Bo Nickal says the bad blood between him and Gable Steveson boiled over backstage well before Steveson's disastrous night at UFC 331. According to Nickal, the two got into it at an RAF event in August, months ahead of Steveson's knockout loss to Sean Sharaf.

Nickal told Uncrowned he remembers the exchange clearly. 'I remember this so vividly, he's like, 'I'll knock you out.' That's what he said to me,' Nickal said.

Nickal says he fired right back, unimpressed by the threat. By his own account, he told Steveson he wasn't sure he'd win a wrestling match with him, but had no doubt he'd win a fight, telling him flatly that he had no defense.

That line reads differently now. Steveson was finished by Sean Sharaf in just twelve seconds in the first round at UFC 331 last month, a result fast enough that fans on r/MMA are still passing around a Topps Now trading card commemorating the knockout.

Nickal, for his part, is moving forward with his own middleweight run. He's currently ranked fourteenth at 185 pounds and is coming off a first round knockout of Kyle Daukaus back in June. mmafighting.com His fight against Joe Pyfer, originally scheduled for UFC 335 on December 12, has been postponed and moved to a main event in Cleveland in February 2027. mmamania.com Our model gives him a 39 percent shot, a slight edge for Pyfer, and Nickal sits at a 1572 Elo rating built from seven tracked bouts.

Whether Nickal and Steveson ever settle anything in the cage remains unclear, but for now Nickal seems content to have called it correctly. As he put it himself, reflecting on the whole saga, 'it's weird, all the stuff between us.'