Josh Hokit didn\u2019t blink when the UFC asked him about making a quick turnaround from his potential Fight of the Year against Curtis Blaydes to then accept a showdown with Derrick Lewis at the White House on June 14.<\/p>\n
Obviously every fight is a risk but Hokit absorbed a whole lot of damage during that three-round battle against Blaydes and he\u2019s now competing again just two months later with a spot on arguably the biggest UFC card of all-time. Blaydes, who has faced both fighters in the past, acknowledges that Hokit definitely surprised him during their back-and-forth battle but he cautions the always outspoken heavyweight from constantly welcoming those kinds of wars because it will eventually come back to haunt him.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Blaydes argues that Hokit might eventually be better off at 205 pounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a good young, jaw,\u201d Blaydes told MMA Fighting about Hokit. \u201cYou do that three or four times, that jaw is going to be gone. I don\u2019t think he do that at heavyweight a bunch of times. He might better served going down to light heavyweight because they don\u2019t hit as hard. Yeah, they\u2019re faster but he\u2019s got the wrestling. I don\u2019t know if he can maintain, especially if he wants to fight the way that we just did, like if he uses the wrestling more and relies on that yeah, but then again he\u2019s a smaller heavyweight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think long term, if I was his manager or his brother or whatever, someone in his circle, I would be having serious discussions about let\u2019s give it a year but let\u2019s think about going down to light heavyweight.\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, Blaydes definitely sees a path to victory for Hokit over Lewis given the trajectory their respective careers are following during recent fights.<\/p>\n
While Hokit still sports an undefeated record in the UFC, Lewis is now 41 years old and he\u2019s gone just 3-5 over his past eight fights in the octagon. Blaydes knows from personal experience how much underestimating Lewis can cost you but he\u2019s just not sure \u201cThe Black Beast\u201d is the same fighter now as he was when they first met back in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cHokit entering [the fight], his jaw is not going to be 100%,\u201d Blaydes said. \u201cThat\u2019s scary going against a guy like Derrick Lewis but then again, the Derrick Lewis that we just saw against Waldo [Cortes-Acosta], he looks like the motivation is gone. If you get a Derrick Lewis that doesn\u2019t really care and just allows you to take him down at will, he can win like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if he gets a motivated Derrick Lewis that comes in hunting the big, heavy knockout \u2026 I\u2019m going back and forth because we don\u2019t know the version of Derrick Lewis that we\u2019re going to get. If we get the version that I had to fight, I\u2019d go with Derrick. But if we get the one that showed up against Waldo, I go Hokit.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Hokit wins, he\u2019s going to be knocking on the door to title contention at heavyweight because he\u2019s already become one of the most talked about and polarizing fighters on the entire UFC roster while building an impressive resume along the way.<\/p>\n
But Blaydes isn\u2019t ready to crown Hokit as a future champion just yet given his limited body of work compared to many of the other top heavyweights in the UFC.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot yet,\u201d Blaydes said about Hokit. \u201cWe had a great fight but styles make matchups. Is he able to do that against [Alexander] Volkov? Is he able to do that against a Derrick Lewis? We\u2019re going to see. Is he going to be able to do that against Waldo? I do believe he\u2019d beat Waldo because Waldo is just a slightly smaller, younger version of Derrick Lewis but we don\u2019t know. We don\u2019t have enough information. It\u2019s all projections.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be willing to guarantee it. Does he have the potential? Yes, obviously but I\u2019m not 100% on that one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josh Hokit didn\u2019t blink when the UFC asked him about making a quick turnaround from his potential Fight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396,14855],"class_list":["post-732513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732513","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=732513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}