UFC CEO Dana White is shedding some light on what Gable Steveson’s Octagon debut could look like.<\/p>\n
Steveson, the Olympic gold medalist and two-time Division I champion wrestler, signed with the premier MMA promotion earlier in April. He’s scheduled to make his debut at UFC 329 on July 11 in Las Vegas against a yet-to-be-determined opponent.<\/p>\n
Though the 25-year-old is widely considered a potential future UFC champion, White indicated Saturday that the promotion won’t throw Steveson into the deep end of the heavyweight division right away.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if we go after a top-15 guy,” White told theScore at the UFC Winnipeg postfight press conference.<\/p>\n
“I say this to you guys all the time: The UFC jitters are real. Walking in – I don’t care how you’ve competed or where or what you’ve done. When you come here, it’s a different level. Like I said earlier tonight, our matchmakers are the best in the business. We’ll figure him out and get him the right fight … at what we think his level is and what we think he’s capable of.”<\/p>\n
Steveson made his professional MMA debut last September and holds a 3-0 record, all first-round finishes. Most recently, he defeated Hugo Lezama at a Mexico Fight League event in February.<\/p>\n
Steveson transitioned to MMA following a three-year career in WWE and a brief stint with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills during the 2024 preseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UFC CEO Dana White is shedding some light on what Gable Steveson’s Octagon debut could look like. Steveson,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-617975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617975","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=617975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}