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Dan Hooker was surprised by certain aspects of his UFC Austin fight.
Dan Hooker vs Bobby Green is a contest that the former thought was a headline fight, but it turned out to be the UFC Austin co-main event.
Outside of main events and/or title fights, seeing five-rounders is a rarity and on December 2, Dan Hooker is about to join that Leon Edwards vs Nate Diaz tradition.
Hooker vs Green is an exciting clash on paper and pits the No. 9 lightweight against Green, the No. 12 contender in the weight category.
When recently speaking to The New Zealand Herald about how he felt about this five-rounder not closing out the card, Hooker said:
"That pi**ed me right off. It’s a funny one. You call up anyone and ask ‘you want to do twice as much work for the same money?’ No, brother. After three, I’m going home. The main event is five rounds. You can’t chuck it to co-main and still keep the five rounds. It’s just not a thing. It’s a sport of risk versus reward."
"You give me the main event and everything that comes with that. With winning a main event comes bigger opportunities and you get a lot more exposure – I love main events. But you’re not getting the same reward for equal risk. It just doesn’t make sense. They’re taking me for a bit of a donkey."
Check out the NZ Herald Hooker feature below:
Dan Hooker and the lightweight division nowadays
A lightweight matchup will in fact top the marquee of the Moody Center, but it will be Beneil Dariush versus Arman Tsarukyan. The 155-pound warriors are ranked No. 4 and No. 8 at lightweight, respectively.
No. 1 ranked Charles Oliveira and champion Islam Makhachev seem destined for a lightweight title rematch. Justin Gaethje and Dustin Poirier are in the second and third slots while five to seven at lightweight is filled up by Michael Chandler, Mateusz Gamrot, Rafael Fiziev, respectively.
Dan Hooker and former divisional kingpin Rafael Dos Anjos round out the UFC's current top 10 lightweight rankings.
