallest kid in his class and among the boys who lived in his neighborhood. This, predictably, made him an easy target for bullies, leading him to get picked on.

But Van, ever ‘The Fearless’, fought back every time. But that didn’t stop the bullies, leading to him getting into fights regularly. So much so that he started enjoying the fights and even started learning more about how to be an effective fighter, starting with watching street fight videos online to sharpen his skills.

“I was a small kid. From where I come from, you get picked on. It’s kind of like I fight every day, and I got to the point where I enjoyed fighting. I watched clips on street fights and how to win street fights. I tried it in my next fight and things like that. That’s what got me into my career,” Van recounted in a recent interview.

It was therefore only natural for him to make fighting his profession, especially because of the experience he had gained in the streets. After all, as any fighter would tell you, nothing can prepare you for an actual fight, no matter how hard you spar in the gym. And since he already knew what it was like to be in the real thing, where there were no rules, and he was fighting bigger guys in the streets, Joshua Van became ‘Fearless’ and continues to be so. What are your thoughts on Josua Van’s journey to the UFC?