Olympic Gold Medalist Gable Steveson is Set for His UFC Debut

Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson is about to take on the biggest test of his combat sports career. After unsuccessful attempts to establish himself in both WWE and the NFL, the decorated wrestler will finally make his long-awaited UFC debut at UFC 329 on July 11 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Steveson’s first appearance in the Octagon will come during International Fight Week on a card headlined by Conor McGregor’s highly anticipated return against Max Holloway. From his decorated wrestling resume and unconventional path to the UFC to his opponent, Elisha Ellison, here’s everything you need to know ahead of his debut.

Who is Gable Steveson? Olympic Gold Medalist’s Journey to UFC 329

Gable Steveson is an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler and one of the most accomplished heavyweight prospects to transition into mixed martial arts. Steveson’s wrestling resume is about as decorated as it gets. He won Olympic gold in freestyle wrestling at the Tokyo Games, becoming the youngest super heavyweight gold medalist in the sport’s history at 21 years, two months, and six days old.

At the University of Minnesota, he won back-to-back NCAA Division I heavyweight titles, picked up the Dan Hodge Trophy twice as college wrestling’s top performer, and earned All-American honors five times. In Minnesota high school history, he still holds the highest career winning percentage ever recorded.

What came next was a detour through two other sports. Steveson signed with WWE in 2021, becoming only the second Olympic gold medalist the company had signed after Kurt Angle, and was released a few years later following a poorly received televised match. He then signed with the Buffalo Bills in 2024 and was cut before the season started, despite never having played organized football. Neither stop gave him the launchpad he was chasing.

MMA has gone differently. Steveson turned pro in September 2025 and is 3-0 in straight MMA competition, with first-round finishes over Braden Peterson at LFA 217 and Kevin Hein at APFC 21, then a TKO of veteran Hugo Lezama at MFL 3 in February 2026.

In between, he also picked up a 15-second knockout of Billy Swanson under Mike Perry’s Dirty Boxing rules, a different combat sports discipline, which is where the “3-0” some trackers still use and the “4-0” others quote both come from. However it’s counted, every single appearance has ended in a first-round finish.

Now, after the UFC officially announced his signing during UFC 327 in April, the Olympic gold medalist is set to make his debut against Elisha Ellison at UFC 329 during International Fight Week on July 11.

Gable Steveson vs. Elisha Ellison at UFC 329: Fight Card, Record, and Preview

Steveson’s opponent is Elisha Ellison, a 5-2 heavyweight known as “The Snack Panther.” Ellison has finished every fight he’s won, a 100 percent finish rate across five career victories, four of them by knockout. His one UFC appearance came at UFC Perth in September 2025, where he lost to Brando Pericic by knockout in under two minutes.

Steveson is being talked about as the prospect who could fix what’s widely considered the UFC’s weakest division. The bout sits on the preliminary card rather than the pay-per-view main card, a change from the original plan. When the lineup first came together, Steveson’s debut was positioned as the opener of the main card itself, a clear signal of how much confidence the promotion has in him.

That changed when the card’s actual opening bout, a flyweight fight between Cody Durden and Ode Osbourne, fell apart after Osbourne withdrew. With the lineup reshuffled to fill the gap, Steveson’s fight moved to the prelims, where it’s now expected to stream on Paramount+ starting at 7 PM ET on July 11, ahead of the main card.

Steveson has already made it clear he sees this as only the beginning. After signing with the UFC, the gold medalist confidently declared, “This is going to be the biggest debut on earth, and I’m ready.”

Is Gable Steveson training with Jon Jones?

Gable Steveson has been training alongside Jon Jones for a while now. The partnership started way before Steveson’s MMA career began. He originally joined Jones’ camp to help him prepare for a planned fight with Stipe Miocic, training alongside grappling standout Gordon Ryan in what became one of the more talked-about camps in recent UFC history.

Since then, Jones has shifted from training partner to mentor, overseeing Steveson’s transition into mixed martial arts. Not everyone, however, is convinced that’s the ideal setup. UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier has publicly questioned whether Jon Jones can fully dedicate himself to developing Steveson while remaining an active fighter.

“You have to become secondary to everyone that you coach,” Cormier said. “Jon is still on the roster, he’s an active fighter, and I don’t know if he can be as giving and selfless to make Gable the true star of the show. You’ve got to make the other guy. You’ve got to make your athlete the star of the show.”

Cormier also suggested that having Jones as his coach could ultimately slow Steveson’s development if the former champion is unable to devote his full attention to the role.

Steveson, however, has embraced the arrangement. While he has said the final decision on when he’s ready to compete rests with him, he also admitted he trusts Jones to tell him when the moment has truly arrived.

The clearest evidence that the wrestling hasn’t gone anywhere came a month before his UFC debut. On May 30 in Arlington, Texas, Steveson made his Real American Freestyle debut against Alexandr Romanov, a former UFC and PFL Heavyweight with a 22-4 professional MMA record built on legitimate grappling credentials. Steveson controlled the match from the opening exchange and closed it out with a 10-0 technical fall in the second period.

Jon Jones was there in Steveson’s corner the entire time, watching the fight closely. Although it was a wrestling match under wrestling rules, not an MMA fight, it answered the one real question hanging over the move to the UFC: whether five years away from competitive wrestling had taken anything off him. It hadn’t.