Dana White has never been shy about holding a grudge, but he rarely says the quiet part this plainly. Speaking with Jim Rome, the UFC CEO owned up to punishing Josh Hokit through the matchmaking.
“I didn’t like some of the things he said, so I might’ve threw some tough guys at him,” White said, in a clip Championship Rounds posted on X on Wednesday.
That “might’ve” is doing a lot of work. White didn’t specify which comments bothered him, and the clip as posted doesn’t name the opponents he had in mind. What it does confirm is something fighters have long suspected about how the UFC handles its loudest prospects.
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Hokit is a strange case for this kind of treatment, because nothing anyone has thrown at him has worked yet. He’s 10-0 and sits at No. 10 at heavyweight in the Knockout Daily rankings. The Jackson-Wink MMA fighter came up the long way. He started his MMA career in Bellator, debuting at Bellator 300 in October 2023 with a third-round arm-triangle on Spencer Smith. He followed that with a second-round armbar on Sean Rose. He then won three fights under the LFA banner before landing on season 9 of Dana White’s Contender Series. Before any of that he was an All-American wrestler and a running back at Fresno State, then spent time on the San Francisco 49ers’ practice squad.
The toughest guy yet arrives fast. Hokit headlines UFC 334 against former interim champ Ciryl Gane on Nov. 14, two days after his 29th birthday.
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And he hasn’t exactly gone quiet. Earlier this week Hokit dropped a diss track aimed at Gane, Tom Aspinall, Jon Jones, Ilia Topuria and Alex Pereira, which Championship Rounds circulated on X. Spinnin Backfist called it promo nobody had seen before. Dovy posted a separate clip of Hokit freestyling with a whiskey in hand, captioned as 11 days out from the fight. Derek Brunson enjoyed the track (“Haha this is good😂😂😂 . Gane in 3 tho,” he wrote on X) and still picked the Frenchman to finish it.
I’ll take a heavyweight who raps at the whole top of the division over one who mumbles through media day. Still, White’s admission puts a funny spin on fight week. If Gane is the boss’s idea of a lesson, Hokit gets to answer it in a main event slot, with the man who booked it watching from cageside. A win at UFC 334 on Nov. 14 and his next “tough guy” probably comes with a title attached.
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