Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight veteran Dan Hooker
won’t be rushing his return to the Octagon this time around.
Hooker (23-12) was slated to face Bobby Green
(31-14) in the co-main event of the recently concluded UFC Fight
Night event in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately, the Kiwi was forced to
withdraw from the bout merely 10 days ahead of the scheduled date
after breaking his arm during one of his final sparring
sessions.
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According to Hooker, this is the same arm that went under the knife
following a hard-fought split-decision win against Jalin
Turner at UFC 290 in July.
“It’s the exact same spot… Speaking with the surgeon, it just
never healed properly. It actually never healed. It never set into
place and by the time that I realized that it’s not healing, I was
too deep in,” Hooker said on the MMA Hour. “I was too close to the
fight, everything was booked, so I was just kind of going out of my
way to protect it and not let it get hurt.”
“Then my second-to-last sparring session, one of my sparring
partners whipped a kick out and put it on the right spot and just
blew it right through. So, I had the same surgery, just a bigger
plate put in, and then they drilled some bone marrow out of my hip
and then injected it into the spot where it’s not healing just to
ensure it heals up.”
Having learned a lesson in the importance of allowing himself a
considerable amount of time to recover from such debilitating
injuries, Hooker and his team at City Kickboxing aren’t looking to
rush back into action, at least for the time being.
“I’ll be back to training in three months… I just never let it
set at the start. They gave me a smaller brace and it allowed me to
use it and then I was just doing stuff with it and lifting weights.
So, at this time, they’ve put me in a concrete cast, they’re not
letting me—there’s just absolutely no faith involved, which I need,
I need to be protected from myself. So, it’s just set in stone…
I’m playing everything by the book this time. I’m not breaking any
rules. I’m going to get this thing healed up. Yeah, I think five
months is a good target I’ve set myself.”