Josh Hokit will challenge Ciryl Gane for the undisputed heavyweight championship at UFC 334 on Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden, completing one of the fastest rises the division has seen in years. Instead of becoming more careful as the stakes increase, the undefeated contender has attacked Gane, questioned Tom Aspinall’s injuries, criticized Gable Steveson and Jon Jones, mocked Alexander Volkov, brushed aside Dana White’s concerns and even choked a fan unconscious at a meet-and-greet.
There is a conventional way to prepare for the biggest fight of your life. Josh Hokit appears determined to do almost everything else. Less than a year after entering the UFC, the undefeated heavyweight is no longer trying to convince the promotion that he belongs. He is preparing to walk into Madison Square Garden on Nov. 14 and fight Ciryl Gane for the undisputed heavyweight championship, completing a rise so fast that Hokit has barely had time to transition from prospect to contender before becoming a genuine title challenger.
The remarkable part is that the closer Hokit gets to the championship, the less interested he appears in behaving like a traditional one. His interviews have become more confrontational, his list of targets has expanded across nearly the entire heavyweight division, and the antics that once seemed like the strange sideshow accompanying an intriguing prospect have increasingly become inseparable from his identity. In a matter of days, Hokit has accused the reigning champion of cheating, questioned whether a former champion’s medical problems are legitimate, criticized the development of an Olympic gold medalist, challenged the influence of Jon Jones, mocked Alexander Volkov’s entertainment value, dismissed Dana White’s public concerns and participated in a meet-and-greet stunt in which a fan was intentionally choked unconscious. It would be easier to dismiss all of that if Hokit were merely talking his way toward opportunities, but the problem for everyone around him is that he keeps winning them.
Hokit is 10-0 as a professional and 4-0 in the UFC after earning his contract through Dana White’s Contender Series in 2025. His rise has included victories over Curtis Blaydes and Derrick Lewis, with the latter coming at UFC Freedom 250 in June and placing him directly into the heavyweight championship conversation. Almost exactly one year after making his promotional debut, Hokit will now headline UFC 334 against Gane with the undisputed championship at stake.
The opportunity arrived quickly. Hokit said UFC executive Hunter Campbell called him and offered two words: “Ciryl Gane.” Hokit’s answer was immediate. He wanted the fight, wanted the championship opportunity and had no interest in negotiating himself out of the biggest assignment of his career. After Tom Aspinall vacated the heavyweight title because of complications related to his injured eye, Gane was elevated from interim champion to undisputed champion, setting up the matchup with Hokit in New York.
Hokit, however, does not believe Gane deserves the designation he will carry into Madison Square Garden. He has argued that promoting Gane after the circumstances surrounding his fight with Aspinall effectively rewarded someone Hokit believes benefited from illegal eye pokes. The accusation is part competitive criticism and part promotional fuel. Hokit openly acknowledges that Gane becoming undisputed actually improves his own opportunity because defeating him would allow Hokit to leave UFC 334 as the undisputed champion rather than merely inheriting an interim belt.
His assessment of Gane as a fighter was equally dismissive. Hokit credited him with athletic ability and decent fight intelligence, but predicted that none of it would matter once the fight becomes exhausting. Hokit said his preparation is built around the point when both men are tired and one of them has to continue producing, rather than simply rehearsing combinations. He believes that is where he will break Gane, and he has promised that if he becomes champion, inactivity will not define his reign. Hokit says he intends to defend the belt four times a year.
The contradiction surrounding Gane and Aspinall illustrates the strange territory Hokit has entered. He criticizes Gane for the illegal eye pokes that contributed to Aspinall’s prolonged absence, yet he has simultaneously questioned whether Aspinall’s continuing medical problems are genuine at all. Aspinall has undergone surgeries and ultimately vacated the championship after his recovery failed to progress sufficiently, but Hokit has publicly suggested that the former champion is exaggerating the problem and may be attempting to maneuver his way out of the UFC.
Those are Hokit’s allegations, and there is no evidence in the material supporting his suggestion that Aspinall’s surgeries or medical issues were fabricated. That distinction matters because Hokit went considerably further than ordinary trash talk. He speculated that Aspinall might want to leave the promotion for boxing and even questioned whether doctors could somehow be involved, without providing evidence for either suggestion. The public record contained in the reporting instead reflects an athlete who has been sidelined by complications following the eye injury and subsequent procedures.
Hokit seems unconcerned with that distinction because restraint has never been central to the persona he is building. His philosophy appears to be that everyone around the heavyweight division is available for criticism, particularly anyone whose career path can be contrasted with his own. Aspinall waited through the prolonged Jon Jones heavyweight saga and later suffered the eye injury against Gane. Hokit frames his own career as the opposite approach: accept difficult fights, stay active, take risks and trust that the promotion will reward the results.
That same message surfaced when Hokit turned his attention toward Gable Steveson. Two weeks after Sean Sharaf stunned Steveson with a 12-second knockout at UFC 331, Hokit argued that the Olympic gold medalist may have underestimated the transition from elite wrestling into mixed martial arts. Hokit said MMA requires accomplished wrestlers to rebuild from the beginning, and he claimed he had heard Steveson was not training properly under Jon Jones and was not even sparring consistently.
Hokit’s criticism was not limited to Steveson. He questioned whether Jones’ influence was helping the Olympic champion navigate the sport and suggested Steveson may have been trying to imitate the former heavyweight champion’s public persona without possessing the same natural charisma. Hokit also criticized how Steveson handled difficult questions during UFC 331 fight week and interpreted his demeanor after the loss as another sign that something was wrong with his approach.
