If you were to ask any fan going into UFC 327 which bout would earn Fight of the Night honors, few would suggest Curtis Blaydes vs. Josh Hokit. But Blaydes and Hokit did indeed earn that bonus, along with talk of Fight of the Year honors.
Their 15 minute war was a classic heavyweight slobberknocker that saw both men pushed to their limits as they continued to unload big shots on each other until the final bell. Hokit walked away with the 29-28×3 win and $200,000 in bonuses. Blaydes also got a bonus …
along with a shattered nose and broken orbital. But he also earned a lot more respect and interest from fans, which resulted in an interview with TMZ Sports.
“Early on, I was on pain meds,” Blaydes said of his injuries. “I was on Percocet because I have the orbital and the broken nose, but I haven’t had any of those a day, so I still feel good. And if you watched the fight, I I know everybody did, he didn’t hit me anywhere else besides the face. So my legs are good. My arms are good. Everything else is good.”
“He broke the nose on that early overhand in the first round, that’s where all the blood came from. I think that was the biggest deciding factor for the judges, all the blood I was bleeding. And that was just because I’m a bleeder. This nose has been broken a few times now.”
“I was surprised,” he said of the decision. “I was expecting [the ref] to pick my hand up. I really, really was. That’s why when they gave us the judgment, I was a little bit in shock. I was like, ‘Dang. I thought thought I did enough.'”
“I won a lot of those exchanges, and he won a lot of those exchanges. It seems split, but then you add in the wrestling. He didn’t get any of his wrestling going, I got mine going. That was really the main reason I thought I won because I knew on the strikes it was even, but then when you add the grappling, I know I won that.”
Going to war with Hokit in the cage left Blaydes much more respectful of the up-and-coming heavyweight than he was before their fight.
“His hand speed was a lot faster than we had anticipated,” Blaydes said. “That overhand and those wild uppercuts. And also just the balls.”
“There’s a lot of the things he did, you would not coach. You would not tell him to do that. That’s why it worked, because he had the balls to do it. He was doing the wrong things and the wrong times, but because I was expecting, like, the proper responses, I wasn’t expecting him just to toss a wild uppercut. It caught me off guard, and that happened a bunch of times.”
Asked if Hokit could be an elite heavyweight, Blaydes suggested yes.
“It’s hard to say he doesn’t have what it takes to be one of those guys,” he said. “Like, I don’t have those scraps with bums. So I know he’s not a bum, but I guess we’re gonna find out when he has this turnaround with Derrick Lewis.”
Hokit is set to return at the UFC White House card on June 14th against Derrick Lewis. Blaydes? He’s been handed a 160 day suspension and has no plans to rush back to action until his orbital injury is properly healed.
