Dan Hooker is unsure which version of Arnold Allen he’ll get, but he’s ready for any kind of fight.
Hooker (21-11 MMA, 11-7 UFC) meets Allen (17-1 MMA, 8-0 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 204, which takes place March 19 at O2 Arena in London.
Unbeaten in the UFC, Allen owns one of the longest active winning streaks in the featherweight division. Although Allen hasn’t notched a finish since he submitted Mads Burnell in May 2018, Hooker knows the Brit can be a threat.
“It could go one of two ways,” Hooker told MMA Junkie. “You could definitely watch Arnold fight and you can say he’s as technical as you like, and he does a great job of staying composed and breaking guys down. But he’s definitely a dog. When he does get backed into a corner or has an opponent hurt or something like that, he does bite down on his mouth guard and he does start swinging and he is quite a game opponent. So I think he has a mixture of both.
“I have a mixture of both, so that’s the excitement around this fight in that it could go one of two ways. It could be an extremely technical chess match or it could get a bit wild, and I’m happy to oblige either avenue that this fight goes.”
A win over Allen could catapult Hooker straight to the upper echelon of the division. But despite being unranked, Hooker sees equal benefit for Allen in this fight.
“His achievements in the weight class are undeniable,” Hooker said. “The guys that he’s beaten are very skilled. But yeah, I guess he just hasn’t broken that barrier because he hasn’t gotten the opportunity to compete like a bigger-name guy. So that, I guess, is the intrigue for him in taking this fight: that I had an established name at ’55 and coming down to ’45, people wanted to know who I wanted to fight.
“So it’s a win-win situation for the UFC, and that’s kind of the fights that they like to match. Either I come down and establish myself within the weight class or he gets that bigger-name opponent that he’s been chasing the last couple of years. So yeah, I feel like he’s an incredibly skilled fighter and all the intrigue he’s got behind him within the weight class is definitely deserving.”