Paddy Pimblett sat down with Joe Rogan this week and said out loud what a decent chunk of the fan base has been muttering since 2025: “I think it’s bad for the sport if Josh Hokit wins.”
The timing is pointed. On Saturday, November 14, Hokit walks into Madison Square Garden to challenge Ciryl Gane for the undisputed UFC heavyweight title at UFC 334. It’s Gane’s first defense of the undisputed belt. It’s Hokit’s fifth fight in the Octagon. Five. Plenty of heavyweights spend five fights trying to crack the bottom of the top 15.
I’ll give Pimblett most of his argument, and then I’ll take one piece of it away.
The act is the problem he’s naming
Pimblett’s complaint lands on the persona, and he was specific about it. He told Rogan he hates the acting and the pretending, and he dragged Colby Covington into the conversation as the comparison point. “I hate the trying to be someone you’re not,” he said. Then the plea: “Just be yourself.” Then the part that sounded like a Liverpool pub at closing time: “Why are you putting this act on? It just pisses me off, lad.”
He even picked out a moment, Hokit’s media day and weigh-in routine, specifically him “pretending to be sick on himself.” Pimblett’s verdict on that one was three words long. “What are you doing?”
Honestly, fair question. The Incredible Hok’ started stirring things up on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2025 and never stopped. The low point came after he beat Derrick Lewis on the White House lawn, when he used his time inside the Octagon to make disparaging remarks about former First Lady Michelle Obama. That’s a man who had the biggest win of his career and a live microphone, and chose to spend the moment on that. You can find a gimmick entertaining and still wince at that one.
So when Pimblett says the shtick grates, he’s speaking for a lot of people. Bloody Elbow described plenty of fans as openly hoping for Hokit’s downfall, and Pimblett has now planted himself firmly in that group.
Din Thomas went the other way
The counterargument came from Din Thomas, who recently made the case that Hokit beating Gane would be great for the UFC. Thomas compared the 28-year-old to Conor McGregor, pointing to his all-around package as a fighter and an entertainer, and framed him as someone who would do everything people want a champion to do.
That’s a big comparison to hang on a man who hasn’t yet hit five fights. McGregor is the gold standard for selling a fight and then actually delivering the violence you were sold. Hokit has the first half down cold. The second half gets graded Saturday, against a former interim champion type of opponent in Gane who has spent years making heavyweights look slow.
Where Pimblett overreaches
Here’s where I get off the bus. “Bad for the sport” is a heavy charge, and a heavyweight title fight is the one place the sport gets to settle these things without anybody’s opinion mattering. If Hokit walks through Gane at the Garden, he’ll have beaten the champion in his first defense. That result is clean. Nobody gets handed the belt for vomit theatrics at a weigh-in.
What Pimblett is really describing is taste. He doesn’t like the act, the same way he doesn’t like Covington’s act. That’s a completely reasonable thing to say on a podcast. It just doesn’t scale up into harm to MMA. The sport has survived champions people couldn’t stand. It’ll survive one more if it comes to that.
And I’ll admit my bias. I love the Contender Series pipeline. A guy earns a contract on a Tuesday night in Las Vegas, gets a handful of fights, beats Derrick Lewis, and suddenly he’s headlining MSG. That path is exactly what the show was built for. Hokit’s mouth is a separate issue from Hokit’s results, and lumping them together cheapens the results.
If you want to aim frustration somewhere, aim it at the speed. Fifth fight for the title is fast for any division, and the gimmick almost certainly helped him cut the line. That’s a legitimate gripe about matchmaking. It’s also Gane’s problem to solve with his hands, and I’d rather watch him solve it than hear another round of discourse about it.
Pimblett has the right instinct about the performance outside the cage and the wrong conclusion about what happens inside it. Saturday at Madison Square Garden, the act gets 25 minutes, tops, to prove it can fight. If Gane is still holding the belt at the end of the night, Pimblett won’t need to say a word.
