Dan
Hooker isn’t looking forward to five rounds against Bobby Green
for a co-main event.
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Hooker initially expected that his bout against Green, which is
slated for UFC on ESPN 52 at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas, on
Dec. 2, whould be the event’s headliner. Instead, the fight will be
the co-main event but is still scheduled for five rounds. The Kiwi
is not happy with losing out on all the benefits that come with
being in the evening’s featured bout.
“That pissed me right off,” Hooker told the NZ
Herald. “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.”
A lightweight clash between Beneil
Dariush and Arman Tsarkyan will now serve as the UFC Austin
main event. While the City Kickboxing veteran isn’t going to back
down from the fight, he claims the booking has failed to get him
motivated.
“I’m going to show up and fight, but it’s just a funny spot. It
just really doesn’t spark my interest. That’s it,” he said.
Hooker has proposed a “no-round, no-time limit” clash against Green
as an alternative option to a five-round, co-main event.
“If you want to do that, let’s go old school,” he said. “I’ll do a
no-round, no-time limit fight for the same price. How about that?
Now you have my attention. Now you have sparked my interest. I
guarantee you Bobby Green
is up for that. We’ll scrap the rounds altogether and just do a
25-minute fight, a half an hour fight – it can go half an hour
because you don’t need to waste time drinking water in the corner –
then it doesn’t impact their TV or whatever. Scrap the rounds and
we’ll just have a fight. Now I’ll do it for the same price. There’s
my counter-offer, UFC.”
Hooker is currently riding a two-fight win streak with a
hard-fought split decision win over Jalin
Turner in his most recent outing at UFC 290 in July. Meanwhile,
Green is coming off consecutive stoppage wins, including a knockout
of Grant
Dawson in a main-event clash last month.