"Kane had the mask, right? I liked the guy with the mask for whatever reason. They were always like scary and, uh, Kane, Rey Mysterio. Um, Sting comes to mind for whatever reason," Josh Hokit told Helen Yee Sports, answering a line of questions that ended with him admitting he still goes back and watches old wrestling clips.
Hokit, a fighter best known for his work in mixed martial arts, spent the interview naming the wrestlers who stuck with him from childhood and explaining why those moments hold up now. He listed Kane, Rey Mysterio and Sting, then added an even longer roll call — Jake the Snake, Mr. Perfect and Macho Man — as examples of the old-school angles he rewatched to study characters rather than just crashes and finishes.
"Yeah, so now I go back and I watch the clips. I’m like, it is good acting, and it’s like, I just… now I watch it just for the characters, and I’m like, ‘oh, that’s an interesting angle,’" Hokit said, using the phrase that turned the conversation from nostalgia into analysis. He explicitly framed those moments as performance: spectacle built on personalities more than pure athletics.
The weight of Hokit’s comments is simple and specific: a public figure in a combat sport that sometimes disdains scripted entertainment is endorsing wrestling as legitimate character work. For fans parsing crossover potential, his naming of concrete favorites — and the way he described studying their angles — gives that endorsement texture. It’s not casual fandom; it reads as someone cataloguing techniques.
Context matters here. Some MMA fighters have long been vocal opponents of pro wrestling’s staged nature, while others treat it as an adjacent craft or even a destination. Hokit’s remarks landed during a sit-down with Helen Yee Sports and followed a line of questions about his early fandom, turning what could have been a throwaway comment into a public signal to wrestling audiences that he pays attention to storytelling, not just spectacle.
That signal carried a built-in friction. In the same interview, Hokit did not announce a career pivot; the piece notes he discussed potentially making the jump to WWE only as a future possibility. The contradiction is implicit: he studies the characters and praises the acting, yet when asked about going to WWE he framed any move as hypothetical rather than imminent. It leaves fans with a clear tease and no timeline.
The tension matters because Hokit’s interest could be read two ways. On one hand, a fighter who treats old angles as study material could translate charisma and in-ring presence if he ever chose wrestling. On the other hand, calling a WWE move merely a future possibility keeps expectations modest and prevents any immediate contractual speculation. Hokit’s praise of the so-called steroid era — "I was like, ‘ah, okay'" — acknowledges the messier parts of wrestling history even as he applauds its performers.
For readers wondering which wrestlers he singled out, Hokit’s list is the clearest detail: Kane, Rey Mysterio, Sting, Jake the Snake, Mr. Perfect and Macho Man. For those wanting to know why he watches again, his answer was direct — "I watch it just for the characters" — and literal: he now treats old clips as examples of acting and angle construction rather than mere nostalgia fodder.
What comes next is the open question the interview leaves hanging. Hokit did not set a timetable and made clear a WWE move remains a possibility, not a plan. That unresolved step is the story’s hinge: whether his studying of old-school angles evolves into an intentional crossover, or stays a private appreciation that shapes his persona inside the cage, is what wrestling fans and fight watchers will be watching for now.
