Alexander Volkanovski watched Josh Hokit walk Ciryl Gane down for five rounds at UFC 334 and came away with a scorecard a lot of people won’t like. He had it 3-2 for Gane. In a video he posted, which Home of Fight clipped and shared on X early Sunday, the former featherweight champion said he had the fight level at two rounds apiece going into the last, and that Gane took the fifth by settling down while Hokit kept coming.
Hokit’s cheerleaders will want to stop listening at this point. They shouldn’t, because Volkanovski gave their guy plenty of credit. “Hokit was very aggressively coming forward, just in Gane’s face, and you could see Gane absolutely hating life and just not knowing how to deal with it, sort of freaking out,” he said. That’s a fighter describing a man getting his opponent exactly where he wanted him. Volkanovski then pointed to the adjustment: “You’ve got to give credit to Gane for being able to get his composure back and be like, ‘Alright, I accept that this is the type of fight it needs to be, and I’m gonna just try and do my best while that happens.’ And I believe that’s what won him the fight.”
Home of Fight framed his argument as aggression versus actual damage, and that framing is the right one, even though Volkanovski’s own words lean more on Gane’s mental reset than on a damage tally. Pressure feels like winning. It looks like winning from the cheap seats, and it looks like winning on a phone screen at 2 a.m. But under the scoring criteria the judges actually use, effective striking and grappling come first, and effective aggressiveness only enters the picture when those are close to even. Marching forward earns you nothing on paper unless the marching produces clean shots. A fighter who eats the pressure, stays composed and lands the better work while backing up can win that round, and Volkanovski’s read is that Gane did exactly that in Round 5.
View post on X
Hokit’s case
There is a legitimate grievance in Hokit’s corner, and it has nothing to do with the cards. THE MMA GURU noted on X that Hokit took a bad eye poke in the first minute of the fight, and the referee had him continue with no break and no point deduction. If that’s how it played out, that’s a problem. Hokit is entitled to recovery time after a foul, and a point taken there changes the math on a fight that Volkanovski himself had tied after four. A 3-2 decision with a deduction becomes a draw. Gane fans should sit with that for a second before they start celebrating clean judging.
What Hokit did after the poke deserves respect too. The same post described him swinging forward and marching down a much bigger man, which is about as much as you can ask of someone fighting half-blind in the first minute of a title fight.
View post on X
He also has a high-profile supporter. Happy Punch posted video of Alex Pereira telling Hokit he thought Hokit won, and Hokit answered with a single word, Chama. Pereira’s opinion counts for something, and I’d still bet his card leaned on how the fight felt from the octagon side, which is precisely the bias Volkanovski is describing.
Why the theater matters
Hokit spent fight week building a character. Championship Rounds caught him arriving at the weigh-in pretending to be drunk again, then passing out on the scale and staying motionless for over a minute. Happy Punch caught him flipping off Bruce Buffer during his introduction, after Buffer had previously criticized his antics. None of that scores points, obviously. It does shape how people watch. When a guy has been the loudest presence all week and then spends 25 minutes in his opponent’s face, viewers are primed to see him as the one in control.
Judges are supposed to be immune to that, and in this case, by Volkanovski’s logic, they were. The fight came down to one round between two men who’d split the first four, and in that round the bigger, more technical fighter stopped panicking and started fighting the fight in front of him. I love that stuff. A real adjustment, made late, under pressure, against a style that was clearly bothering him. That’s the most underrated skill in the sport and it decided a heavyweight title.
View post on X
So here’s my pick for the argument: Volkanovski is right about the scoring and the critics are wrong about what aggression is worth. Hokit’s real beef is with the referee who let a first-minute eye poke slide without a pause or a point. Gane keeps the decision, and Hokit keeps a fair complaint aimed at the right person.
