Preview: UFC 313 Prelims

Flyweights

Joshua Van (12-2, 5-1 UFC) vs. Rei Tsuruya (10-0, 1-0 UFC)

ODDS: Van (-192), Tsuruya (+160)

Van has championship-level upside and is one of the most promising young talents in the UFC, but he’s certainly taking the hard road towards realizing his potential. Van made his professional debut in 2021 and proved to be an absolute prodigy, keeping up an active schedule but still improving greatly from fight to fight—to the point that he was clearly a UFC-ready fighter when the promotion signed him 20 months into his career. Van is an offense-focused but slow-building fighter, putting his foot on the gas early and often eating a ton of offense in the process, but he uses that time to warm up and feel things out, enough so that he’s usually laying an absolute beating on his opponents by the third round. With Van continuing his willingness to fight anyone at any time, there is the worry that he’s burning himself out given that he’s putting on war after war, especially after he stepped in to fight Edgar Chairez just two months after his first knockout loss to Charles Johnson. This marks Van’s fourth fight in eight months, as he turned around quickly after the Chairez fight to outlast Cody Durden. The good news is that Tsuruya provides a softer test, at least in terms of the damage that Van figures to absorb. Tsuruya is another young gun at just 22 years old and is one of the top prospects out of Japan, but his game is much more one dimensional, as he’s a focused grappler who doesn’t look to waste much time on the feet. Below a certain level—which included most of the competition in the Road to UFC tournament he won in 2024—Tsuruya is an absolutely electric submission artist, but his UFC debut against Carlos Hernandez in June was a cause for some concern. It was a clear Tsuruya win, but he struggled to get the ball rolling against a solid wrestler and clearly tired out down the home stretch. Tsuruya needs to get a quick submission here, as Van is built to blow this fight wide open as soon as his opponent tires. While grappling isn’t currently where Van is at his best, the call is that he has learned enough over the years to survive and advance. The pick is Van via third-round knockout.

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