Madison Square Garden sure looks mighty heavy again.
For the third time in four years, the UFC will stage heavyweight championship action at The World’s Most Famous Arena as newly elevated champion Ciryl Gane makes his first title defense against Josh Hokit in the UFC 334 main event on Nov. 14.
Not to be overshadowed, the co-main event is the anticipated women’s bantamweight clash between champion Kayla Harrison and Hall of Famer Amanda Nunes — a fight the promotion has billed as its “most anticipated women’s fight ever.”
The promotion announced the pair of marquee title fights and the full bout lineup during Saturday night’s stream of UFC 331.
Gane, who won interim gold with a win over former two-weight champ Alex Pereira at the White House in June, was revealed during the announcement as the new undisputed heavyweight champion, just days after previous titleholder Tom Aspinall vacated his championship status as he continues to recover from eye injuries suffered in a no contest against Gane last October — the result of an illegal double-eye poke.
Hokit, who spent time with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals but never played in a regular-season game, rode the wave of bizarre, pro wrestling-style interviews and a pair of entertaining victories over ranked competition earlier this year to garner a championship challenge after debuting with the UFC in August 2025.
Harrison and Nunes previously were set to face off in January before a neck injury to the champion shelved the matchup indefinitely.
Rescheduling the matchup between former friends and American Top Team training partners for New York indicates Harrison has recovered enough to face arguably the greatest woman in MMA history.
Filling out the main card are a middleweight matchup between Caio Borralho and Yousri Belgaroui, a welterweight clash between Uros Medic and Kevin Holland, and flyweight action between Bilal Hasan and Luis Gurule.
The preliminary bouts preceding the main card, which is expected to begin at 9 p.m., features:
- Stephen Thompson vs. Charles Radtke (welterweight)
- Drew Dober vs. Chris Duncan (lightweight)
- Jim Miller vs. Terrance McKinney (lightweight)
- Donte Johnson vs. Baisangur Susurkaev (middleweight)
- Macy Chiasson vs. Bia Mesquita (women’s bantamweight)
- Adrian Yanez vs. Juan Diaz (bantamweight)
- Nazim Sadykhov vs. Jefferson Nascimento (lightweight)
The heavyweight title fight follows recent championship showdowns in the division at the Garden between Jon Jones and Stipe Miocic (2024) and Aspinall vs. Sergei Pavlovich for the interim title (2023).
This year marks 10 years since the landmark debut at MSG.
The arena has hosted UFC events every November, with the exception of 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic that prevented the promotion from staging events across the United States outside of its UFC Apex venue in Las Vegas.
