Fast facts
- Division: Heavyweight (UFC)
- Record: 10-0
- Nationality: American
- Team/gym: Jackson-Wink MMA
- Notable wins: Curtis Blaydes (unanimous decision, UFC 327), Derrick Lewis (TKO, UFC Freedom 250), Denzel Freeman (TKO, UFC 324), Guilherme Uriel (TKO, Dana White’s Contender Series)
The first decision that tells you who Josh Hokit is came before he was old enough to buy a beer. As a senior at Clovis High School in California’s Central Valley, he climbed as high as No. 3 in the country as a wrestler and accepted a scholarship to Drexel. Then he found out Drexel had no football team, and he changed his mind. He walked on at Fresno State instead, an hour’s drive from nowhere glamorous, so he could keep doing both.
Hokit was born in Bakersfield on November 12, 1997, grew up in Wasco and later moved to Clovis. In other words, he came up the long way through the Valley, where kids wrestle in the winter and hit people in the fall and nobody hands out shortcuts.
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Two sports, no off-season
At Fresno State he did a bit of everything on the football field as a freshman: linebacker, fullback, running back and special teams. By his sophomore year he had settled into the offense and run for 583 yards, second on the team, with seven touchdowns, ninth-best in the Mountain West. When the football season ended he went straight back to the wrestling room and placed fifth at the Big 12 championships.
The junior year is the one I keep coming back to. Hokit led the Bulldogs with 27 wins and became Fresno State’s first wrestling All-American since Mario Botelho in 2003, a 16-year drought broken by a kid who was spending half his year carrying a football. As a senior in 2019, he ran for 287 yards and nine touchdowns, served as captain for the final four games, then went 24 wins deep on the mat and earned second-team NWCA All-American honors. He finished his college football career with 1,260 rushing yards and 17 touchdowns. The Athletic’s David Lombardi built a July 2020 piece around his “walk-on mentality,” which is about as accurate a two-word biography as you’ll find.
The NFL was less romantic about him. He went undrafted in 2020, signed with the San Francisco 49ers, got waived at final cuts and was back on the practice squad the next day. The same thing happened in 2021. The Niners finally let him go on August 15, 2022. The Arizona Cardinals signed him three days later and waived him five days after that. If you’ve ever wondered what the edge of a pro roster feels like, that’s it: a lot of next days.
The fighter
Bellator announced it had signed him on March 1, 2023. His debut came at Bellator 300 that October against Spencer Smith, and he won by arm-triangle in the third round. Nearly a year later he armbarred Sean Rose in the second round at Bellator Champions Series 4. Both early wins came on the ground, which is what you’d expect from a decorated college wrestler.
What came next was less predictable. After three wins in the Legacy Fighting Alliance, he stopped Guilherme Uriel by TKO in the second round on the Contender Series on August 19, 2025, and Dana White gave him a contract. In the UFC he has fought like a man in a hurry. He finished Max Gimenis early in the first round at UFC Fight Night 264, then forced Denzel Freeman to retire on the stool after one round at UFC 324. Both nights earned Performance of the Night bonuses.
Then came Curtis Blaydes at UFC 327 on April 11, 2026, and this is the fight that made me stop rolling my eyes. Blaydes is a wrestler’s heavyweight, and Hokit stood with him for 15 minutes and won a unanimous decision in a bout that media outlets widely called a Fight of the Year contender. The two men combined for 351 significant strikes, a UFC heavyweight record, and Hokit landed 177 of them. His 164 significant head strikes are also a division record. He took home both Performance and Fight of the Night, $200,000 in bonuses for one evening’s work.
The UFC booked his next fight that same night. On June 14 he stopped Derrick Lewis by TKO in the second round at UFC Freedom 250, staged on the South Lawn of the White House.
The microphone
There is no honest profile of Hokit that skips what he says after he wins. Going back to his LFA days, he has used post-fight interviews to call Michelle Obama a man and to say transgender women belong in the Octagon with him “because you need to get your ass whooped.” After the Freeman win at UFC 324, the first UFC event streamed live on Paramount+, he used a racial slur on the broadcast, called Waldo Cortes-Acosta a deadbeat father and signed off with “And P.S., Brittney Griner is a man.” The crowd laughed and Joe Rogan, laughing too, said, “Brittney Griner catching strays. She doesn’t deserve that.” White said, “I heard about it. I didn’t see it. I don’t love it,” and UFC Asia deleted the clip from X.
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At the White House he went back to the same well: “Now listen, Alex Pereira, I’m going to chama on your mama, and lastly, Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” White called it “fucking gross,” “moronic” and “inappropriate.”
Retired welterweight Matt Brown, speaking on The Fighter vs. The Writer, made the case that this is partly the point. “You’ve got to have guys that you don’t like,” Brown said. He also drew a line through Conor McGregor’s career and warned that the Michelle Obama remarks might be where people start tuning out. “Right now, he’s at that threshold where he’s pissing us off but not really hurting anything,” Brown said.
What’s next
Hokit faces Ciryl Gane for the UFC heavyweight title in the UFC 334 main event at Madison Square Garden on November 14. Gane beat Pereira for the interim belt at the same June event where Hokit beat Lewis. Knockout Daily’s rankings have Hokit at No. 10 at heavyweight.
Not everyone thinks he’s earned it. Brown said plainly that Alexander Volkov deserves the shot more and that Hokit is “getting it based off his mouth and based off his antics.” Volkov, speaking to Helen Yee, said a fight with Hokit would be “the easiest fight ever,” though he called Hokit “a nice guy” and admitted, “we should probably bet on Gane.” Pereira, still stung by both Gane and the White House mic, posted that the women’s fight should headline instead.
My view sits somewhere in between. Four UFC fights is a thin résumé for a title shot, and I don’t love watching a promotion skip Volkov because somebody trended. But the Blaydes fight was real, and so was the kid who turned down a scholarship to keep playing both sports. The mouth got him the date. The wrestling room in Fresno is the reason he might keep the belt.
He turns 29 on November 12, two days before he walks out at the Garden.
