{"id":226305,"date":"2025-06-30T09:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T09:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226305\/"},"modified":"2025-06-30T09:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T09:44:09","slug":"kai-kara-france-gives-honest-review-of-his-performance-against-alexandre-pantoja-in-first-comments-after-ufc-317","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/226305\/","title":{"rendered":"Kai Kara-France gives honest review of his performance against Alexandre Pantoja in first comments after UFC 317"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kai Kara-France says everything felt okay while battling Alexandre Pantoja on the ground at UFC 317 \u2014 until it didn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before Ilia Topuria knocked out Charles Oliveira<\/a> to become a two-division kingpin at UFC 317, Pantoja got things done inside the distance himself to exit the cage with gold in his possession. <\/p>\n

In the co-main event, Pantoja submitted Kara-France in round three<\/a>, becoming the longest-reigning active male UFC champion in the process.<\/p>\n

While celebrations will be ongoing for \u2018The Cannibal\u2019 and his team, it\u2019ll be the opposite for Kara-France<\/a>, who fell short of a UFC title for the second time in his career and likely faces a long road back to another opportunity.<\/p>\n

Kai Kara-France admits he didn\u2019t show enough \u2018urgency\u2019 on the ground at UFC 317<\/p>\n

The Kiwi flyweight first had his title ambitions dented at UFC 277 in the summer of 2022. Kara-France was stopped by Brandon Moreno<\/a> in their battle for the interim championship.<\/p>\n

Having fallen to a similar fate three years later, an understandably disappointed Kara-France reflected on the setback during an interview with Sky Sport NZ backstage at T-Mobile Arena.<\/p>\n

\u201cHats off to Pantoja. He\u2019s the champ for a reason,\u201d Kara-France said. \u201cHe\u2019s just tough. Cracked him a few times and he just keeps coming forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I was sweet until it got deeper and deeper. Before you know it\u2026I was just stuck. That\u2019s his world on the ground, and it was just dangerous for me to (show) not enough urgency to get up.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust proud to represent the gym, our coaches and our team. Just want to say a big thanks for all the support back home,\u201d Kara-France added. \u201cIt\u2019s just tough because I\u2019ve been here before\u2026it is harder to get up every time when you put so much into this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the fight game, and I\u2019m going to hold my head up high\u2026live to fight another day.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Alexandre Pantoja\u2019s next challenger is already decided<\/p>\n

While Kara-France licks his wounds and assesses his next step, Pantoja<\/a> already has a fresh challenge in his sights.<\/p>\n

Moments after \u2018The Cannibal\u2019 recorded his fourth successful defense and made history as the winningest flyweight in UFC history, the champ faced off with Joshua Van<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Van beat Brandon Royval in a war<\/a> earlier in the night, landing a late knockdown to put an exclamation point on his short-notice victory over the top-ranked contender.<\/p>\n

As a result, the rising Burmese flyweight has seemingly jumped the queue and earned a title shot off the back of his two victories at back-to-back June pay-per-views.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kai Kara-France says everything felt okay while battling Alexandre Pantoja on the ground at UFC 317 \u2014 until…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[87980,2000,299,88009,36,87979,83008],"class_list":{"0":"post-226305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-alexandre-pantoja","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-flyweight","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-kai-kara-france","14":"tag-ufc-317"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114771674124101446","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}