After getting out of the hospital and off the pain meds, Curtis Blaydes is still not buying the decision from UFC 327. But even while arguing he should have had his hand raised, Blaydes gave Josh Hokit the kind of respect that means more after a heavyweight banger than any polite post-fight compliment.
Speaking in a recent interview with TMZ Sports, Blaydes broke down the damage, the scorecards, and the part of Hokit’s game that caught him off guard. MiddleEasy already covered how Blaydes broke his silence after the UFC 327 war and how Dana White quickly moved Hokit into a Derrick Lewis matchup for the White House card, but this interview gave a much fuller picture of how Blaydes saw the fight.
Blaydes said, “Early on, I was on pain meds. I was on Percocet because I have the orbital and the broken nose, but I haven’t had any of those a day, so I still feel good. And if you watched the fight, I I know everybody did, he didn’t hit me anywhere else besides the face. So my legs are good. My arms are good. Everything else is good.”
Every time Josh Hokit flipped off Curtis Blaydes at UFC 327 🖕😳 #UFC327 pic.twitter.com/opawtX9GBV
— UFC on TNT Sports (@ufcontnt) April 13, 2026
He also pointed to the first-round damage as the moment that changed how the fight looked, saying:
“He broke the nose on that early overhand in the first round, that’s where all the blood came from. I think that was the biggest deciding factor for the judges, all the blood I was bleeding. And that was just because I’m a bleeder. This nose has been broken a few times now.”
Curtis Blaydes says Josh Hokit’s chaos made him dangerous
Blaydes did not hide that he expected to win.
He said, “I was surprised. I was expecting [the ref] to pick my hand up. I really, really was. That’s why when they gave us the judgment, I was a little bit in shock. I was like, ‘Dang. I thought thought I did enough.’”
He then explained exactly why he thought the score should have gone his way, saying:
“I won a lot of those exchanges, and he won a lot of those exchanges. It seems split, but then you add in the wrestling. He didn’t get any of his wrestling going, I got mine going. That was really the main reason I thought I won because I knew on the strikes it was even, but then when you add the grappling, I know I won that.”
The more interesting part came when Blaydes got into what made Hokit difficult. Blaydes said:
“His hand speed was a lot faster than we had anticipated. That overhand and those wild uppercuts. And also just the balls.”
He kept going, saying:
“There’s a lot of the things he did, you would not coach. You would not tell him to do that. That’s why it worked, because he had the balls to do it. He was doing the wrong things and the wrong times, but because I was expecting, like, the proper responses, I wasn’t expecting him just to toss a wild uppercut. It caught me off guard, and that happened a bunch of times.”
Hokit’s stock has already jumped after UFC 327, and the reaction around the sport has made that obvious. That rise also showed up in Dustin Poirier’s reaction to Hokit’s breakout.
Blaydes even left the door open for Hokit becoming a real factor at heavyweight, saying:
“It’s hard to say he doesn’t have what it takes to be one of those guys. Like, I don’t have those scraps with bums. So I know he’s not a bum, but I guess we’re gonna find out when he has this turnaround with Derrick Lewis.”
