Joshua Van remembers asking his mother why they had to live in Houston. Why couldn’t they just go back home where things were familiar?
He was 12 years old at the time, and Van wanted to go back to where he lived the first decade of his life, in Myanmar. Life wasn’t easy for an undersized pre-teen who spoke little English and was picked on during school for both of those attributes.
Looking back, the math adds up that he’d become the first Burmese fighter to compete in the UFC.
“I was a small kid,” Van recently told MMA Junkie. “From where I come from, you get picked on. It’s kind of like I fight everyday, 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 grew up one of five siblings in Myanmar, a country ridden with military and political conflict. When things increasingly worsened, Van’s parents decided to move to Malaysia. Van was 10 years old.
“The military in Myanmar is always bad,” Van said. “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.”
Three years later, Van and his family moved to the United States and settled in Houston, where he still resides today. Bullying and his love for Bruce Lee formulated a love for MMA.
In 2020, Van made his amateur debut before he turned professional in 2021.
After a 2-1 start to his pro tenure, Van went on an atypical run up the regional ladder. He won Fury FC gold in December and was signed for a short-notice bout UFC on ABC 5 in June.
The signing was historic as Van became his native country’s first to make the UFC walk. But the history didn’t stop there. Van also notched Myanmar’s first win in promotion history June 24 when he defeated Zhalgas Zhumagulov via split decision.
The Burmese love poured in.
“It meant a lot of things for me,” Van said. “It meant everything to me, to be able to represent my country on the biggest stage. It felt amazing, man. The only thing was I can’t have my flag in there, man. If I was able to have the Myanmar flag in there, that would be amazing. That’s the only thing that was going on.”
While the endearment and pride was felt across borders and bodies of water, Van knows for the time being he cannot experience it in person until Myanmar becomes safer.
For the time being, Van will hold fond memories of the first 10 years of his life close to his heart as he continues to be Myanmar’s most prominent MMA flag bearer outside of ONE Championship star Aung La Nsang.
“It was amazing, my memory from Myanmar. I lived there until I was seven or eight and then I moved to Malaysia. Then Malaysia, from there, I came here. Every memory I have over there was amazing, man. Everybody loved everybody. Everybody supported everybody. Everybody was respectful and stuff like that.
“… This platform that I have right now, I feel like the UFC is the biggest platform you can have. I want to the world to see what’s really going on. The military be cutting off our internet and stuff like that. It’s hard for the other part of the world to really know what’s going on and stuff like that. I will use this platform to know what is really going on over there.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 5.
Burmese fighter: Joshua Van details pioneering journey to plant Myanmar’s flag on UFC turf