UFC 266: Dan Hooker calls out Beneil Dariush, says ‘I like the look of his little number there’
- Hooker wants to face No 3-ranked UFC lightweight after a unanimous decision win against Nasrat Haqparast on Saturday night
- ‘He’s sitting there without a dance partner. That gets me excited, a fight like that,’ says ‘The Hangman’
Dan Hooker called out Beneil Dariush after getting a unanimous decision in his lightweight bout with Nasrat Haqparast on Saturday night’s UFC 266 preliminary card.
“The Hangman” (21-10) bounced back from successive defeats to Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler that have seen him slip to No 8 in the divisional rankings, with third-ranked Dariush seeming like the only viable match-up going forward.
“He’s the only one sitting there without a fight,” Hooker told media in his post-fight interview backstage. “If you look at the rankings, everyone is booked except him and Tony [Ferguson], who he just beat.
“He’s sitting there without a dance partner. That gets me excited, a fight like that. I like the look of his little number there, so I’d like to take it off him.”
Hooker’s victory capped a remarkable training camp that saw him forced into lockdown in New Zealand two days after accepting the fight, with visa issues for both fighters also seeing them arrive in the US just hours before having to weigh in.
“It was crazy, I gave it a bit of an undersell,” the 31-year-old Kiwi said. “It’s just been everything that could go wrong went wrong in this training camp.