This is a fight that I’ve secretly hoped would come together for a minute now. And with how things turned out following 323, it is very likely to happen in the near future. The two most talented rising stars in the division with a fight between the two being the first title fight between two fighters born in the 2000’s. I’ve seen a lot of people picking Taira in a hypothetical matchup, but I’m pretty confident that Van wins this. On the feet, Taira has a very rudimentary kickboxing style with sharp leg kicks and a clean 1-2. While not very dynamic, his fundamentals are excellent, allowing him to pick opponents from range and set up his wrestling. He has clean defense, and enough power to keep his opponents honest. His thai plum is underrated as well as he wraps it up one opponents crashes into range. But what the Royval and Perez fight have shown me is that he struggles with combination punchers. He gets a bit lost in prolonged exchanges, and his defense comes a bit undone with volume. He’ll make you miss on the first few shots, but the third, fourth, fifth? That’s where I think Van would shine. I can see him outpacing him on the fight and working him with combinations. On top of that, Van has sharper boxing fundamentals, cleaner counters and much more accurate than both Royval and Perez. Of course, Taira has the tools on the feet to keep Van at bay, but Van is excellent at finding his range and making slight adjustments. If he can build from each exchange, I can see him snowballing on the feet. Now already, some of you are pointing out the clear discrepancy in the grappling. Taira is easily when of the best grapplers in the sport right now. He has beautiful positional control, a very patient passing game, excellent transitions and nasty back takes. His style is very text book, and it’s only made more dominant by the clear strength difference over his opponents. But Van has underrated defensive grappling in my opinion. He has a beautiful sprawl paired with sharp single and double leg defense. Great balance, strong hips, and safe get ups. And he’s displayed this against solid grapplers too. Rei Tsuruya is a life long wrestler with multiple junior Olympic titles. He has strong traditional takedowns with funky judo throws mixed in, and a tricky tenth planet style bjj game. Not only did Van defend most of the takedowns, but he was able to get right back up and scramble out from bottom. Cody Durden and Bruno Silva also had a tough time getting Van down and keeping him there. Against Pantoja, I was worried for Van as he doesn’t use traditional wrestling. His gets the fight to the mat from body lock take down variations, and creates scrambles with crab walks and inversions. But against Taira? His stonewall style actually matches up or pretty well stylistically. Taira would be the best grappler Van has faced, but I believe Van has the tools to get it done. TLDR: Van sprawls and brawls to a UD or late stoppage.