Mar 22, 2025; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Gable Steveson of the Minnesota Golden Gophers reacts after losing to Wyatt Hendrickson of the Oklahoma State Cowboys (not pictured) during the Division I Men’s Wrestling Championship held at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Eric Hartline-Imagn Images / Eric Hartline-Imagn Images
What’s next for Gable Steveson? After the Gophers heavyweight suffered a loss in the national championship match — a bout that’s been called the biggest upset in college wrestling history — to Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson, Steveson is looking ahead to opportunities in the NFL and MMA.
“I’m not happy with the results,” Steveson said Monday on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show. “Win or loss, the road doesn’t end for me and I keep going forward.”
“The sun always comes up the next day,” he added. “What’s next for me is I’ve been boxing, I’ve been putting on the gloves, doing Jiu-Jitsu classes, trying to get ready for an MMA career. Or right after I stepped off the mat Saturday night, just a couple calls from a few new teams in the NFL. The roads keep opening and I’m just so happy that I can go out there and put on my best performance. Win or lose, like I said, I’m always a showman. I go out there and I turn the crowd up, I show love, and if a guy gets his hand raised across from me, it’s respect always. The doors are still opening and I’m just so happy where I am today and where the future is going to take me.”
Steveson, the two-time national champ, five-time All-American, two-time Dan Hodge Trophy winner and Olympic gold medalist, was leading 4-2 in the third period of the heavyweight championship match when Hendrickson took down Steveson — the first time Steveson had been taken down all season — with 20 seconds to go. Steveson wasn’t able to escape, which would have sent the match into overtime, and Hendrickson instead came away with a 5-4 decision.
Did he know right then, as McAfee asked, that he was “f*****”?
“I’m a great counter-score wrestler, so when he got to my legs, you can kind of get a sense that you might be f*****, but you’re not f***** fully,” Steveson answered, cracking a laugh. “You get the sense that, ‘OK, it’s about to happen.’ I get taken down with 20 seconds left and I’m looking at the clock like, ‘Gosh, I gotta get up.'”
As it turns out, getting up with a 285-pound wrestler on top of you isn’t easy.
“I’m getting full weight on top of me and I’m trying to build up, and it just wasn’t my time,” he explained. “I’m cool with that. There’s nothing wrong with not having your time and not having your day because I feel that out of all the other times that I probably could’ve pulled it off, but that day just wasn’t my day, and it happens.”
Steveson, who previously worked out with the Buffalo Bills, didn’t reveal which NFL teams called him after he lost to Hendrickson. But he’s still excited for the opportunity to play at the highest level and use his wrestling skills on the gridiron.
“It’s a one-on-one battle with the guy across from you. Just growing up wrestling, you look at a guy across from you, it’s just like you go out there and you want to kill. It’s going to be hard. it’s going to be desperation to get to the quarterback or it’s to be desperation to not let the D-line get to the quarterback. Whatever position I can get in at, I’ll be grateful, I’ll be thankful,” he said.
Steveson noted that he’d never worn football cleats before his Bills tryout.
“When I was in Buffalo, I put my best shoes on. A lot of don’t know that was my first time ever playing football and first time ever putting on cleats,” he said. “Von Miller had to help me put on my pads and strap them because I had no clue how to put them on my first day of camp.”
If it isn’t football, Steveson acknowledged that an MMA career, perhaps in the UFC, is the most “viable” option that he’s still working at.
“Just making sure I can get my hands certified and ready. Making sure that I can see punches coming and make sure that I’m comfortable in a cage and comfortable with guys in front of me that are going to be throwing these huge haymakers, and getting in and getting out the way,” Steveson said. “I got a great mentor right now — I hope a lot of people know a guy named Jon Jones. Just a fantastic dude and the greatest fighter of all time.”
Jones, the current UFC heavyweight champ who is 28-1-0 all time, has been working with Steveson. Jones recently attended a Gophers wrestling meet at the University of Minnesota.
He says one of the next steps will be getting a meeting with UFC president Dana White.
“That’s one meeting that I would love to have,” he said. “If I can get in front of his face and really pitch who I am and pitch who he can see and who I will be, I think that will be the greatest thing.”
Despite the loss in front of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk — and hundreds of thousands of fans watching on ESPN — Steveson isn’t down on himself about his third career loss.
“I woke up today. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. For a long time now I’ve been like, ‘Damn, I get to wake up. I have a home, I have a house, I get to eat good food, I get to see the world, I get to go places that nobody may ever see,'” Steveson said.
“I think a lot of people were expecting a really bad reaction from me, but at the end of the day I’ve done so many great things, I’ve met so many great people, I’ve been to so many great places. I will never take that for granted. That was the main reason why I wanted to come back to the University of Minnesota after leaving in 2022. I wanted these kids to see that you can be something special.”
Steveson went 103-3 during his Gophers career, which came after a 210-3 record in high school that featured four Minnesota state championships at Apple Valley.
“It’s not the end of the world for me,” Steveson concluded.
Published 2 Hours Ago|Modified 3:56 PM EDT
