Ex-WWE Star, Olympian Gable Steveson Wins Boxing Debut with Epic 13-Second KO on Video

Olympic champion wrestler and former WWE Superstar Gable Steveson defeated Billy Swanson by first-round knockout, 13 seconds into their clash at Dirty Boxing 4 on Thursday night at The Pinnacle in Nashville, Tennessee.

Last month, Steveson made his first foray into the professional combat sports ranks after dominating the world of amateur wrestling.

At LFA 217 in his home state of Minnesota, Steveson demolished Braden Peterson by first-round technical knockout, ensuring his MMA debut was a successful one.

While not a traditional MMA fight, the bout against Swanson at Dirty Boxing represented the next step in Steveson's combat sports journey.

Per the promotion's official website, "Dirty Boxing Championship is a new super-fast and close-action combat sport that packs world class MMA and vintage boxing into a pair of five-ounce gloves and an 18-foot certifiably 'DIRTY' boxing ring."

Steveson, 25, is a two-time NCAA 285-pound wrestling champion at the University of Minnesota, plus he won the gold medal in super heavyweight freestyle wrestling at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, upsetting Georgia's Geno Petriashvili in the final.

After that, Steveson attempted to transition into the world of pro wrestling, signing a contract with WWE in 2021.

Steveson's pro wrestling training was a lengthy process that resulted in him making only a handful of television appearances and wrestling most of his matches at untelevised live events.

His one televised match was a double count-out with Baron Corbin at NXT Great American Bash in July 2023, and Steveson was released from the company by May 2024.

Steveson then made a brief attempt to make it in the NFL despite having never played organized football previously. He spent the 2024 preseason with the Buffalo Bills as a defensive tackle and appeared in multiple preseason games before getting released.

After that, Steveson returned to the college wrestling ranks for one more year, winning his fourth Big Ten title, but falling to Oklahoma State's Wyatt Hendrickson in the national championship match.

Now, Steveson is 2-0 over a pair of professional combat sports outings since the end of his collegiate career, and he is perhaps building momentum toward signing with a major promotion in the not-too-distant future.