Costello van Steenis and Johnny Eblen were set to headline PFL Austin on July 18, but an injury forced the champion out of their bout. Now, he gets to stay on the sidelines and watch Eblen rematch Impa Kasanganay for the interim title.
Van Steenis will be in attendance Saturday night at the Moody Center and had a choice of words for Eblen, who told MMA Fighting earlier this week that his “time is coming” after getting through Kasanganay.
“He’s saying he’s focused on Impa, but he can’t wait to beat my ass,” van Steenis told MMA Fighting. “In every interview and every social media platform, I see him mentioning my name. I’m thinking, dude, you’re fighting Impa, right? Make sure you fight him. From now on you’re fighting Impa, so you mean nothing to me. If you lose against Impa, you mean even less than nothing to me. So you better win. You better win and then make sure that you say what you’re going to do. When we sign the contract for the end of the year or maybe next year, I’m gonna look after myself and make sure that I’m gonna smash you. That I’m gonna smash him.”
Eblen won a split decision over Kasanganay back in 2024, and van Steenis sees the same outcome this time around.
“It can go both ways,” van Steenis said. “I really like Impa. I trained with him. I see him not only as a future opponent, but I also see him as an inspiration to me and to other athletes. And I see him also as a friend. I trained with him in Kill Cliff a couple of times, he’s a great guy. I’m rooting for him. I hope he wins. But I also hope Eblen wins so I can fight him again, and then I am the only guy that beat Eblen. So when I fight him again, then I’m the only guy that beat Eblen not once, but two times.”
Van Steenis declined to go into details about the medical issue that forced him off PFL Austin, but said it was a “serious injury” that prevented him from “jump on a bike or even walk stairs.”
“I signed the contract to fight in the 18th of July and bad luck came around knocking on the door and I got injured,” van Steenis said. “Of course it’s very normal that you fight injured. I think in every fight you get injured, in training camp, but this was an injury that I couldn’t say I want to fight or I have to fight. Even though if I said I have to fight I couldn’t fight because I couldn’t do anything. I just needed to accept.
“Of course I felt like that I lost the fight against myself because first priority is look after yourself, be sure you’re as healthy as possible to get in the fight because you signed the contract, and I failed to myself on this. But after a couple of weeks I had to accept it. Or you just sit there on the sofa whining about it, or you accept that you’re injured and just get to work, get better. Maybe it was meant to be, you know? Even more time to be a better fighter and a better human than i am now.”
Van Steenis expects to be at 100 percent in four weeks, and aims at the fourth quarter of 2026 for a unification bout against the winner of Kasanganay vs. Eblen.
“It’s very frustrating,” van Steenis said. “I signed the contract to fight on the 18th of July and that’s me sitting on the sideline, and two other people — while I should be fighting, they’re fighting. I just need to accept it, you know? It is what it is. I just need to watch the fight and swallow the tears, actually — saying it in soft words. It’s a motherf*cker [laughs].”
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