“It actually fcking burns. I thought this sht was fake.”
That’s Josh Hokit, eyes presumably streaming, in a clip that came from his own X account and spread fast once Championship Rounds reposted it on Saturday night. The footage shows Hokit getting pepper sprayed during sparring. Yahoo Sports framed it as training for Ciryl Gane eye pokes, and Dovy on X described Hokit as training his eyes for the fight. Whatever you think of the method, he clearly found out the hard way that the product works as advertised.
The timing makes it louder. Hokit (10-0) gets Gane in a heavyweight title fight at UFC 334 on Nov. 14, two days after he turns 29. Knockout Daily’s Cagefile data has Hokit at No. 10 at heavyweight, fighting out of Jackson-Wink MMA, with his last outing on June 14. Gane (14-2) of MMA Factory also last fought on June 14, and he’s the first French champion in UFC history.
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Hokit’s road here is about as strange as heavyweight résumés get. He was an All-American wrestler and a running back at Fresno State, then spent time on the San Francisco 49ers practice squad and was briefly with the Arizona Cardinals before signing with Bellator in 2023. He submitted Spencer Smith with an arm-triangle in Round 3 of his debut at Bellator 300, tapped Sean Rose with an armbar in Round 2, won three times under the LFA banner, and earned his way through Dana White’s Contender Series. I love a Contender Series graduate getting a shot this big. I also wonder whether it’s arriving too early, and talkSPORT ran a piece Monday headlined around Hokit being told this title fight comes at the wrong time.
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Hokit isn’t acting like a man who agrees. Beyond the pepper spray, he dropped a diss track Sunday night that Championship Rounds said takes aim at Gane, Tom Aspinall, Jon Jones, Ilia Topuria and Alex Pereira. Dovy billed it as an “MSG freestyle.” Full Mount MMA also passed along an AI-generated video of Hokit tracking Gane down in New York and walking off with his belt, which drew laughs.
Part of the bet is clear. A wrestler with a 10-0 record and real submission finishes is wagering that he can get a kickboxer like Gane, who knocked out a multiple-time WBC Muaythai champion’s division peers before ever touching MMA, onto the mat and keep him there, sore eyes or not. If the plan works, Hokit goes from practice-squad fullback to UFC heavyweight champion on Nov. 14. If it doesn’t, the pepper spray clip becomes the most-watched footage of his camp.
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