Taira Has Eight Submission Wins Going Into His First Title Shot — UFC 328 Spent Fight Week Talking About Guns

Eight submission wins in the UFC. An 18-1 professional record. The first fighter in history to stop Brandon Moreno — a two-time flyweight champion — in a professional fight. Tatsuro Taira steps into Newark on Saturday night for his first UFC title shot with credentials the sport doesn't produce very often.

You probably spent the week reading about Sean Strickland threatening to shoot people.

That's UFC 328.

Taira fights Joshua Van for the flyweight belt at the Prudential Center in Newark on May 9. Van's first title defense, earned the right way: 16-2, legitimately dangerous, not a placeholder. The fight got pushed from UFC 327 after Van picked up a minor injury; the extra month changed nothing. Taira earned this shot the same way he earns most things, by submitting whoever was in front of him until there was nobody else to submit.

Eight UFC submission wins. Not eight total finishes where a couple happened to be chokes. Eight submissions specifically, in the most competitive flyweight pool on the planet. UFC stats rank him fourth all-time in the flyweight division for submissions per 15 minutes at 1.83. He doesn't grind position and wait for opponents to make errors. He hunts finishes from everywhere and closes them out.

The win that put him here came in December 2025 against Moreno. Brandon Moreno had been submitted exactly once in his professional career before Taira showed up. He's a two-time champion, legitimately skilled on the ground, the kind of fighter who makes you forget being stopped is still possible for him. Taira stopped him anyway. He became the first to do it, which is either the beginning of a title shot narrative or the most undersold accomplishment in recent flyweight history, depending on who you asked during fight week.

Based on fight week, nobody was asking.

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Sean Strickland fights Khamzat Chimaev in the main event, middleweight title, the fight most of the MMA audience came for. Somewhere in the days before the card, Strickland turned up at a media scrum and announced he'd be armed.

Direct quote: "If you come up to me with three f—ing Chechens who don't speak English, I'm going to pull my gun, and I'm going to shoot each and every one of you."

He also said he'd be "strapped in New Jersey." New Jersey has among the strictest gun laws in the country. This did not appear to factor into the threat.

Dana White told the press he was beefing up security throughout fight week. The scheduled pre-fight faceoff got canceled — apparently having these two specific people in a room together before the actual fight was not optimal. Chimaev answered at a presser: "New Jersey is Muslim community, it's my home. I don't think he's gonna come out with a gun there. Otherwise there will be a lot of people in jail, because he's dead."

The quotes went everywhere. Combat sports media covered the gun story; outlets that don't normally touch combat sports covered the gun story. It ran for days.

Taira kept training.

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You could blame Strickland for this, but that's the wrong call. He knows the UFC's promotional math better than almost anyone. The gun quote went wide because it was built to go wide. This is a fighter who has spent his career figuring out exactly how loud you need to be in a sport full of loud people. The attention follows the noise. It always does.

The grappling story got buried.

The community has spent years recycling the same argument: does sport jiu-jitsu actually transfer to MMA? The debate surfaces every few months, someone dismisses modern grappling as useless in the cage, someone else pulls up Demian Maia footage or a Craig Jones clip, the cycle resets. Taira is what happens when you stop arguing and just watch.

He came up through Shooto in Japan, a submission-based circuit with real stakes, and entered the UFC at flyweight. Three years in the promotion, submitting people at a rate almost nobody in the division's history has matched. He's not an example people cite in debates. He's the answer the debate keeps asking for.

His title shot is Saturday. The opponent is a real champion. The grappling question is live.

Fight week was about guns.

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Strickland's doing his thing and the machine works the way it works. That's fine. But Tatsuro Taira, eight UFC submission wins, 18-1, the first man to stop Moreno, is four days from his first shot at a belt. The flyweight title fight is the co-main at the Prudential Center. If you have opinions about jiu-jitsu in MMA, this is the one match all week that's actually running the experiment live.

Whether or not Strickland shows up strapped in New Jersey, the grappler's still fighting.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Sean Strickland: 'I'm going to pull my gun and shoot each and every one of you' — MMA Mania
• 'I'll be strapped in New Jersey': Sean Strickland issues chilling warning to Khamzat Chimaev before UFC 328 — Bloody Elbow
• UFC 328 Countdown: Joshua Van vs. Tatsuro Taira — Tapology
• Tatsuro Taira — UFC Athlete Profile