Up until now Conor McGregor has been adamant that he still wants to fight Michael Chandler next, despite his rival booking a fight with Charles Oliveira for later this year, but now it seems he has a new opponent in mind, and a potential date and destination too.
McGregor ran into current 6th ranked UFC lightweight Dan Hooker at the BKFC event this past weekend, and it seems they have verbally agreed to a fight early next year.
“February 1st in Saudi Arabia,” McGregor stated when asked at the weekend about his next fight. “Dan Hooker.”
Hooker has since spoken to Submission radio to confirm that he had discussed the fight with the former two-division champion at the BKFC event in Spain on Saturday night, and that they both were on-board with the idea.
“We’re kindred spirits, as you can see,” Hooker told Submission Radio. “We get along quite well. I think we’re both very similar. There’s a lot of similarities there. We just spoke in the ring. I’m on board. He’s on board. We just need to get the UFC on board and we’ll get this thing across the line.”
Hooker had talked up the idea of fighting McGregor back in August immediately after a split-decision win over Mateusz Gamrot, and hand gone on to explain later that the idea of stealing the lucrative match-up from Chandler was the icing on the cake for him.
“It’s like the biggest troll move you could do of all time is to snake that fight off Chandler,” Hooker told The Mac Life at the time. “Like he waits all that time and then Conor just fights me anyway, like that would be gold. Like, I would feel like the biggest snake troll of all time. I would get my black belt in trolling.”
The balance of power has since shifted though due to Chandler surprising many people by suddenly agreeing to fight Charles Oliveira instead, but it did still seem like there was still a strong chance that the fight against McGregor would follow after that.
Clearly Hooker thinks he’s now in pole position for the McGregor fight, but given how difficult it’s been to get ‘The Notorious’ back into the Octagon over the past three years, and how erratic his behaviour has seen of late, it’s fair to say it’s far from a done deal.
