Dan Hooker has had some success at lightweight, but it looks like climbing the mountain up to Charles Oliveira isn’t something he wants for the moment. Hooker is now looking to return to the 145 pound division where he started his career, and where his City Kickboxing teammate Alexander Volkanovski reigns supreme.
In an interview with MMAFighting, Hooker revealed his motivation for moving down a division. “That’s the real motivating factor to go down to featherweight, is that I didn’t want to tread water at lightweight.
Dan Hooker Explains Featherweight Move, Potential Clash With Teammate Volkanovski
You want to be a world champion. That’s your goal, so you want to get there as quickly as you possibly can. This is the quickest path for me. If I would have stayed at lightweight, I would have had to kind of sit there and gatekeep the top 10 for the next 12 to 18 months.
At this stage of my career, it doesn’t give me as much motivation as moving yourself towards a title. To just move down to a weight class where I feel I’m quite comfortable making and be straight back into the mix, is a big motivating factor.”
Hooker once fought at featherweight, but the gruelling weight cuts moved him up to a more comfortable 155 pounds. However, with recent advances in nutritional science, he’s happier making the cut these days. “Advancements in the science around weight cutting have really developed.
It’s kind of incomparable when I used to be making it. The UFC didn’t even have a Performance Institute, let alone a nutrition department, let alone these guys who are weight cutting specialists and working with a fight dietician, who is kind of monitoring everything.
I always knew I could do it, but it’s whether you could do it and still perform, or do it within a safe range. It’s not like I just eyeballed it.”
As for his teammate, featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, Dan Hooker simply isn’t worried about facing him. The sky’s the limit for Volkanovski, he says. “You just want all your friends to win.
You want them all to be successful. I’ve seen some teams where it’s not even in the same weight class, but one person on the same team starts getting a lot of success and then other teammates, there’s maybe some jealousy creeping in.
It’s just not like that for our team. Everyone just wants the best for everyone. Like we say, one of us wins, we all win; one of us loses, we all lose. That’s why we are in the position that we’re in. We really go out there and represent our team.
Anything can happen. It’s such a crazy sport. Alex could end up being double champ and fighting at lightweight or something crazy like that. That’s what I want for him. I want nothing but success for him. I don’t want my success at his expense.”
Will Dan Hooker fare better at featherweight than lightweight? Let us know in the comments.
