"I Threw Some Tough Guys at Him": Dana White Admits He Tried to Slow Josh Hokit Down — and Hokit Just Kept Winning

Dana White has never hidden that he does not like Josh Hokit's mouth. This week, on The Jim Rome Show, he admitted something more: he may have tried to do something about it with the matchmaking — and it did not work. "Hokit [vs. Gane] was the fight to make," White said. "Hokit has been overlooked the entire time, not only by the fans and media, but by me. I didn't like some of the things he said, so I might have threw some tough guys at him, and he passed every test, and here he is. Like him or hate him, he fought his way to the top, and there's no denying that this guy deserves this title shot and belongs there." It is a remarkable admission from a promoter who has spent a year publicly bristling at his own heavyweight contender. The friction started with Hokit's microphone work. After knocking out Denzel Freeman at UFC 324 in January, he cut a long wrestling-style promo laced with crude language and a derogatory remark about WNBA star Brittney Griner. After stopping Derrick Lewis at UFC Freedom 250 in June, he aimed a disparaging comment at former first lady Michelle Obama. At the UFC 331 post-fight press conference, White said he did not have to like a fighter for that fighter to thrive. But disliking the act and stopping the fighter are two different things, and Hokit has made the second one impossible. He earned his UFC contract on Dana White's Contender Series in August 2025, stopping Guilherme Uriel with elbows in the second round, and debuted three months later with a first-round finish of Max Gimenis. Then came the tests White talked about. He beat Freeman, then survived a bloody three-round war with Curtis Blaydes — ranked fifth in the division at the time — to win a unanimous decision at UFC 327, collecting both Fight of the Night and Performance of the Night bonuses. Then he stopped Lewis at the White House event. Ten wins, no losses, four and zero in the UFC, ranked fourth at heavyweight. Hokit did not wait long to answer White. On X the same day, he told the UFC president to "send anybody you want" — and then listed the four men White had sent, with a note on each. Gimenis was "World Champ jiu jitsu." Freeman was "World team member wrestler." Blaydes was "Wrestler, big, cardio/ top 5 for 8 years." And for Lewis, he wrote: "Fat Cow Pig." It is the same shrug he gave back in September, when he appeared on The Ariel Helwani Show and brushed off White's public dislike entirely. "Dana is just, you know, he has to say that," Hokit said then. "Deep down, I'm Dana's favorite fighter, you know what I'm saying? He can't wait for my fights." Whether that is true or not, the road to November 14 is now set in stone. Hokit challenges Ciryl Gane for the undisputed heavyweight title in the main event of UFC 334 at Madison Square Garden. Gane, 14-2, is making the first defence of the undisputed belt. He won the interim title by knocking out Alex Pereira at the White House event in June, and he holds the undisputed crown because Tom Aspinall vacated it in September over the lingering eye injury from their no contest. White has now said, on the record, that he tried to slow Hokit down — and that Hokit passed every test anyway. Hokit's answer is the same as it has been all year: send anybody you want.