Dan Hooker: That took the cake

Every front has a back. And every spectacular UFC debut like three-time Bellator MMA lightweight champion Michael Chandler enjoyed in the UFC 257 co-main has someone who lost. In this case, it was Dan Hooker, and in his first post-loss interview, with the ever-awesome Submission Radio, “The Hangman” talked about it, and was full of praise for his opponent.

That’s a guy that’s earned it,” said Hooker. “His catchphrase is ‘paid in full’, and that’s one hundred percent what it is. That guy wears his heart on his sleeve, that guy goes out there and fights his heart out every single fight and goes out and continually puts it on the line. So, it’s good to see a result for a fighter like that, or a fighter which I see like a lot of similarities with our careers.

The fighter was tougher by far on himself.

You’re always frustrated after a loss. … I was like, ‘I’m done. I’m finished with this s****y sport. I’m done.’ And then you get back to the hotel and you sit down and think about it, and you realize you’re not good at anything else either. I was kind of thinking, s***, I’ve kind of painted myself into a bit of a corner here,” said Hooker, laughing. “… people think you’re gonna be rolling around in depression and then not getting out of bed, but I know what it is. This is a sport I’ve been doing and following for my entire adult life. So, it’s always a possibility. But … a loss like this, you’re not rolling around in depression, like super upset. It’s kind of self-explanatory, and it is what is. I can honestly say, I’m not any more upset than when I lost the Poirier fight.

“People are gauging the fan reaction to the fight, or how they felt about the fight. But that doesn’t mean that that’s a true representation of how you feel about the fight. … The fan reaction was good to the last one, the Poirier loss. You pretty much got the worst-case scenario in the last fight. But I’m just as disappointed about both. Both are losses … and you understand that if you follow the sport enough, people remember, ‘that was a great fight, that was a great fight’. Then time passes, you know, two years, ‘oh, did he fight Dustin Poirier?’ Five years later, five years after the fight, they just look up your record and they just see the red and the green, they just see win and loss. And so I understand that in this sport, losing is losing, and winning is winning. It’s that same thing, an inch or a mile. It doesn’t matter. If you win, you win, and if you lose, you lose. And if you follow this sport long enough, you see that that happens time and time again.

You invest so much into this sport. You prepare for a bad case, but that’s like a whole other level. That’s the first time that that’s ever happened to me in my career, to not only lose, but to lose in that kind of fashion. But you’re out back and you’re fine. Like, you go back to the hotel, I was completely fine. You don’t even feel like you’ve been in a fight. At least if you go out there, you fight your heart out, you get busted up, someone gets the better of you, but you know you tried. You went out on your shield, you tried, you fought hard. That’s a lot easier to take, because you went out there. I didn’t even feel like I got in a fight. We arrived back in the hotel, I was like, was that? You’re more thinking, is that a bad dream? You’re just in like more of a bad dream case scenario.

“You have good days, bad days. You prepare, you go into these kinds of things and you prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario, but even that took the cake. Even that surprised me how bad it went. That was the very surprising thing. So, what can you say? What can you say? I have no words to describe that. You come to, and then you’re just like, wow, I’ve just wasted four months, four months of my life for that.

That’s the funny thing, I zigged when I should have zagged, that’s all it is. Fighting is like a mixture of thinking and your reactions. You’re balancing your processed thought and then your reactions. I felt like I was calm, could see everything, was thinking, was sharp in there, just relied on my reaction to get out of the way of that punch, and it let me down. Yeah, it’s hard to describe. It’s like such an obvious error and such a very costly mistake.

He changed levels. I think I relied on my reaction time. He sold the level change well. I thought he was going for a takedown, comes upstairs with a punch. There’s a million things I could’ve done that would’ve changed that. There’s a million different reactions that I could’ve done and that not happen. But it did. What can you do? I certainly don’t have a time machine. I think Floyd Mayweather has a time machine. If anyone has a time machine, Floyd Mayweather has a time machine. I do not have a time machine.

“I’m back in the gym, I’m training, I’m wrestling, I’m grappling. But getting hit in the head is not even a thought of mine for the coming months. Like, you just gotta be smart about it. So, I’m not even thinking about that.”

“[Losing] is just like a constant ringing in your ear, and over time it will irritate you long enough that it’s like an itch you need to scratch, and it’s like you need to get back in there and avenge it. And the only thing that I’ve found that will ever get rid of that, is a win, is to turn that around. We’re in the sport where you’re as good as your last fight.”

UG, we all thought the same thing about Chandler – WOW!!?! What do you think about the other side of the highlight reel?