Olympic gold medalist and former WWE Superstar Gable Steveson turned in a dominant performance in his MMA debut Friday night.<\/p>\n
Competing at Legacy Fighting Alliance (LFA) 217 in his home state of Minnesota, Steveson beat Braden Peterson by technical knockout just 1:38 into the first round.<\/p>\n
Steveson managed to take Peterson down to the mat before throwing rapid-fire punches. With Peterson covering up and unable to properly defend himself, the referee stepped in and awarded Steveson the TKO victory.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old Steveson is best known for his dominance as an amateur wrestler, winning the national championship as a heavyweight at the University of Minnesota in both 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Steveson also won a gold medal in men’s freestyle wrestling at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, beating Georgia’s Geno Petriashvili in the final.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Steveson started the transition to professional wrestling by signing a deal with WWE. After completing the 2022 collegiate wrestling season, Steveson began training at the WWE Performance Center.<\/p>\n
It was a much slower process than most expected, though, and he only ended up wrestling one televised match in WWE\u2014a double count-out against Baron Corbin at NXT Great American Bash in 2023.<\/p>\n
WWE released Steveson in May 2024, leading to a brief foray into the NFL, as he signed a contract with the Buffalo Bills.<\/p>\n
Although Steveson had no football experience, he tried his hand at making the Bills’ roster as a defensive tackle. He was with the team in training camp and appeared in some preseason games before getting released prior to the start of the 2024 regular season.<\/p>\n
Now, Steveson is looking to make his mark in the world of MMA, and if he turns in more showings like the one he delivered Friday night, a UFC contract could potentially be in his future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olympic gold medalist and former WWE Superstar Gable Steveson turned in a dominant performance in his MMA debut…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-140472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}