Dan Hooker had a name in mind had he won at UFC 266 and he did just that as he called out Beneil Dariush following his win.
At UFC 266, Hooker returned to the win column with a dominant decision win over Nasrat Haqparast. After the win, inside the Octagon he called out Dariush and he explained why after the fight.
“He’s the only one sitting there without a fight,” Hooker said to the media after UFC 266. “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.”
Whether or not Hooker gets the fight against Dariush to be seen. It is a fight that does make some sense as the Kiwi does deserve to fight someone ranked ahead of him as it was a dominant win over Haqparast. The lead-up to the fight was also challenging for Hooker but he’s just glad he got the win.
“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.”
