Noah Gugnon vs Kody Steele Preview & Prediction — UFC 333: Volkanovski vs. Evloev

UFC 333 serves up a stylistic riddle at Gugnon vs Steele: a finisher with a perfect record inside the distance against a forward-marching wrestler whose own weakness, on paper, looks tailor-made for a finish. The desk has this logged as a read, not a bet, but the pick is Steele, and the case for him runs straight through the one hole already in Gugnon's record.

Noah Gugnon

Gugnon's calling card is simple and brutal: every win has ended early, built on heavy low kicks that collapse a stance and top or back control that closes the show once the fight hits the floor. That profile makes him dangerous from a distance and suffocating once he gets hands on a tiring opponent. But the one loss on his record, a stoppage against Mark Ewen, tells the other half of the story. The tape shows Gugnon retreating in straight lines under pressure, getting walked down against the cage, eating a right hand that hurt him, and ultimately getting finished by a standing elbow once he was backed into the fence with nowhere left to go. His defensive wrestling, his bottom game, and how he holds up physically into the third round have never been tested on film, which matters against someone built to apply exactly the kind of pressure that already got to him once.

Kody Steele

Steele is a pressure fighter, a wrestler with explosive doubles who marches forward behind a high guard, traps opponents on the fence, and works hooks, uppercuts, and clinch elbows and knees off the tie-up. He has been to deep water before, going the full three rounds on three separate occasions and finishing a fight as late as round three, so cardio and durability over a full fight are not open questions the way they are for Gugnon. The flaw in Steele's resume is real: Rongzhu out-landed him 125 to 59 on the feet, and Martinez found him clean with head kicks in that fight too. On paper, that is a striking-defense hole sitting right in front of a finisher like Gugnon.

But that flaw is less exposed here than it looks. Rongzhu built that volume gap at standing range and distance, not in the exact forward-pressure, fence-trapping phase that is Steele's bread and butter. Steele's path to winning this fight does not require him to out-strike Gugnon in the pocket. It requires him to do what he already does best: close distance, put Gugnon's back on the fence, and work from the clinch and in the grappling exchanges where his doubles and his control can take over.

How the fight plays out

This fight is decided by which fighter's game reaches the other's weakness first, and the sequencing favors Steele. Gugnon's finishing tools, the low kicks and the top-and-back control, are real, but they are mostly a second-phase game: he needs a phase win against the wrestler before any of those finishes can start. Steele's path does not have that prerequisite. His forward pressure and his fence-trapping are a first-phase game, and the fence is precisely where Gugnon's tape shows him breaking down under exactly that kind of pressure.

Steele does not need to solve Gugnon's striking defense in open space to win. He needs to do what already worked against a different opponent who was not Gugnon: march forward, cut off the cage, and put Gugnon in the one spot where the only finish on Gugnon's record came from someone else doing the same thing. Gugnon's counters are live, but they are reactive tools against a fighter who dictates where the fight happens. The desk reads that sequencing advantage as decisive, even without a market number attached.

The verdict

The pick is Steele. His pressure-and-clinch game reaches the exact fence position where Gugnon's only loss came from, while Steele's own striking-volume flaw is tied to a different opponent and a different range than the one this fight is likely to live in.