After picking up a few losses in his recent outings in the UFC’s lightweight division, the No.8 ranked Dan Hooker has recently hinted that he might be planning a drop down to the featherweight ranks.
“I’m doing a little something, something at the moment,” Hooker had told Mac Life. “You’ve got to make your next move your best move. Let’s just say I’m working with the UFC and the fight dietician very closely and I’m doing a test, a little test run. And we’ll see.”
The plan appears to have been hatched following his first round kimura submission loss to Islam Makhachev late last month. That had marked his third defeat in his past four fights, albeit against top-flight opposition, with his other losses coming to current interim champ Dustin Poirier and former title challenger Michael Chandler.
The good news for Hooker now is that it seems his test cut down to featherweight was a success as he has now posted a photo of him tipping the scales at 146lbs, while commenting, “45 look alive.”
If he does drop down a division then it won’t be his first rodeo at featherweight as he actually started out his UFC run there between 2014-2016.
During that time he compiled a 3-3 record, before switching to lightweight in 2017, which for quite some time appeared to have been a good move, winning 7 of his first 8 fights there, claiming notable wins over the likes of Gilbert Burns, Paul Felder, Al Iaquinta and Jim Miller along the way.
That suggests that Hooker is more than capable of still holding his own at 155lbs, but it seems he fancies his chances better at 145lb, where he would be going up against the likes of current champion Alex Volkanovski, Max Holloway, Brian Ortega and Yair Rodriguez to name but a few.
