Gable Steveson has four professional MMA fights. He is already telling the UFC heavyweight champion to get ready.
With Tom Aspinall forced to vacate the undisputed heavyweight title after another setback to his eye injury, Ciryl Gane is being elevated to undisputed champion. Gane took the interim belt by knocking out Alex Pereira in the second round. The planned Aspinall rematch at UFC 334 in November is dead.
Steveson wasted no time.
The Callout
“The fans deserve Me vs Gane,” Steveson said, adding that he would “give Ciryl what he has coming.” He extended the warning to whoever is holding the belt by the time he cracks the top five.
That is confident talk from a man who made his UFC debut earlier this summer.
The Resume Is Thinner Than The Talk
Steveson is a 2020 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle wrestling and a two-time NCAA champion at Minnesota. In combat sports pedigree terms, that is about as good as an entry point gets.
He scored a first-round knockout of Elisha Ellison in his UFC debut in Las Vegas, and he returns Saturday night at UFC 331 in what has become a grudge match with Sean Sharaf. UFC 331 takes place at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles with Joshua Van and Alexandre Pantoja running it back in the main event.
Four fights against non-ranked opposition does not earn a title shot. Steveson knows that. He is doing what every heavyweight with marketable credentials does, which is talk his way up the rankings faster than his record justifies.
Why It Might Work Anyway
Heavyweight is the division where this strategy actually functions. The talent pool is shallow, the champions turn over constantly, and one knockout can vault a fighter three spots.
Gane is now a champion who has been beaten before and who has never been described as an overwhelming finisher. A wrestler who can take him down and hold him there is a stylistic nightmare, and Steveson is the best pure wrestler to enter the division in a decade.
Some observers believe he could hold the belt as soon as next year. That is aggressive, and it is not absurd.
What He Actually Needs
Two wins over ranked opponents. Not callouts, not media day quotes, not teasing Jon Jones’ return, which Steveson also did this week.
The wrestling will translate. The question that has ended every wrestler-to-MMA pipeline story is whether the striking defense holds up when a real heavyweight gets to load up. Steveson has not been tested there.
Bottom Line
Beat Sharaf on Saturday, then take a top-10 fight and win it. Do that and the Gane callout becomes a legitimate demand instead of a press conference line.
Steveson has the tools and the platform. He has not earned the fight yet, and pretending otherwise does not help him.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.