Issue 224

December 2025

Normally, we've got a cracking action shot that captures the best of brutality. This image offers a juxtaposition, plain and uneventful. There’s been an outcry that Joshua Van looks wrong here. Just too fresh-faced. He’s looking like he’s just finished a brisk airport walk rather than becoming a UFC champion by default. There’s no haunting thousand-yard stare. No visible tax paid. We expect champions to resemble men who’ve been through a wood chipper but Van looks like he could politely help pack up the Octagon back into storage. That’s why some fighters didn’t like this image, but what was Joshua supposed to do? He didn’t choose the injury. He didn’t script the ending. He showed up, did his job, and when critics tried to downplay it, his response was blunt and very on-brand for a 24-year-old who had just skipped several steps of the traditional suffering ladder.

“F*ck them,” Van said about these opinions.

In a division stacked with men who earned their scars, he collected his share to get there, yet this photo still represents a quiet disruption. And for the fighters lining up behind him, that might be the most unsettling part of all.