The Finer Points of Face Punching

The Finer Points of Face Punching

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The Finer Points of Face Punching
The Finer Points of Face Punching
Joshua Van vs Brandon Royval part 2

Joshua Van vs Brandon Royval part 2

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Connor Ruebusch
Jul 15, 2025
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The Finer Points of Face Punching
The Finer Points of Face Punching
Joshua Van vs Brandon Royval part 2
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We closed out part one of this analysis illustrating Brandon Royval’s craft as a striker. Such a thing often goes unappreciated in a brutal fight like this, and I was glad to highlight it. Of course, it wasn’t all jabs and clever combinations. It struck me, watching this fight, that there is something very reminiscent of the great Carlos Condit in Brandon Royval’s striking—and that absolutely includes the unbreakable chin, and the dauntless courage, without both of which the Natural Born Killer’s whole game would have fallen apart.

So that was the other half of Royval’s comeback in the second round. His corner had asked for pressure; so Royval put down the leafblower and picked up a woodchipper. He started pressing forward more. In fact he insisted on it, and damn the consequences. Even when Van hit him, he swung back, trying to drown him with pure pace. It was a brave and alluringly simple solution to a complex problem. And it worked—for a time.

The real turning point of the fight happened here.

Royval kicks things off with a four-punch salvo. Individually, none of these punches are great. The first left hand is a mere throwaway, a tempo move that gets Royval’s head off the center line and prepares the right uppercut. That uppercut is probably the best strike of the lot, with some real hip behind it, but there is no weight transfer. Once Royval flings his weight onto the front foot, it stays there. Consequently, the two-three that follows carries very little power. The final hook actually touches Van’s chin only to bounce harmlessly away.

It is, however, a full combination playing off the venomous jab Royval had spent the previous two minutes establishing, and one to which Van has no reply. Were he a more mature fighter, he might have been fine with that. There’s nothing inherently wrong, after all, with having to play a little defense now and again. But for all the newfound maturity displayed in his last fight, Van is still a fiery 23 year-old. And so, when Royval goes to follow up with another left hand, Van slips and fires back. Royval’s defense is flailing, but he gets the left arm up to stop Van’s right. Van attacks again, cleverly following the right hand Royval just defended with a right body kick he probably won’t. It sinks into Royval’s gut.

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But now Royval counters—one of the first times he has done so in the entire fight. They aren’t the subtle, precise counters Van has been landing all night up to this point, but they don’t have to be. Van has switched into attacking mode, and he isn’t ready for Royval to come back right away. He senses the left hand coming, but he’s a tempo behind, still struggling to reset himself after the kick. He guesses that it will be a straight left, flings out a desperate parry—but he guesses wrong. Royval clocks him with a chingazo of a wide left hand, stuns him. And suddenly Van’s retreating isn’t so effective as it had been. Royval proceeds to bounce half a dozen more blows off his face, even walking through a big right hand to do it.

The Art of the Comeback

Unfortunately for Brandon Royval, Joshua Van is a tough son of a bitch, too. And while there are many things he has yet to experience in his young career, a slobber-knocking war is not one of them. In fact, prior to the fight with Bruno Silva, the vast majority of his fights saw Van pressing forward relentlessly, Van trying to drown the opponent with pace and raw aggression, Van walking through fire, getting hurt, and forging ahead regardless.

This experience was enough to see him through the rest of the second round. In fact he retained a remarkable poise in the face of Royval’s accelerating onslaught. Still, two of the three judges watching would go on to give that round to Brandon Royval, and I tend to agree with them.

Van returned to a heated corner. In fact, one cornerman was so… enthusiastic in his admonition that Van start moving his head that another had to tell him to settle down. The advice was good, though. Van had made his counter punching work well in the first round based almost solely on distance management, on footwork. Now that Royval had found his range, however, come up with a dozen ways of exploiting the threat of the jab, and even started to find Van on the counter, he desperately needed to shore up his defense.

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