Fans questioned Dan Hooker’s decision-making in his loss at UFC Qatar.
Hooker was submitted by Arman Tsarukyan in the second round of their lightweight main event on November 22.
This was just the second time that ‘The Hangman’ has been submitted in the UFC, having been caught in a kimura by Islam Makhachev back in 2021.
Hooker was brutally honest in his assessment of the fight and what it means for his career following the end of a three-fight win streak.
The fan favorite also had no issue admitting that he made a mistake in the fight due to “forgetting” about something that cost him on Saturday night.
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Dan Hooker says he forgot that Charles Oliveira couldn’t submit Arman Tsarukyan with a guillotine
Arman Tsarukyan racked up just over six minutes of control time before securing an arm triangle submission in the second round.
While Dan Hooker has two UFC wins via guillotine choke on his record, many fans were critical of him for attempting this in both rounds only to end up on the ground.
When giving his thoughts on the fight in a video with TheMacLife, where Hooker called out Renato Moicano, he joked about the first thing that host Oscar Willis said to him when seeing him after the defeat.
“He walks in and he goes, ‘So Charles Oliveira couldn’t guillotine him and you thought you’d give it a crack?’ I did.”
Oliveira came close to finishing Tsarukyan in their UFC 300 bout, but even the fighter with the most submission wins in the history of the promotion couldn’t secure the tap.
In response to Hooker, Willis claimed that the lightweight’s counter to him was that he “forgot” about ‘Do Bronx’ not being able to catch the number one contender with the same technique.
Hooker went on to admit when he was asked whether he thought his choke attempts were close that like many spectators, he was stunned by how Tsarukyan was able to reverse the position to escape from the second guillotine.
“The second one, I thought that and then he did a back flip out of it and I was like, ‘What?!’ He’s good, he’s good at keeping really tight.”
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Dan Hooker doesn’t regret fighting Arman Tsarukyan or talking trash to him
While his decision to try and submit Arman Tsarukyan with two guillotine chokes only to end up in bad positions may not have been the best move, Dan Hooker doesn’t regret his decision to take the fight.
There was mutual respect between them following a tense build-up to UFC Qatar, with Hooker saying during the video with TheMacLife that he doesn’t “take any of it back” because “we had fun”.
‘The Hangman’ went on to say that while the defeat could have a big impact on his career, he still believes it was the right fight to make.
“It is what it is. No one else wanted to fight that guy. No one else wanted to step up and fight that guy and then what? The division just stalls. You got a number one contender no one wants to fight. You got a champ that doesn’t want to fight. We can’t all sit around.”