Blaydes warns Hokit's chin won't survive heavyweight long-term after Lewis fight booked

Curtis Blaydes sees a route to victory for Josh Hokit against Derrick Lewis at UFC White House on June 14, but the veteran heavyweight has serious reservations about whether Hokit’s chin can withstand a career built on the kind of brutal exchanges they shared just two months ago.

Hokit accepted the Lewis fight on short turnaround after his three-round war with Blaydes, a bout widely considered a potential Fight of the Year candidate. Blaydes, who has faced both men, admits Hokit surprised him — but that performance is precisely what worries him about the 26-year-old’s future at heavyweight.

“He has a good young jaw,” Blaydes told MMA Fighting. “You do that three or four times, that jaw is going to be gone. I don’t think he can do that at heavyweight a bunch of times. He might be better served going down to light heavyweight because they don’t hit as hard. Yeah, they’re faster but he’s got the wrestling.”

Blaydes went further, suggesting those closest to Hokit should already be having the conversation. “I would be having serious discussions about let’s give it a year but let’s think about going down to light heavyweight,” he said.

On the Lewis matchup itself, Blaydes is genuinely split. Hokit enters the fight undefeated in the UFC, while Lewis, now 41, has gone just 3-5 over his past eight octagon appearances. Blaydes knows better than most how dangerous underestimating Lewis can be — he lost to him in 2021 — but questions whether that version of Lewis still exists.

“Hokit entering the fight, his jaw is not going to be 100%,” Blaydes said. “That’s scary going against a guy like Derrick Lewis. But then again, the Derrick Lewis that we just saw against Waldo [Cortes-Acosta], he looks like the motivation is gone. If you get a Derrick Lewis that doesn’t really care and just allows you to take him down at will, he can win like that.”

“But if he gets a motivated Derrick Lewis that comes in hunting the big, heavy knockout … I’m going back and forth because we don’t know the version of Derrick Lewis that we’re going to get. If we get the version that I had to fight, I’d go with Derrick. But if we get the one that showed up against Waldo, I go Hokit.”

A win over Lewis would put Hokit firmly in heavyweight title contention, making the stakes on June 14 considerable — even if Blaydes believes the bigger career question for him lies further down the road.