The UFC's annual November visit to Madison Square Garden has carried a big-event feel ever since the promotion first staged a card at the famed arena in 2016. That tradition continues on Saturday, when UFC 334 brings two title fights to midtown Manhattan. The heavyweight championship bout between Ciryl Gane and newcomer Josh Hokit tops the bill, while Kayla Harrison defends her women's bantamweight title against former champion Amanda Nunes in the co-main event.
For Gane, the fight is a chance to move past a growing reputation as a dirty fighter. His last two outings were clouded by controversy, with numerous accidental eye pokes against Tom Aspinall and a series of strikes behind the head against Alex Pereira. Gane, a two-time interim titleholder, was elevated to full champion after multiple eye surgeries forced Aspinall to vacate the belt. While the 36-year-old French striker is widely viewed as a humble sportsman rather than a villain, past opponents including Junior dos Santos, Tai Tuivasa, Jon Jones, Sergey Spivac and Alexander Volkov have accused him of intentionally illegal tactics, a pattern that suggests recklessness more than bad luck. A clean win over Hokit would help him claim the legitimacy, and the 'baddest man on the planet' label, that comes with the heavyweight crown.
Hokit presents a very different kind of question: is MMA ready for him as champion? Unbeaten in 10 professional fights, including four in the Octagon, he will step in against Gane only one year and six days after his UFC debut. Known as 'The Incredible Hok,' he has built a pro wrestling-inspired persona seemingly designed to offend everyone in the room, and last week released an explicit rap diss track titled 'MSG Freestyle' aimed at the entire division. A former walk-on at Fresno State University who excelled in wrestling and football, Hokit went from All-American wrestler and NFL practice squad player to UFC title challenger, and a victory on Saturday would make him a legitimate fighter of the year candidate for 2026.
The co-main event is being billed as a true women's MMA superfight. The sport has produced memorable female headliners dating back to Cris Cyborg vs. Gina Carano in 2009 and Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate in 2012 under the Strikeforce banner, with the UFC's first women's title fight coming in 2013. The benchmark superfight remains Nunes' first-round knockout of Cyborg at UFC 232 in 2018, when she moved up in weight to claim a second belt. Now Nunes, widely considered the greatest female fighter in MMA history, returns from a three-year retirement to face Harrison, who at 19-1 has been one of the most dominant fighters the sport has produced. The two are former teammates, a backstory that fueled Nunes' exit from their shared American Top Team gym, and the fight arrives 10 months after it was originally scheduled for January.
Win or lose, Saturday could mark the end of Harrison's career. The 36-year-old, fresh off neck surgery that forced the postponement of the Nunes fight, has said in recent interviews that she might already have retired had the bout not come together, and that she is satisfied with her decorated career. Harrison won two Olympic gold medals in judo, captured her UFC title last summer and previously won two PFL lightweight season tournaments, each carrying a $1 million prize. She is also a full-time single mother of two children she adopted from one of her siblings, and the weight cut has been a constant obstacle: she competed at 172 pounds in judo and mostly at 155 in MMA, yet has made the 135-pound bantamweight limit repeatedly since UFC folded its 145-pound women's division in 2023.
Further down the card, Yousri Belgaroui is about to show how good he really is. The 34-year-old Dutch kickboxer, nicknamed 'The Boogeyman,' has recorded TKOs in all three of his Octagon appearances over the past 13 months, rebounding from a decision loss on 'The Dana White Contender Series' in 2023 with a knockout in his return the following year. A former GLORY kickboxing rival of Alex Pereira and Israel Adesanya who now trains with Pereira and Glover Teixeira in Connecticut, Belgaroui takes a major step up against No. 6-ranked middleweight Caio Borralho, who is 8-1 in the UFC with wins over Abus Magomedov, Jared Cannonier and Reinier de Ridder.
