Dan Hooker isn’t buying UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria’s recent claims that he’s going to move up to the lightweight division next year in a bid to win a second title.
“Classic sh*t,” Hooker told Submission Radio this week. “It’s pretty evident that he’s just working off of McGregor’s playbook. Line 1 in McGregor’s playbook is to keep your name in the headlines. That’s all that I kind of see from it, is Topuria keeping his name in the headlines. The guy doesn’t fight that often. I think he just fights Volk sometime next year, March or April.”
Topuria had already indicated after his last victory over Max Holloway in October that he’d we open to fighting Volkanovski next by squaring off with him in the Octagon, and so Hooker has put him on blast for now appearing to be casting that match-up in doubt.
“Don’t get in the f*cking cage with him and agree to fight him then, d*ckhead,” Hooker said. “You let him get in the cage, you had a faceoff with him, and you said you’d fight him, man to man? That’s that: You’ve already agreed to a fight, and how are you going to back out of it now?”
