Josh Hokit gets his crack at Ciryl Gane and the UFC heavyweight title in the main event of UFC 334 in New York, and the promotion spent Friday doing the full hype-package routine. The UFC dropped a YouTube short titled “Josh Hokit’s Career So Far,” posted his entire fight with Curtis Blaydes on X, and UFC Europe circulated a clip of Hokit watching Gane fight Alex Pereira and yelling “I PREDICTED THAT!” at the screen.
If you want the full card order and the exact broadcast window, talkSPORT and AOL both published start-time and how-to-watch breakdowns on Friday. I’m not going to guess at bout order or times off a headline, so check those before you plan your night around it. What I can tell you is who’s on top and why it’s a strange one.
Gane is the champion. Hokit is undefeated and climbed the division on two tracks at once. One is his work in the cage. The other is a running stream of provocative, frequently offensive comments that MMA Fighting described as deliberate attempts to draw attention. That second track has costs. Joaquin Buckley went after Dustin Poirier on Instagram this week for praising Hokit, calling Hokit a racist and tearing into Poirier over the slur he used during his June arrest at Atlanta’s airport. Poirier fired back in the comments: “Tryna get some views? Shut up or kill me!”
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The best part of the build came from Dana White, who told Jim Rome that Hokit’s matchmaking had a little punishment baked in. “I didn’t like some of the things he said, so I might’ve threw some tough guys at him,” White said. He also doesn’t sound worried about the belt landing on Hokit’s waist. “We are all in with Josh Hokit, so whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen, he’s the main event in New York and I’m sure a lot of stupid sh*t is going to happen,” White said in a clip shared on X.
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Gane, for his part, isn’t buying the idea that heavyweight is thin right now. “The top 10 is incredible,” he said in a UFC video. “A lot of people talk about how the division is poor.” He went on to call this the best era the division has had.
My take, and I say this as someone who usually fades the guy with the loudest microphone: White just handed you the most useful handicapping note of fight week. When the boss admits he spent years feeding a fighter tough opponents out of spite and the fighter is still unbeaten, that record carries more weight than the usual hype-job 0 in the loss column. I still want Gane’s footwork and his experience at the top of the division before I commit a dime, because a champion who believes the top 10 is loaded has been preparing like it. But if the market prices Hokit as a sideshow, that’s exactly the kind of underdog I’d at least sniff at. Blaydes is a real test, and the UFC posted that whole fight for a reason.
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