MMA Junkie dropped its staff picks Saturday morning with a pointed hook. “See who’s picking title fight upsets at #UFC334 at Madison Square Garden. Who thinks Nunes and Hokit leave NYC with belts around their waists?” the outlet wrote on X.
MMA Fighting posted its own UFC 334 predictions minutes earlier, and CBS Sports ran a best-bets piece built around Gane vs. Hokit and Harrison vs. Nunes. So the upset question is getting asked everywhere on fight day. The case for and against Hokit is worth laying out, because one side of it is a lot thinner than the other.
The champion
Ciryl Gane (14-2) holds the UFC heavyweight title and was the first French champion in promotion history. He sits No. 11 on the UFC pound-for-pound list as of Sept. 22. Before MMA he was a knockout-heavy Muay Thai fighter, and he has finished opponents with an arm triangle and a heel hook in the UFC, so he’s more than a kickboxer who wandered into a cage. He last fought June 14, which works out to five months off. That isn’t a layoff that worries me.
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The challenger
Josh Hokit is 10-0, trains at Jackson-Wink MMA and turned 29 on Thursday. He holds the No. 10 spot in our heavyweight rankings, and he’s listed at No. 5 in the UFC’s own heavyweight rankings as of Oct. 24. The résumé is athletic more than technical: All-American wrestler at Fresno State, 1,260 college rushing yards and two stints on the San Francisco 49ers practice squad. His pro MMA debut came in October 2023 at Bellator 300, an arm-triangle win over Spencer Smith. Three years from debut to a heavyweight title shot is fast, even at heavyweight.
He has also owned fight week. At Thursday’s press conference, Nunes laughed at one of his cruder lines, per Championship Rounds. At Friday’s weigh-in he went back to his drunk routine and lay on the scale without moving for over a minute. Fellow fighter Tommy McMillen’s reaction, per Championship Rounds: “Bro tryna hit my move.”
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Where the value sits
We weren’t given a betting line, and I’m not inventing one. The math still holds. A wrestler with 10 pro fights is trying to drag a former Muay Thai champion to the mat over 25 minutes, and if the first two takedown attempts don’t land, every exchange on the feet tilts toward Gane. Hokit’s live path is early chaos plus top control. If his price drifts long, a small sprinkle is defensible. Building a parlay around it is how you end up quoting your own bad bets in this column.
The answer arrives tonight at Madison Square Garden.
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