Dan Hooker fought through a broken arm for the better part of two full rounds to get the job done against Jalen Turner at UFC 290, but it took a replay to figure out exactly when his injury occurred.
Hooker said Monday MMA watch He then went back and watched the fight, when he witnessed a kick delivered by Turner in the opening round which possibly broke a bone in his wrist. After a few minutes, the 33-year-old New Zealander knew something had gone terribly wrong, even though he had never thought of finding a way out of the fight.
“I went back and watched and I think it was a bit of a slow process,” Hooker said. MMA watch. “I think it was a front kick in the first round and I think it may have cracked a little bit in it. If I look at it, just as I start the second round, I look at my arm because it’s not responding the way I want it to, and then in the second [round]he landed a few more kicks and I think that breaks it.
“I definitely felt it in the second. I was like, ‘Something here.’ I couldn’t feel my right hand, and then it wasn’t until the third round that I dropped him and tried to finish him off, I was following through with punches, and it was one punch and I said ‘I’ I’m going to throw my right hand anyway. I throw my right and I feel like it’s completely out of place. My whole right arm is dead right. Not the way I wanted to win. I’d control him at the top with my right elbow and stay at the top and punch him with my left.”
One of the most significant blows of the fight came when Turner fired a headbutt in the early part of the second round that bounced off Hooker’s face.
Although the shot was clean, Hooker survived the next attack and really turned the tables by hurting Turner just moments later, resulting in a near over submission as the round drew to a close. This final sequence, along with his performance in the third round, convinced Hooker that he had done enough to secure the win, regardless of the fact that he went nearly 10 minutes into a competition with only a fully capable one.
“In the second round, it put me in my head – I wanted to get my hand in there but she didn’t do what she was told,” Hooker said. “I hurt him at the end of that round and ended up with a rear naked choke. So here is the sequence for the end of the fight in round two.
“Third round, I would hurt him on his feet and then hold him to the ground. It’s hard to argue with that. I was so confident. I was so confident that I got the job done.”
Even with a broken arm, Hooker came closest to ending the fight with a submission attempt in the second round, but he wasn’t discouraged that he couldn’t put Turner down.
“That was pretty much a cover,” Hooker said. This was in depth, but it’s not something you can mentally like, ‘This was my chance! “I didn’t feel it at all [like] That was my only chance. We have five more minutes so we’ll get him out of here.”
Hooker is now on a winning streak after his performance at UFC 290, but he’s not ready to start looking forward to what’s next just yet.
Hooker’s broken arm will require surgery on Wednesday, and he’ll likely have another surgery to fix some damage to his face as well, but Hooker has no doubt he’ll bounce back quickly as he always does.
“[The broken arm is] very painful. But what are you going to do about it?” Hooker said. “We’re going to fix everything and be back to 100 percent in no time.”