A former UFC champion is picking Ciryl Gane to stop Josh Hokit at UFC 334, and the argument fits on a napkin. Gane has the “power advantage,” and he finishes the unbeaten wrestler.
That’s the call MMA Junkie and Yahoo Sports both ran with late Thursday, two days out from the Nov. 14 heavyweight title headliner. The headlines don’t name the ex-champ or the round, so neither will I.
The pick isn’t exactly a reach. Gane is 14-2 out of MMA Factory, and Wikipedia lists him as the current UFC heavyweight champion and the first French titleholder in company history. He sat No. 11 in the UFC pound-for-pound rankings as of Sept. 22. Before MMA he was a Muay Thai guy with real hardware. He won the AFMT heavyweight title by second-round knockout and later took a decision over multiple-time WBC Muaythai champ Yassine Boughanem. Standing up, he’s been doing this a long time.
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Hokit is 10-0, fights out of Jackson-Wink and turned 29 on Thursday. His résumé reads like three careers stacked on top of each other. He was a two-time All-American wrestler at Fresno State and a running back and fullback on the football team, then spent time on the San Francisco 49ers practice squad before a five-day stint with the Arizona Cardinals in 2022. He didn’t make his pro MMA debut until Bellator 300 in October 2023, where he won by third-round arm-triangle. His second win was an armbar. He was No. 5 in the Meta UFC heavyweight rankings as of Oct. 24.
So the matchup is a decorated kickboxer against a grappler who’s been an MMA fighter for about three years. If Hokit can’t drag Gane to the mat, the former champ’s math starts looking pretty good.
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Hokit hasn’t sold this fight quietly. In a sitdown with Daniel Cormier, he defended the trash talk as a business move.
“You fought Jon Jones for $50K. I’m not going through that. I don’t want anyone to lowball me. If I gotta crack a few eggs to make an omlette, that’s what I’m gonna do,” Hokit said.
At least one legend is buying it. Clips posted to X show Amanda Nunes dapping him up after a profane line about the two sides of the dais that got a big laugh in the room.
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Gane and Hokit both last fought June 14. Hokit gets his first shot at a title and his first real test of the zero on Saturday.
