Georges St-Pierre has made his pick for the UFC 334 heavyweight title fight. Yahoo Sports published the Hall of Famer’s prediction for Ciryl Gane vs. Josh Hokit on Friday, Nov. 13, one day before the two meet for the belt.
When St-Pierre talks about strikers and grapplers, I listen, and I don’t say that about many people with a microphone. He started Kyokushin karate at age seven and didn’t begin wrestling until he was 19 or 20. He still retired holding the UFC welterweight records for takedowns landed (87) and takedown accuracy (73.7%), plus the best significant strike defense in division history at 73.1%. He was a striker who learned to wrestle, then out-wrestled the wrestlers. He went 12-0 in UFC title fights at 170 pounds, defended the belt nine straight times and won 33 consecutive rounds between 2007 and 2011. Then he came back at UFC 217 in November 2017 and submitted Michael Bisping for the middleweight title.
Gane’s résumé is what makes the striking-versus-grappling question worth asking. The Frenchman is 14-2 and holds the UFC heavyweight title, the first French champion in UFC history. He sat at No. 11 in the men’s pound-for-pound rankings as of Sept. 22. Before MMA he was a Muay Thai fighter, and most of his wins there came by knockout, including his professional debut, a second-round finish of Jérémy Jeanne for an AFMT heavyweight title. He trains at MMA Factory under Fernand Lopez. His last fight was June 14, so he arrives on a normal five-month turnaround. My usual layoff grumbling does not apply here.
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Hokit, meanwhile, has owned fight week on the internet. Championship Rounds posted that Amanda Nunes got a big laugh out of one of his lines (we’ll spare you the wording). The same account posted that Hokit showed up to Friday’s weigh-in acting “drunk” again and lay motionless on the scale for more than a minute. Tommy McMillen also commented on one of his posts, according to Spinnin Backfist. The two had their faceoff on Nov. 10.
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None of that scale theater tells you whether Hokit can get a former Muay Thai champion’s back against the fence for 25 minutes. That’s the question St-Pierre spent a career answering from both sides. It’s also the only question I care about when I’m deciding whether a guy getting this much attention for bits is a live dog or just a good bit.
Gane and Hokit headline UFC 334 on Saturday, Nov. 14.
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