During a recent episode of The Mighty Cast, former UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya joined host Demetrious Johnson to break down the action from the UFC White House card.
When the discussion turned to Josh Hokit‘s match against Derrick Lewis, both men found themselves focused on the same sequence: Hokit’s failed armbar attempt.
Johnson was the first to bring it up, admitting he never fully bought what he was seeing.
“I think when he did the armbar against Derrick Lewis, I think he was just playing.”
Adesanya immediately agreed.
“He sold it. I knew it. Yeah.”
According to Adesanya, he never believed Hokit was seriously trying to finish the submission.
“From the beginning, I was like, ‘He can finish this.’ I was like, ‘He can finish this.'”
Then, as the round wound down, something changed.
“And he starts screaming like the last four seconds. I was like, ‘Okay, he wants us to go to the second round.'”
Both saw the moment the same way. In their eyes, Hokit had the armbar locked up and chose not to finish it.
Adesanya explained why he was so convinced.
“I knew he was playing. I knew he was playing because it was fully extended.”
For him, the position looked too good to fail by accident.
“I’m like, you know how to finish an armbar. Even I know how to finish an armbar.”
The former champion continued, making it clear he wasn’t buying any suggestion that Hokit simply couldn’t secure the submission.
“I’m like, come on. You know how to…But he just kept it.”
The scream, however, was what made him suspicious.
“And the scream kind of sold for me. I was, ‘Oh, this guy’s just, he’s, that’s the fugazi.'”
Adesanya then pointed to Hokit’s overall demeanor throughout fight week and on fight night.
“But again, that fight he came in just hot. He came in, flipped him off at the stare down or before the stare down.”
There was no scramble, no desperate escape from Lewis, and no obvious reason the submission couldn’t have been completed. The arm was fully extended, yet Hokit chose to let the opportunity pass.
