Ciryl Gane has been holding on to some Josh Hokit DMs, and with UFC 334 days away, the heavyweight champion finally let people read along.
Gane told RMC Sport Combat that the challenger reached out to him privately before this week’s fight-week circus began. “He’s messaged me privately before. I’ve never told anyone this,” Gane said.
According to Gane, Hokit’s message was a three-sport scouting report. “He said, I’d beat you at basketball. I won’t beat you at soccer because soccer is a wimp’s sport. And I’d beat you in MMA too.”
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So Hokit conceded soccer and insulted it in the same breath. That’s the move of a guy who loses at pool and announces pool was never a real sport anyway.
Gane didn’t sound bothered. “Then he gets back to his bit. It’s funny,” he said.
The bit is the whole Hokit experience. He earned his UFC contract with a win on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2025, and the former American football player has been rubbing people the wrong way ever since with his gimmick and his mouth. White himself has said publicly that he doesn’t like Hokit’s approach. Hokit hasn’t toned any of it down, and he’s already been going after Gane online and in interviews, so expect more of the same at the press conference later this week.
The fight itself is a big one. Gane makes the first defense of his undisputed heavyweight title against Hokit in the main event at Madison Square Garden this Saturday, Nov. 14. The co-main is its own soap opera, with Amanda Nunes coming out of retirement to face her former teammate Kayla Harrison. The UFC is selling New York a card full of people who have history, and now the headliners have receipts.
Hokit also picked an odd lane for his trash talk. Gane actually played basketball and soccer growing up before he found Muay Thai and, later, MMA. Hokit’s background is collegiate wrestling, and that’s the skill most people point to when they explain how he could leave MSG with the belt.
My take: this DM is the most likable thing Hokit has done in public, and he did it in private. It’s the kind of dumb, competitive, playground nonsense real athletes say to each other, and Gane clearly took it that way. None of it matters Saturday, though. Hokit isn’t beating Gane in a game of HORSE at the Garden. His path to the title is taking the Frenchman down and keeping him there, and if he can’t do that, the soccer line will be the best shot he lands all week.
