Josh Hokit Says Gable Steveson Is Not Training the Right Way
Josh Hokit did not treat Gable Steveson’s 12-second knockout as a fluke.
Speaking with Ariel Helwani on The AH Show, Hokit said the Olympic wrestler learned the hard way that mixed martial arts is not the sport he came from. “This sht ain’t sweet, this is a whole different game,” Hokit said. “He wants to talk about my wrestling and all that other sht. This ain’t wrestling. And so that’s, he had to learn it the hard way.”
Sean Sharaf stopped Steveson at 0:12 of the first round at UFC 331 on September 19 in Los Angeles. It was Steveson’s first professional loss and dropped him to 4-1.
Hokit said the result did not surprise him once he heard how Steveson had been preparing. “I heard he’s not practicing properly,” Hokit said. “And that’s due to Jon Jones. He ain’t even, I heard he’s not even sparring and sh*t.”
Those comments are Hokit’s account, not a confirmed camp report. Jones has been publicly tied to Steveson’s MMA run. Hokit framed that relationship as part of the problem, not a guarantee of readiness.
“It’s like, what we doing, gang?” Hokit said. “This is a whole different sport. You gotta start from ground zero.”
He argued that past success makes that reset harder. “It’s hard for people like that that had that success to start from the building blocks again,” Hokit said. “He had to learn the hard way. We’ll see what he’s made out of, because adversity’s here.”
Helwani asked whether Steveson bounces back. Hokit would not give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Sh*t, we’ll see,” Hokit said. “We’ll see what he’s made out of. I don’t know. We’ll see if he’s doing it for the right reasons. If he’s just doing it for the clout and people talking about him.”
Hokit also criticized how Steveson left the cage. Steveson walked out before the official result was announced, a moment that drew heavy backlash after the upset.
“Even him walking out the cage,” Hokit said. “He’s walking out the cage and smiling and sht, talking to people. I mean, sht, if I lose and I happen to walk outside the cage, it’s like, f*ck everybody. That’s just how I feel as a competitor. He’s over there smiling and still trying to uphold this fake image, gang.”
Helwani then asked about fight week. Steveson spent that week answering more than a boxing match. Sharaf used the pre-fight press conference to bring up a 2019 college case that resurfaced around the bout. Steveson later said in a statement that he was never charged, the matter was dropped by the district attorney, and there was no finding of responsibility against him.
Hokit did not retry that case. He said Steveson looked unprepared to face the question in public.
“I don’t know who his PR person is, and I don’t know what Jon Jones is telling him,” Hokit said. “Jon Jones is good at what Jon Jones is good at. He has that charisma about him. He’s from a father that’s a pastor, so that’s in his genes.”
Hokit’s point was that Jones’ presence does not transfer. “If he’s telling Gable to go the same route, and Gable doesn’t have that type of charisma, it’s like, who you lying to now?” Hokit said.
He returned to the press conference. “That case that was brought up from his college days,” Hokit said. “You’re not prepared to answer, gang? Like, what are we doing? Someone should have told him, hey, you need to be prepared to answer this question or play into it. That dude that knocked him out called him out in front of the world in a press conference. And he had no answer for it. That was the first time you thought about it? You didn’t think that was going to get brought up?”
Hokit then offered his own theory for why Steveson is around Jones. “Maybe that’s even why he’s with Jon Jones in the first place,” Hokit said. “I’m going to go with Jon Jones, and Jon Jones been through some sh*t, and maybe I’m going to hide behind that name and that image. If I’m with Jon Jones, the quote-unquote nice guy, maybe I’ll be a nice guy, or be seen as a nice guy.”
That is Hokit’s read. It is not a booking, and it is not a medical or legal finding.
Hokit is preparing for a much larger assignment of his own. He is scheduled to face Ciryl Gane on November 14 at UFC 334 for the undisputed heavyweight title. Steveson has not announced a return date.
The heavyweight division will decide the rest. A 12-second loss does not end a career, but it does end the idea that Olympic wrestling walks into the UFC and dictates terms. Hokit’s message was that Steveson either starts over for real or keeps selling an image the cage already punched through.
