Jason Burgos
Josh Hokit’s bizarre attempt to draw attention to himself during the UFC 327 media event is more proof of why the company’s product is getting lame.
Fight fans are used to the industry being a little weird. While two men going into a cage or ring appeals to a lot of people, you still need to promote a fight to get people to spend their hard-earned money on tickets or streaming subscriptions to watch it.
In pursuit of making big bucks, fight fans have seen a lot of stuff to help bring attention to an upcoming fight. And over the last 10 years, some UFC fighters have gone to weird and ugly places to promote their bouts. However, on Wednesday, Josh Hokit went to a dumb place in an attempt to draw interest to his return at UFC 327 this weekend.
Instead of the usual media day tradition of taking questions from mixed martial arts media, the 28-year-old decided to deliver a pro wrestling-style promo while wearing his trademark American flag bandana and sunglasses. However, while there have been UFC fighters in the past who have offered up some outstanding wrestling promos (See: Chael Sonnen), Hokit provided something really bizarre.
Playing the character of the “Incredible Hoke,” he was breathing heavy, dealt out rhymes, and at one point started talking like a toddler. However, that wasn’t the end of it. The UFC heavyweight then changed characters, started using a Mexican-American accent, and wore a knit hat down over his eyes.
Furthermore, in an attempt to be the star of UFC 327 media day, he tried to have a face-to-face confrontation with one of the evening’s main event participants, Jiri Prochazka. Video of the odd scene can be found above.
Hokit’s strange behavior has been panned by UFC fans and analysts alike. But it still highlights one of several issues with the company’s content that is getting lame lately.
The UFC only has itself to blame for Josh Hokit
Hokit, striving to build a name for himself, is nothing new in the promotion. The UFC has long been questioned for its ability to build stars. So in many cases over the last couple of decades, fighters have taken it upon themselves to create a household name.
It was highly effective in the early 2010s for Chael Sonnen. In the late 2010s, former two-division champion and company icon Conor McGregor took it even further and became an international superstar due to his bold and brash personality. After him, Colby Covington rubbed many the wrong way by creating a champion for fans with a MAGA lean. Then, in recent years, former middleweight champ Sean Strickland has built a brand off xenophobic and sexist opinions.
However, those men could back it up in the ring and had varying levels of charisma. That is not the case for most fighters, and many of them feel they need to go to bizarre lengths to get notoriety and try to squeeze all the opportunities and money they can from the sport.
The fight promotion style that the UFC has nurtured for so long is now heading to corny places, but that isn’t the company’s only problem.
Is the UFC losing its cool factor?
Over the last few years, as the company has tried to have events almost every weekend, the quality of the product has regressed.
Fans are complaining more and more about weak cards and underwhelming main events. Making matters worse, while the Paramount+ era is better financially for fans, the UFC is far less willing to spend big bucks to make big fights if they can’t use pay-per-view points to make deals.
With PPV no longer an option, the UFC prefers to be cheap and making fights with elite stars like McGregor, Ronda Rousey, Jon Jones, Ilia Topuria, or Islam Makhachev has been far more difficult. So top talent now competes much less. It’s created a disappointing situation for fans of the company.
The talent pool is thinning, it is going to silly places to self-promote, and the quality of UFC events has gone down. The UFC has a historic card on the lawn of the White House in June that is just good, instead of great. While the company has gotten far bigger in recent years, it is nowhere close to as cool as it was just four or five years ago.
