Josh Hokit cannot call himself UFC champion until he beats Ciryl Gane on Saturday night. On Wednesday, he tried the next best thing: he walked up to Amanda Nunes's table at UFC 334 media day in New York, picked up her championship belts, and strolled off with them over his shoulders.
“He cannot run forever.”
The scene is on the UFC's own media day video. Nunes was away from her table when Hokit helped himself to the belts laid out for the former two-division champion and UFC 334 co-headliner. The UFC's public relations staff tracked him down and returned the belts to their rightful owner. No harm done, no foul called — and a ready-made headline for a fight week that hardly needed one.
The joke has a famous precedent, in the same city, almost exactly ten years ago. At the UFC 205 pre-fight press conference on November 10, 2016, Conor McGregor arrived late to find lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez had stormed off stage in protest — and swiped Alvarez's belt from the table, setting it beside his own featherweight strap. Alvarez came back, grabbed a belt, and walked off with the wrong one: McGregor's featherweight title. Hokit copied the bit. The difference is that the belts he took were not his opponent's, and their owner was not even in the room.
Hokit, 10-0 and 4-0 in the UFC, fights Gane for the undisputed heavyweight title in Saturday's main event at Madison Square Garden. Gane, 14-2, makes the first defense of the undisputed crown he inherited when Tom Aspinall vacated the title in September, after the eye injury from their no-contest at UFC 321 in October 2025. Gane won the interim belt by stopping Alex Pereira in the second round at UFC Freedom 250 in June. Hokit earned the shot in four UFC wins in less than a year, with stoppage victories over Curtis Blaydes and Derrick Lewis.
Hokit has spent fight week promising to take the belt the hard way, too. "I'm going to pressure him, and he only has a few options after that, whether he overextends or he cowers away and tries to run — he cannot run forever," he told Uncrowned. "He's going to try to pitter-patter, point [fight]. He won't be able to stay away from me forever, and if he tries, he will be tired from just that. I'll get my hands on him one way or the other and then f***ing wear him out. Make him look like any other sloppy heavyweight."
Gane is not buying the act. He told the UFC's Countdown show that Hokit "pretends he's a clown," and that the loudmouth routine masks a fighter who understands exactly what controversy buys. The champion's dismissal has been the pattern all week: at the Times Square face-offs on Tuesday night, Hokit sized Gane up and said, "Thought you would be taller." Gane answered afterward that it was "all for show."
The co-main event is the fight the belts belonged to. Kayla Harrison, 19-1, defends the women's bantamweight title against Nunes, 23-5, the former two-division champion widely regarded as the greatest women's fighter in the sport's history. Nunes has not fought since June 2023, when she beat Irene Aldana and retired on top. By fight night on Saturday she will have been away for 1,253 days. Harrison won the belt by submitting Julianna Peña at UFC 316; the first defense was postponed while Harrison recovered from neck surgery. The two were American Top Team teammates before they were opponents, and on Tuesday they stood inches apart in Times Square without needing many words.
That is what made Wednesday's stunt land the way it did. The belts Hokit borrowed are not props. They are her championship belts from her two-division reign — and the bantamweight title is the one Harrison defends against her on Saturday. Hokit paraded around New York with them for a few minutes; on Saturday, both title fights will decide who actually carries belts out of Madison Square Garden.
The four fighters share a stage again on Thursday afternoon, at the pre-fight press conference at the Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden, with ceremonial weigh-ins on Friday. UFC 334's main card starts at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday on Paramount+. Hokit has to win his belt for real on Saturday night. Wednesday, he settled for borrowing someone else's — and Nunes, win or lose against Harrison, will want hers back.
