‘The Hangman’ earned a huge win in front of his home crowd in one of the best non-title fight main events in UFC history that took place just over five years ago.
Long before Dan Hooker’s recent career resurgence, the New Zealander was a rising contender in the lightweight division.
Hooker’s one-sided loss to Edson Barboza had halted his four-fight win streak but ‘The Hangman’ bounced back by defeating James Vick and Al Iaquinta in 2019.
Hooker has overcome some tremendous adversity inside of the Octagon and that’s exactly what he had to do in his first main event spotlight back in 2020.
For the first time since 2017, the Octagon landed in Auckland where the home crowd favorite would take on a dangerous striker who he had previously called out to his face in a post-fight interview.
Dan Hooker and Paul Felder put on an instant classic in Auckland
Both Dan Hooker and Paul Felder were looking to break through into the upper tier of the lightweight rankings by emerging from Auckland with the win.
There was tension between them in the build-up to the fight and that ended up producing an absolute war over five rounds where both men left a part of themselves inside the Octagon.
In a clash between the #6 and #7-ranked contenders, Hooker started the fight well, winning the first round on all three scorecards after starting to cause Felder’s right eye to swell along with chopping down his legs.
With ‘The Hangman’ continuing to pick his opponent off from the outside, the emphasis was on Felder to close the gap but he continued to take damage whilst doing so.
‘The Irish Dragon’ started to achieve more success around the halfway point despite the punishment he had already taken, convincingly winning the fourth round on all three cards after coming out the blocks fast.
In the fifth round, with the fight potentially hanging in the balance, both men had success in a closely contested final stanza that ended with Hooker using his wrestling to control the final minute.
Hooker got his hand raised via a controversial split decision winning 48-47 despite 12 of 17 media members seeing the fight in favor of Felder.
In an emotional post-fight interview, Felder spoke about retirement after taking off his gloves and though he did make a return later that year to step in and face Rafael dos Anjos on short notice, this was truly the current UFC commentator’s swan song.
“I knew it was close. I feel like I hurt him a lot in the fight but he got the takedowns, smart. He busted me up pretty good and that might be it for me. Man, I got a four-year old at home that misses me every time I go away like this but congratulations to Dan.
“I knew this is exactly what I was in for when I came up here to New Zealand. I p—– this guy off and when you p— off a talented guy like Dan, he’s gonna bring it to you and man, that was fun brother. That was fun, five rounds going at it.”
February 23 will always be remembered in MMA history for this great main event clash with the following iconic photo of the two opponents in hospital together regularly making an appearance on social media.
Dan Hooker and Paul Felder reflect on their war that is now five years old
On a recent episode of Michael Bisping’s Believe You Me podcast, Paul Felder and Dan Hooker reflected on the fight being five years in the past.
“It’s about time we had another beer together my friend, it’s about time we had a beer together,” Hooker said. “It’s been a long time.”
Felder remarked how at the time, both men were trying to prove that they deserved to be in the title picture which ‘The Hangman’ currently finds himself in at this point in time.
It didn’t work out for him last time out despite his win over Felder with Hooker losing back back-to-back fights to Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler but he now believes that he’s in a much better position to contend with the very best.
“Back. I’m back baby, it’s a long time coming. It’s a lot of hard work that’s involved in that and a lot of ups, a lot of downs but yeah it’s, you just feel like you’re more comfortable now.”
Hooker will unfortunately have to wait a bit longer to continue his winning streak after he withdrew from his upcoming clash with Justin Gaethje at UFC 313 due to an injury.