LAS VEGAS – Dan Hooker has already eyed a potential name for his next UFC bout.
The UFC lightweight contender wants to get his hands on Beneil Dariush following his most recent win at Saturday’s UFC 266. Hooker (21-10 MMA, 11-6 UFC) outpointed Nasrat Haqparast in a unanimous decision in the preliminary portion of the card.
Hooker sees Dariush as the only name that makes sense at the moment given the schedule at 155 pounds.
“He’s the only one sitting there without a fight,” Hooker told MMA Junkie and other reporters at the UFC 266 post-fight news conference. “If you look at the rankings, every single one of them is booked except Tony Ferguson and Beneil Dariush.
“They just fought, so it doesn’t make sense for that fight to happen again. So Beneil Dariush is sitting there without a dance partner and that gets me out of bed in the morning, a fight like that. I like the look of his little number next to his name, I’d like to take that off him.”
The win over Haqparast got Hooker back on the winning track, as he entered the bout with back-to-back defeats to Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler. The 31-year-old had to dig deep for the victory, even prior to setting foot in the cage.
Hooker had plenty of hurdles in the lead up to the fight, as he had to train around strict quarantine rules in his home country of New Zealand, as well as visa issues that almost had him miss the fight.
“It’s just been everything that could go wrong, went wrong in this training camp,” Hooker said. “It was a crazy road. I signed the fight on a Sunday and on Tuesday we went on a full lockdown. Everything shut down. Eugene (Hooker’s coach) came up with a plan to move everyone to the gym and then cops came and shut that down. Then training in the gym and got caught there and cops came and shut that down. They told me, ‘We catch you doing anything one more time and we’re going to arrest you.’ The last four weeks I was just training in my house, in my garage. Just shadow boxing, staying sharp.”
Watch the full post-fight interview with Hooker in the video above.
Dan Hooker sets sight on Beneil Dariush: ‘That gets me out of bed in the morning’
