Full Steam Ahead For Gable Steveson | UFC Fight Pass

It wasn’t.

“Man, I'm there,” Steveson said without hesitation. “Send me the address - defense, anything, goalie. I got you.”

We both laugh, knowing that he’s not going to make that trip from Albuquerque to New York City to play with our Corrupted Youth squad. But the reality is that maybe if Steveson didn’t have a fight coming up on Friday’s LFA card in Prior Lake, Minnesota, against Braden Peterson, he might have.

That’s the beauty of being 25 years old and feeling like you can do anything.

“It's very powerful,” Steveson admits. “But it comes with a lot of bad, too, because your mind is in so many places of, hey, I could do one thing, I could do the next. I'm 25, so when I was 21, 22, I was just trying to do it all. And it just gets to the point where it is overwhelming and you say, ‘I need to be great at something and really pursue it hard.’ So in my earlier stages, I was all over because I was like, man, I can do WWE, I could play in the NFL. I could fight, I could probably play first base. (Laughs) I might be able to go to the Euro leagues and play soccer. So it's crazy. But as I’ve gotten older and I got more mature, I see the world and I'm like, okay, let's focus on a grand thing and make it the biggest possible.”

That starts on Friday with his MMA debut, one of the most talked about in years, and for good reason, because while he talks about focusing on one thing and being great, he’s already done that on the mats. That’s not hyperbole, because you don’t win Olympic gold, two NCAA D-1 titles, three world titles, and two Dan Hodge trophies by being very good. And truth be told, when you realize that his middle name is Dan, after the legendary Dan Gable, he really couldn’t have gone on to work a 9 to 5.

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“No, I couldn't have,” he laughs. “It was impossible.”

That’s not easy, spending your whole life, especially your teenage years, focused on one thing while your friends are all doing, well, teenage things.

“Man, my whole life has been just my parents taking me to wrestling tournaments and just getting acclimated to places and trying to be the best I can,” Steveson said. “And then when I won the Olympics, I mean you hit the peak of wrestling, but there's always been that drive and want to do more great things. And you’ve got to give up a lot of time, you’ve got to give up seeing a lot of people. And then when you stop seeing a lot of people, people get upset at you and it's the domino effect of a lot of things that you really don't think about. But in the grand scheme of it, if you want to be super good at something, you've got to give up time, you got to give up seeing people, you got to give up going to places, like going out to eat with your friends or going out on a Saturday and replacing time with things that can make you special.”

Steveson has been special for the majority of his 25 years, but perhaps the most special thing he did was returning to the University of Minnesota in 2024 for his last year of eligibility. As he expected, he won his fourth Big Ten title, but in the National Championship match earlier this year against Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson, he lost in what was seen as one of the biggest upsets in wrestling history.

When it was over, the loss obviously stung, but he handled it with grace.

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“I tried to do my best to,” said Steveson. “I tried to put every single eyeball on the Minnesota program and every single eyeball on NCAA wrestling, and even though it didn't turn out the way I wanted to and I knew if I had longer time, that outcome would've been a lot different, things happen, and like I said in the interview with (ESPN’s) Pat McAfee, the world keeps spinning.”

Think about it, there really was no upside for Steveson to come back to Minnesota for that last season. He already hit the top of the wrestling mountain. But in his eyes, his return was for a very good reason.

“When I went back this past year, I really wanted to do it for the team because I really wanted a team trophy,” he said. “And so I put all my personal goals aside and I looked at the coach and now I was like, hey, I'm not here for me. Don't put your time and effort into me. I wanted to come back and make sure the team was straight. And we have a couple young guys that can be really good and are going to be really good and I wanted to make sure that they can see what it looks like to have a guy of a different caliber on a team to push them.

“So it was a really hard season this year because I was coming back from playing football,” Steveson continues. “I was maybe 300 pounds; I didn't have much practice going back in. And my first dual, I probably had a week of practice, and I weighed like 280 and I went out there and just did my thing. This past season was really hard.”

Now there’s more hard work, and he’s not getting ready for his MMA with a bunch of kids, but with all-time great Jon Jones, respected coaches Greg Jackson and Brandon Gibson, and former UFC heavyweight Maurice Greene. So what should fight fans expect from Gable Steveson, mixed martial artist?

“I just think you can expect a full package guy, a reincarnation of someone great and someone that's hungry to be out there and give the crowd a good show, but also just dominate and show the world who he is,” he said. “There's always going to be doubters, there's always going to be people that think you can't do something, but I've dealt with it forever and ever and I've always went out there and proved every single person wrong and showed them why they should be on the side of Gable Stevenson. So September 12th, I’m going to just go out there and show the world who I am and put on the best performance possible. But it doesn't stop there, and it won't stop there and it'll keep going until I get to the point where I can be something special and I can be one of the champions and be looked as a great.”

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