Ciryl Gane is still the UFC heavyweight champion. It took 25 minutes, a lot of body work and a Madison Square Garden crowd that seemed to want the other guy. All three judges scored his UFC 334 main event against Josh Hokit 48-47, a unanimous decision in the first defense of his title on Saturday night in New York.
Hokit (10-1, 4-1 UFC) took the fight to him from the opening bell. He tripped Gane seconds in, then lifted and slammed him before the end of Round 1 and finished the frame dropping elbows from side control. Early in the fight Gane caught Hokit in the left eye with a finger. Referee Marc Goddard let the action continue, which is a sentence Gane’s career keeps producing.
The middle of the fight belonged to Hokit. He bloodied Gane’s nose with right hands in the second. By the third he had taken Gane’s back, was cracking him with short elbows in the clinch and was stomping on the champion’s feet against the fence. He also flipped Gane off at the end of that round. MMA Fighting gave Hokit Round 3, and Gane spent long stretches with his mouth hanging open.
Then Gane changed the fight. MMA Mania noted that he had spent the first 15 minutes on his bike and keeping his kicks holstered out of fear of the takedown. In Round 4 he planted his feet, sat down on his shots and dug knees into Hokit’s midsection. Hokit’s volume dropped. In the fifth, Gane mixed head and body at range and in the clinch, though Hokit still landed two hard right hooks with about a minute left. At one point Gane’s corner told him, “You gotta go on top and rest for two minutes. Rest on top of him.” Easier said than done against a man who never stopped moving forward.
MMA Fighting had it 49-46 for Gane. When the horn sounded, Gane grabbed the top of the cage to catch his breath while Hokit gave him the finger one more time.
Gane (15-2, 1 NC) is now 4-0 with one no-contest over his last five. His path to this belt was messy. He won interim gold with a TKO of Alex Pereira at UFC Freedom 250 in June, then was named champion when Tom Aspinall vacated because of an eye injury from a Gane poke at UFC 321. Yahoo Sports noted that Aspinall has needed multiple surgeries and still hasn’t returned.
Hokit’s road was stranger. The former San Francisco 49ers player went from Bellator to LFA to Dana White’s Contender Series, built a WWE-style heel act along the way, and earned this shot largely off a wild upset of Curtis Blaydes at UFC 327 in March. No opponent has been named for Gane’s next defense. Alexander Volkov, who has won four straight including a decision over Rizvan Kuniev at UFC 333 in October, has a decent case.
My take: I don’t care how he got the belt. Interim titles annoy me, and that eye poke history is ugly. But Gane fought a 30-year-old wrecking ball with 11 pro fights who refused to stop coming, ate everything, and figured out the knees in time. Hokit needs a jab defense and a second idea off the right hand. Once he finds them, I want this rematch at the Garden.
