Dan Hooker does not regret his brief return to featherweight, but it’s full steam ahead at 155 pounds now.
Though currently ranked No. 13 in the UFC lightweight rankings, for his most recent fight, Hooker attempted a return to the 145-pound division, getting knocked out by Arnold Allen back in March at UFC London. That loss was enough to convince Hooker to return to the lightweight division and to hear him tell it, the drop back to featherweight was more of a get-rich-quick scheme than a longterm plan.
“I knew what I was doing with the cut down to featherweight,” Hooker told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour. “I just had it in the back of my head. It was an itch I needed to scratch, and also, I knew the risk and reward that was at play there. I knew that after a few losses at lightweight, I knew that I would have to wait until the landscape of the division changed before I’d get another shot at a top five opponent. So it was just a good time to go down there and roll the dice.
“Had I beaten Arnold Allen, I’d probably be in there for a title shot or one fight away from a title shot, so that’s just a risk that I was willing to take. Obviously it didn’t go the way I wanted it to go so back to ‘55 and time to rebuild, brick by brick. You’ve got to start at the foundation and that comes up with a guy like that, a hungry young kid that’s on a five-fight win streak, a bunch of finishes. It’s time to get some momentum back. It’s time to fight one of these guys that’s unranked and prove where you truly belong in the division.”
Hooker started his UFC career as a featherweight but moved up to 155 in 2017 where he won seven of eight and put himself on the cusp of title contention before losing to Dustin Poirier. Since then, Hooker has struggled to find consistent success, losing three of his previous four bouts, which Hooker, to some degree, attributes to making poor decisions like taking short-notice fights, and fighting without his normal training camps because of the COVID-19 situation in New Zealand.
“I hadn’t realized how much of a big impact doing all those camps under those circumstances and stuff like that was really taking out of me,” Hooker said. “Most of those camps were done either away from my coaches or away from my team. The results for the last year and half, two years, made me realize how important my coaches, how important my team is to the journey. It’s essential. Me being young and dumb and full of it, you just want to get out there, and you back yourself, you think you can do it. I thought I could just do it on my own. I thought I could go over there and do it, fight the best guys in the world under these kind of circumstances, but that just truly made me realize how important it is to invest in my team and invest in my coaches completely. So that’s what I’ve done.”
Part of that reinvestment for Hooker has been the decision to use a manager. Hooker previously managed himself but recently turned that aspect of his career over to his coach Eugene Bareman and Ash Belcastro, so that they can focus on guiding his career and he can simply focus on improving as a mixed martial artist. And Hooker says that had he done this sooner, he probably wouldn’t have so many losses on the resume recently.
“Eugene said no to a lot of the dumb s*** that I did! [Laughs]. ‘Oh, you’re going to take this fight, you’re going to have no coaches. No coaches can come.’ Every bad decision, every poor decision that I made, Eugene advised against every last one of them,” Hooker said. “It’s not like he was encouraging these decisions. [Laughs]. So It makes a lot of sense, in hindsight, to have him take care of them, because you see it. You sit back and you see how a lot of these other guys are dealt. It’s not necessarily the cards that they were dealt but it’s how they play their hand. I feel like that. I feel like the skill set’s there, I feel like everything is there, I just didn’t play my hand the right way around. So coming back around the second time, making a good run, building a strong foundation, I just know how important it is to play your hand the correct way.”
Hooker gets a chance to put his new team setup to the test this November when he faces Claudio Puelles at UFC 281 in November. And while it’s not the marquee matchup with Tony Ferguson that he wanted, Hooker is just ready to step back in the cage.
“I’ve been chewing at the bit to fight since August,” Hooker said. “One they said, ‘Tony Ferguson’s a good fight,’ I was like, ‘Can I get after it?!’ and they gave me the green light to try and get that fight, or try and get after that fight. So it’s not necessarily that I was holding my breath, dying to fight Tony Ferguson. I was just dying to fight absolutely anyone, since August. That’s a long time for me to wait, and I feel like me in the past, if I was managing myself, I would have been here in August and perhaps not under the best circumstances. Me then to now, it just lights a fire. This is the longest time off between fights that I’ve ever had in my entire life and I am absolutely chomping at the bit to get back in there.”
UFC 281 takes place on Nov. 12 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
