Din Thomas went on the UFC’s own Deep Waters podcast this week and said the name nobody in this sport says lightly. He looked at Josh Hokit, a heavyweight with four UFC fights, and reached for Conor McGregor.
“Probably the best we’ve seen in terms of all-around package since Conor McGregor,” Thomas said. “In terms of what they’re doing inside (the Octagon) and what they do outside. Nobody has been able to do it like Josh Hokit.”
That’s a heavy thing to hang on a challenger days before the biggest fight of his life. On Saturday, Nov. 14, at Madison Square Garden, Hokit gets Ciryl Gane in the main event of UFC 334 with the heavyweight title on the line. Amanda Nunes coming back to challenge Kayla Harrison sits on the same card, which tells you how much New York is being asked to carry.
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I’ll say where I land up front. Thomas is right about the champion part, and the best evidence for it comes from the man who’d least like to hear it.
Dana White Built the Case for Him
After Hokit knocked out Derrick Lewis on the South Lawn of the White House, Dana White admitted he doesn’t like Hokit’s approach, according to Bloody Elbow. White has also recently claimed he gave Hokit tougher matchups because of it.
Think about what that means for the people who argue Hokit only got here on the strength of his act. Bloody Elbow noted that Hokit’s shtick has been described as the reason for his fast rise. Maybe the act opened the door. But if the boss is deliberately stacking harder opponents in front of a guy and that guy keeps walking through them, the matchmaking stops being a shortcut and starts being a gauntlet. A title shot earned under those conditions holds up better than one handed over gift-wrapped.
Thomas’s sales pitch for Hokit as champion is pure business, and he made it plainly. “Honestly, he would make a great champion,” he said. “He’d be out there, he’d sell tickets, he’d be active, he’s young.” Then the closer: “He’d do everything that we want from a champion.”
Every part of that list is something heavyweight has wanted from a titleholder. A champion who shows up, talks, fights often and moves tickets is the whole job description outside the cage.
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The Eight Inches
Now the inside of the cage, which is where this gets hard.
Hokit’s reach is 73 inches. Gane’s is 81. That eight-inch gap, flagged by Dovy on X, is enormous even in a division full of big bodies. Every exchange at range is a negotiation Hokit starts behind on. A champion with that kind of length can keep a shorter man on the end of punches all night if he stays disciplined, and the shorter man pays a toll every time he tries to step into his own range.
So Hokit’s job, in my view, is to make the space disappear. The ex-footballer can’t win a long-distance conversation with an 81-inch reach. He has to drag Gane into the parts of the fight where those extra inches stop mattering, and he has to do it without eating clean shots on the way in for 25 minutes.
That gap is also exactly why a win would count. If Hokit beats a defending champion who owns that kind of length advantage, nobody gets to file it under hype. You can’t sell tickets past an eight-inch reach deficit. You have to fight past it.
Four Fights and a Lot of Noise
The honest counterweight is experience. Four UFC fights is a thin résumé for a title challenger at any weight, and the heavyweight belt has a way of exposing what a short résumé hides. MMA Fighting’s roundtable asked whether Hokit is about to be the one true heavyweight king, and the fair answer is that one night answers half of it.
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There’s also the noise. Hokit’s remarks about Michelle Obama after the Lewis knockout were widely criticized, and Bloody Elbow pointed out that many will be rooting against him Saturday. Thomas has made controversial comments of his own lately and knows the McGregor line will start arguments. That’s fine. Arguments are part of what he’s selling on Hokit’s behalf.
Here’s my position. Thomas has the commercial argument right, and White’s own admissions about tougher matchups make the sporting argument stronger than the skeptics allow. What Hokit still lacks is the one thing nobody can talk into existence, a win over an elite heavyweight who had every physical tool to stop him.
Beat Gane, and the future of the division gets real fast. A first defense would settle the rest, and if Thomas is right about the activity, that fight wouldn’t sit on a shelf for long.
Saturday at the Garden, the question gets measured in inches. Eight of them, to be exact, and Hokit has to cover every one.
