An unfortunate accident in sparring led to Dan Hooker’s
withdrawal from UFC
313.
Hooker, who was scheduled to face Justin
Gaethje in a five-round, co-main event bout on March 8 at the
T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, offered further detail regarding the
injury in a recent interview with Sky Sport New Zealand.
“One of the paws is not doing too well,” Hooker said. “I was
sparring last night, as I do, just letting some hooks go, just
throwing some bombs down range, and I just caught one of the boys
on the top of the dome with my knuckle. I don’t think too much of
it but they sent me off to get a CT scan. Had a little CT scan and
they told me my hand is fractured.”
Hooker is unsure of the promotion’s plans in the aftermath of the
injury. At the moment, a replacement opponent for Gaethje has not
been announced with less than two weeks to go before UFC 313.
“So yeah, I obviously still would fight, but with the medicals they
squeeze your hands, so we’ll see how it all plays out,” Hooker
said. “We’ll see if we can kick this fight down the road, or we’ll
just wait and see.”
Hooker had won his last three Octagon appearances, posting
successive victories over Claudio
Puelles, Jalin
Turner and Mateusz
Gamrot. Prior to that, the 35-year-old Kiwki had lost four of
his previous five promotional outings. Hooker is 14-8 during his
UFC tenure overall.
“It’s unfortunate that it was this close,” Hooker said. “Obviously,
gutted for all the fans that I know that were excited for this
fight. That’s probably the main thing, I think. The Lords of War
were not happy, and they took it away from you.”
UFC 313 is headlined by a light heavyweight title tilt between
Alex
Pereira and Magomed
Ankalaev.