Dan Hooker not buying UFC champ Ilia Topuria’s lightweight move

Dan Hooker doubts UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria moves up to lightweight.

Topuria (16-0 MMA, 8-0 UFC) teased a potential move up to 155 pounds after scoring back-to-back knockouts of Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway. Topuria’s coach cited his weight cut as the main reason for the desired move.

However, Hooker doesn’t think Topuria changes weight classes. He compared his approach to Conor McGregor’s.

“Classic sh*t,” Hooker told Submission Radio. “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.”

After becoming the first to knock out Holloway this past October at UFC 308, Topuria welcomed a rematch with Volkanovski. Hooker ripped Topuria for contemplating a change of plans after agreeing to fight his City Kickboxing teammate.

“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?”

Hooker (24-12 MMA, 14-8 UFC) is back in the upper echelon of the UFC lightweight division after three-straight wins over Claudio Puelles, Jalin Turner, and most recently Mateusz Gamrot at UFC 305.