UFC 334 breakdown: how Josh Hokit beats Ciryl Gane, the way Ngannou and Jones did

Ciryl Gane has lost twice in 17 professional MMA fights, and both men who beat him did the same thing. Francis Ngannou took him down 4 times in 5 attempts at UFC 270 and held him for 8:29 of a 25-minute fight. Gane out-landed him 63 to 43 and lost a unanimous decision anyway. Fourteen months later at UFC 285, Jon Jones took him down twice in two attempts and submitted him at 2:04 of the first round.

On Saturday, Ciryl Gane makes the first defense of the heavyweight title at UFC 334 in Madison Square Garden (main card 9 p.m. ET, 02:00 UTC Sunday). His challenger is Josh Hokit, 10-0, No. 4 in the heavyweight rankings, and a man whose best fights look a lot more like Ngannou's third round than Ngannou's first.

The market has Gane at -220 and Hokit at +180 across 18 sportsbooks, which makes Gane a 65.8 percent favorite once the margin comes out. Our model is a little less sure: Gane 61.3 percent, Hokit 38.7. This piece is about the 38.7. If Hokit wins, what does it look like?

The champion at range

Photo: MHSC TV - Montpellier Hérault Sport Club / CC BY 3.0

Start with what nobody should try. Gane came up through Muay Thai (6-0 as a pro before MMA), and at range he is as good as any heavyweight the UFC has had. He's 6'4" with an 81-inch reach, lands 5.40 significant strikes a minute in the UFC at 62 percent accuracy, and absorbs 2.31. He makes heavyweights miss and then makes them pay for it.

The receipts are long. He landed 135 significant strikes on Alexander Volkov in 2021, 40 of them to the legs. He landed 110 on Tai Tuivasa and 109 of 156 on Serghei Spivac. In June at UFC Freedom 250, he dropped Alex Pereira and stopped him at 1:27 of the second round, out-landing him 54 to 12. The books had that one as a coin flip: Gane closed at -102.

Ngannou is the proof that even a puncher can't win that game. Look at UFC 270 round by round. Gane out-landed him 15 to 12 in the first and 19 to 10 in the second. Ngannou didn't attempt a single takedown in either round. Then he changed the fight. He went 2 for 3 on takedowns in the third and 2 for 2 in the fourth, and controlled Gane for 1:55, 2:57 and 2:44 in rounds three, four and five. Gane kept winning the striking exchanges (16 to 7 in the fourth). It didn't matter.

Gane has never lost a fight he got to keep standing.

The third man who got him down

There's a quieter data point that matters just as much. In December 2024 at UFC 310, Gane fought Volkov again. Volkov landed 3 of 4 takedowns and held him for 4:32. Gane won, but by split decision, after out-landing Volkov 43 to 39. In their first fight in 2021, when Volkov never got him down, Gane won every card.

Gane stops 47 percent of the takedowns tried on him in the UFC. For a man this good everywhere else, that number is the open door, and the three heavyweights who walked through it handed him a decision loss, a submission loss and the only split decision of his UFC career.

What Hokit does on top

Photo: U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Brittany Primavera / Public domain

Hokit is 29, 6'1", with a 73-inch reach, and he fights out of Jackson-Wink. He's 4-0 in the UFC since he earned his contract on the Contender Series in August 2025, and every stoppage that lasted past the first minute looks the same once he gets on top.

Against Derrick Lewis at UFC Freedom 250, on the same card where Gane won the title, he landed 2 of 3 takedowns, controlled Lewis for 4:04, dropped him once and landed 36 ground strikes on the way to a TKO at 4:09 of the second. Lewis landed 7 significant strikes all night. Against Denzel Freeman at UFC 324 in January it was 1 of 2 takedowns, 3:47 of control and a TKO at 4:59 of the first; Freeman landed nothing, 0 of 7. On the Contender Series he went 6 for 13 on takedowns against Guilherme Uriel, held him for 3:57 and finished him with ground strikes in the second.

That's the Hokit blueprint, and it's the Ngannou blueprint in a smaller, faster body: get a body on the champion, put him on the mat, and stay there. In the UFC he lands 50 percent of his takedowns and stops 78 percent of the ones tried on him.

The Blaydes warning

Then there's the fight that should worry his corner. At UFC 327 in April, Hokit beat Curtis Blaydes by unanimous decision in one of the strangest heavyweight fights in recent memory. Hokit landed 177 of 293 significant strikes. Blaydes landed 174 of 302. Hokit landed 82 in the third round alone.

He won that fight on volume, and he never took Blaydes down (0 of 1). Blaydes took him down twice in the first round and held him for 2:05. It was a 15-minute firefight that Hokit survived by throwing more.

He cannot fight Gane that way. In the UFC, Hokit lands 10.28 significant strikes a minute, an absurd rate for a heavyweight, but he also absorbs 6.12 and avoids only 48 percent of what comes at him. Against a striker who lands 62 percent of his own with an eight-inch reach advantage, a Blaydes-style trade is the fight Gane wants. Every exchange at range is one Hokit loses on the math.

Close the distance once

So the prescription is narrow. Hokit's striking has one job, and it's to get him to Gane's hips. The Lewis fight shows what he does after that: 11 clinch strikes, then the takedown, then the ground strikes.

The reach gap makes the entry the hard part. Gane fights at the end of an 81-inch frame and kicks the legs of anyone who stands outside, 46 leg strikes against Jairzinho Rozenstruik, 40 against Volkov. A challenger who walks in on a straight line eats all of it. Hokit's path is the one Ngannou took in the third round at UFC 270: take the champion's legs out from under him when he has just finished an exchange, not while he's setting one up.

And then he has to hold him. Ngannou's control time is what won that fight, not the takedowns themselves. Gane landed zero ground strikes in those 8:29 on his back.

The championship rounds

Hokit has never been scheduled for five rounds, and the longest fight of his career is that 15-minute Blaydes fight. Gane has gone 25 minutes three times in the UFC (Rozenstruik, Volkov in 2021, and Ngannou). He knows what the fourth round feels like.

But there's a catch in that experience. The one time Gane went 25 minutes and lost, his opponent wrestled late. If Hokit's gas tank survives three rounds of Gane's range, the fourth round is where the model's 38.7 percent lives.

The other column

The model's inputs, in order of weight: age, grappling, the career record, size and striking.

The first two both lean Hokit, and they carry the model's number. Gane is 36 and Hokit 29. In the model's count, which includes his pre-UFC fights, Hokit lands 3.7 takedowns per 15 minutes to Gane's 0.7 and averages 5.2 minutes of control per 15 to Gane's 1.4. The rest leans Gane: a deeper career record, the reach (81 inches to 73) and the height (76 to 73), and the striking defense, where Gane absorbs 2.2 significant strikes a minute and Hokit 5.3.

The prop board is blunt. Gane by knockout is +141, the shortest single outcome. Gane by decision is +303. Hokit by knockout is +542, by decision +608 and by submission +983 (three sportsbooks per market). The fight going the distance is +172, and over 3.5 rounds is +109 on eight books. None of this is betting advice. The market sees one likely ending, and it's Gane's hands.

What to watch

The first takedown attempt, and what happens in the ten seconds after it. If Gane stuffs it and resets in the middle of the Octagon, it's the Pereira fight. If Hokit gets him down and keeps him there, it's the Lewis fight, and the only two men who beat Gane did it exactly that way.

Hokit doesn't need to be Ngannou or Jones. He needs one round on top, and then another one.