Jones remains a lingering presence in every heavyweight conversation, but Hokit says he is not waiting around for him. The retired former champion has repeatedly teased the possibility of returning, and Hokit has made clear that a future fight would interest him if Jones actually comes back. For now, Hokit says Gane and the championship are the only priorities. If he leaves New York with the belt, however, his invitation becomes considerably broader. Hokit says anyone who calls his name afterward can get a fight.
Alexander Volkov discovered exactly what that invitation sounds like when directed toward another contender. After Volkov mocked Hokit’s rise to the title opportunity, Hokit attacked his entertainment value, joking that doctors could prescribe Volkov fights to people struggling with insomnia. He also pointed toward Volkov’s recent lack of finishes and dismissed the veteran’s popularity before immediately saying he would still defend against him if the matchup made sense.
That contradiction has become part of the Hokit formula. He will tell an opponent that nobody cares about him and then volunteer to fight him. He will question whether a challenger deserves attention while creating more attention around that challenger himself. He will criticize the UFC heavyweight division while positioning himself to become its champion. Nearly every insult doubles as promotion, and nearly every controversy creates another possible fight, with even Dana White becoming part of the performance.
White has publicly expressed frustration with Hokit’s comments and indicated that he would have to deal with the contender’s antics if Hokit became champion. The relationship became more complicated after Hokit’s controversial remarks following his victory at the White House event, yet Hokit responded to White’s public discomfort by claiming the UFC CEO secretly enjoys everything he brings to the promotion. “Deep down, I’m Dana’s favorite fighter,” Hokit said, insisting White cannot wait to watch him compete.
Whether White actually shares that feeling is another matter. Hokit’s larger point is that he does not particularly care. He says he did not enter MMA to become universally liked and has no intention of manufacturing a more polished personality for fans or executives. His job, as he sees it, is to sign contracts and produce entertaining fights. If the entire audience turns against him along the way, he believes the fighting will eventually settle the argument.
Hokit carries the same attitude toward fans who believe he has reached the championship too quickly. His explanation is that he has accepted opportunities, produced memorable fights and been willing to behave differently from fighters who spend years waiting for a perfect path. He has described his success as the reward for courage rather than intelligence, suggesting that critics bothered by his rise should examine whether they have been willing to take comparable risks in their own lives. Then came the moment that transformed the promotional circus into something more uncomfortable.
At a fan event shortly before his latest round of interviews, one attendee asked Hokit to choke him unconscious. Hokit agreed. He applied a standing choke until the man went limp and began convulsing, according to the account of the incident, before the fan quickly regained consciousness. Hokit checked on him afterward, appeared relieved when the man said he was okay, and then joked about another person in the crowd being next.
The fan requested the stunt, but that does not make the images any less startling. An undefeated UFC heavyweight title challenger intentionally rendered an untrained spectator unconscious during a meet-and-greet only weeks before fighting for the sport’s most physically imposing championship. It is difficult to imagine a better snapshot of the strange place Hokit currently occupies. His fights are becoming more important, his platform is becoming larger and the behavior surrounding them is becoming less predictable rather than more controlled.
That trajectory is precisely what makes UFC 334 so fascinating. Most fighters become more guarded as they approach championship status because every interview receives greater scrutiny, every mistake becomes more expensive and every controversy threatens endorsement opportunities or relationships with the promotion. Hokit appears to be moving in the opposite direction. The championship stage has not moderated him. It has given him a larger microphone, and there is no denying how quickly that microphone arrived.
Less than three years into his MMA career, Hokit is already preparing to fight for the UFC heavyweight championship. Less than a year after joining the promotion, he is headlining Madison Square Garden. He has gone from the Contender Series to four UFC victories, marquee wins over established heavyweights and an undisputed title fight before many prospects from his class have established themselves on the main roster.
That speed makes it tempting to treat the antics as the explanation for his rise, but doing so would ignore the more important reality. Hokit is receiving this opportunity because he has kept winning. The personality has made those victories louder, but the victories themselves created the leverage. His undefeated record is the foundation beneath everything else, which is why the possibility of him becoming champion can no longer be treated like a joke simply because much of what surrounds him looks like one.
Gane therefore represents something much larger than Hokit’s next opponent. He is the dividing line between one of the strangest rises in recent heavyweight history and one of the strangest potential championship reigns the UFC has seen. If Gane wins, Hokit remains an undefeated prospect who finally encountered the highest level of the division and came up short. If Hokit wins, every outrageous interview, alter ego, feud, insult and stunt immediately belongs to the reigning UFC heavyweight champion, and a possibility that seemed almost absurd when Hokit first arrived will suddenly become reality.
Josh Hokit will walk into Madison Square Garden on Nov. 14 with a perfect record, four UFC victories, the fastest rise of his career behind him and the undisputed heavyweight championship directly in front of him. The closer he gets to that belt, the louder the chaos around him becomes, and UFC 334 will determine whether the wildest personality in the heavyweight division is about to become its most powerful one.
Andrew Carswell is a combat sports columnist and college writing professor, based in Las Vegas, NV, whose work examines the intersection of fighting, media, business, and culture. His commentary and analysis have been featured in various magazines, newspapers, and media outlets, including Yahoo! News, and USA TODAY. Blending journalistic insight and experience with a fan’s perspective, Carswell writes about the fight game as both a cultural phenomenon and a global business.