Hokit reveals White House fight news hit him mid-chaos after UFC 327 war with Blaydes

Josh Hokit found out he had been booked to fight at the White House while lying on a hospital bed alongside Curtis Blaydes, minutes after the pair had produced one of the most gruelling heavyweight bouts in UFC history at UFC 327 in Miami in April.

Hokit defeated Blaydes in a fight that set a record for the most significant strikes landed in a three-round heavyweight contest — 354 in total — before it was announced on the broadcast that he would face Derrick Lewis at the historic June 14 White House event, a bout personally requested by President Donald Trump and sanctioned by UFC president Dana White that same night.

Still running on adrenaline, exhaustion, and a list of potential injuries, Hokit described the moment the news reached him. “The tweety birds were circling my head from that fight,” he told MMA Fighting. “And then one of the birds just stopped and said, ‘Hey, you want to fight at the White House?’ And I’m like, ‘White House?’ That’s all I heard. Boom, let’s do it. I don’t know if my ankle’s broken and my jaw, my face hurts, and my hands hurt, and I was like, ‘White House?’ I don’t even care if I’m cleared one week before. Let’s find a way.”

Hokit was unable to attend any post-fight media obligations after the win, having been taken directly to a local medical facility — where he and Blaydes arrived side by side. It was there that Hokit had a moment of dark humour with the man he had just spent three rounds trying to stop.

“That’s when we rolled into the hospital together on those little beds,” Hokit said. “And I was like, ‘Curtis, you could have made it easy. You could have just gave up and we didn’t have to go through all this.’ But props to him. I keep saying that maybe he believes in Jesus, or a divine power, because that’s what was holding him up. I was hitting him with clean, precise punches, and he was just there. He wasn’t going anywhere.”

Hokit also revealed that he had sensed the fight might turn into something extraordinary even before travelling to Miami. “A week before going out, I had a sparring session and I was like — to Greg Jackson — ‘I think this fight might be a war,’” he said. “Just how I was feeling, how my training was playing out.”

With the Blaydes chapter closed, Hokit now turns his attention to Lewis, the UFC’s all-time knockout leader, at an event unlike anything the sport has staged before.