Johnny Eblen’s gaze tends to point squarely forward.

Take his upset victory over Gegard Mousasi last June, which earned him the Bellator middleweight championship just 12 fights and five years into his MMA career. Eblen says he took only about a week to appreciate his big moment, his coming out party.

“It was a cool moment, but I got over it pretty quickly because I know I have a lot more to do,” Eblen recently told The Post via Zoom. “It’s not the end.”

It’s only the beginning, in fact. Eblen (12-0, six finishes) returns to the cage for his first title defense at Bellator 290 on Saturday (9 p.m. ET, CBS) in Inglewood, Calif., against Anatoly Tokov.

The fight with Tokov (31-2, 24 finishes), a protégé of legendary heavyweight and retiring Bellator 290 headliner Fedor Emelianenko, had been in the works for months, according to Eblen, who cited logistics such as when the challenger from Russia would be granted a visa.

Originally, the title fight under Emelianenko’s rematch with heavyweight champion Ryan Bader was to be light heavyweight titleholder Vadim Nemkov — another Team Fedor success — facing Yoel Romero before the champion withdrew. Eblen got word “around Christmastime” to keep his weight under control for a potential winter matchup. News of both fights broke on Dec. 27.

The swap was fortuitous for Eblen, who now will compete on the first mixed martial arts event to air live on CBS since 2010. Bellator events have aired exclusively on Showtime since the start of 2021, meaning the middleweight champion will garner the most widespread exposure of his career by a mile.

“It’s nice,” Eblen, rarely one to get too visibly hyped up, said of the network television opportunity. “It’s just a step in the right direction. I’m expecting this, expecting to take steps up when it comes to people I fight, exposure I’m getting, the talent level, and so on and so forth.”

CBS happens to be the same network that aired the Kansas City native’s Chiefs defeating the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday and earn a third trip to the Super Bowl in four years. 

Eblen, like the NFL team he roots for, already has struck gold in his own sport, and he’s not done. If all goes according to plan, the 31-year-old gets to celebrate both his first title defense and his favorite football team’s latest championship. He concedes that being a title contender is “kind of expected, almost, at this point” of the Chiefs. 

Not so different from how Eblen thinks of himself in his own athletic career. Neither he nor Kansas City’s budding football dynasty lingers long on accomplishments. There’s always another big win to chase.

“There’s going to be other things I set in life, other goals that I want to achieve that I’m going to have to get over the past to achieve these new goals,” Eblen said. “Part of being successful in life is never really being satisfied”