One fight into his professional MMA career, Gable Steveson is already looking like a problem.
The decorated wrestler won his first professional MMA bout at LFA 217 on Friday, finishing Braden Peterson with a first-round ground-and-pound stoppage.
Steveson enters the sport with a mountain of hype after an amateur wrestling career that saw him earn two NCAA Division I national championships with the University of Minnesota and a gold medal at the 2020 Olympics, which made him the youngest Olympic super heavyweight champion in history. He is one of only six collegiate wrestlers to win the Dan Hodge Trophy multiple times and the only one to do it at heavyweight.
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So it was a hardly a surprise that he had the 37-year-old Peterson on the ground within seconds, with force.
Since that Olympic title, Steveson has had an interesting journey through the sports world. He signed a contract with the WWE in 2021 but was let go last year after a lackluster run. He then tried his hand at an NFL career with the Buffalo Bills as a defensive lineman, but was released in 2024. Amid all that, he returned to Minnesota and was on the bad end of one of the biggest upsets in NCAA history.
Having finally entered the world of MMA, Steveson is already one of sport’s most intriguing heavyweight prospects, and has some notable support behind him. Former two-division UFC champion Jon Jones was on hand at the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel in Steveson’s home state of Minnesota, praising a fighter who helped him prepare for last year’s Stipe Miocic fight and is now getting help from his team in return:
“He’s a freak athlete. He’s incredibly fast, he’s powerful, he’s intelligent, he has the work ethic and he’s shown our team — Greg Jackson, Brandon Gibson and I — that he’s willing to humble himself and surround himself with the best,” Jones said of Steveson. “I think he has the perfect formula to go all the way to the top and some.”
Judging from those comments, the UFC will certainly be monitoring that progress, and likely taking part sooner than later.
