Cejudo urges Steveson to spend a year on striking after 12-second UFC 331 knockout loss

Henry Cejudo has urged Gable Steveson to step back from competition and spend an entire year sharpening his striking, following the Olympic wrestling champion’s stunning 12-second knockout loss to Sean Sharaf at UFC 331 on 19 September.

Sharaf pulled off one of the most shocking upsets in recent UFC memory, stopping Steveson — a -2500 favourite — in the opening seconds of their bout. For Cejudo, a fellow Olympic gold medalist and former two-division UFC champion, the result exposed a fundamental gap in Steveson’s game that no amount of wrestling pedigree can paper over.

“You cannot hurry up in the game,” Cejudo said on the Pound 4 Pound podcast. “My next thing for Gable Steveson is, he needs to take a whole f*cking year and just get better defensively. Because if he is just gonna strike, then strike for one whole year. You’re still young; forget about doing anything with matches in grappling and all this other stuff.”

Cejudo also directed the warning at Bo Nickal, the highly touted collegiate wrestling standout who has built a 9-1 professional record. Nickal secured his UFC contract in 2023 via Dana White’s Contender Series and went undefeated in his first four octagon appearances before being stopped by Reinier de Ridder. He has since bounced back with consecutive stoppage wins over Rodolfo Vieira and Kyle Daukaus.

“I hope Bo Nickal can also see this,” Cejudo added. “You got to be able to respect the game, focus on mixed martial arts and just do that.”

Steveson, now 4-1 as a professional, had finished all four of his previous opponents in the first round — including his UFC debut — before the Sharaf defeat. Cejudo’s concern is that elite wrestling credentials can create a false sense of readiness for the full demands of MMA, particularly on the feet.

The broader point Cejudo is making is one the sport has revisited many times: transitioning from world-class amateur wrestling to well-rounded MMA requires patience, and shortcuts taken early in a career can leave lasting damage to both a fighter’s record and their development.