Dustin Poirier has joined the Josh Hokit fan club, and he got there through a rap video. The former interim lightweight champion heard Hokit’s latest diss track and came away impressed with the heavyweight’s humor and delivery. “He’s crushing it,” Poirier said, according to Sportskeeda, and NDTV Sports quoted him landing on a verdict he probably didn’t expect to reach: “I kind of like this guy now.”
The track in question is called MSG Freestyle, a nod to Madison Square Garden, where the 28-year-old Californian meets heavyweight champion Ciryl Gane for the undisputed belt at UFC 334 on November 14. It’s the first title fight of Hokit’s career. He posted the video to his YouTube channel, mixing AI-generated footage with real clips, and introduced his rap alias, J-Word. Per Essentially Sports, it’s the first time he’s used a song to go after his rivals. He also worked sponsors into it, because of course he did.
The hit list is long. Gane gets the most screen time, including an AI clip of Hokit digging the Frenchman’s grave with the title sitting beside it, plus a cheater label tied to Gane’s history of fouls. Tom Aspinall shows up in a hospital bed with a hand over his eye, a reference to Gane’s poke at UFC 321. Alex Pereira, Hokit’s most persistent enemy since the Brazilian moved to heavyweight, opens the video via footage of his loss to Gane at UFC White House, with a rhyme about Pereira’s mama thrown on top.
Ilia Topuria catches AI footage of his loss to Justin Gaethje. That beef dates back to the UFC White House press conference in New Jersey, where Topuria stood up for Pereira after Hokit spoke ill of Pereira’s mother and security walked Hokit out. It got worse at the Lincoln Memorial presser, where Hokit brought up Topuria’s divorce. Derrick Lewis, whom Hokit stopped by second-round TKO at UFC Freedom 250, gets told to shut up or eat more elbows.
The strangest target is Jon Jones. Hokit calls him Sean Combs, shows him rubbing on baby oil and references his past controversies. As Essentially Sports pointed out, there’s no real history between them. The only prior friction came when Hokit said Jones hurt the career of his teammate Gable Steveson after Steveson’s loss at UFC 331, and Jones never bit.
Hokit isn’t the first fighter to try this. Jake Paul released his own track taking aim at Dana White over fighter pay, with shots at Anderson Silva and Jorge Masvidal mixed in.
My take: Poirier liking the song is a good sign for Hokit’s career as a talker, and talkers get paid. I just don’t price fights off of verses. Hokit has already spent a press tour getting escorted out of buildings and now a music video digging Gane’s grave, which is a lot of energy invested before he’s thrown a single punch at a champion. Gane gets the last word on November 14, and nobody remembers the freestyle if the challenger is the one getting carried out of the Garden.
