Dan Hooker continues to take aim at Paddy Pimblett, this time bringing up a supposed confrontation with Conor McGregor to back up his opinion.
This Saturday, Hooker fights Benoit Saint Denis in what should be a brutal lightweight clash at UFC 325, but Hooker has spent much of the build-up to the event talking and answering questions about Pimblett. An ugly war of words developed between them after Pimblett made a crude remark hypothetically involving Hooker’s mother to criticize his grappling, and Hooker firing back by invoking the memory of a friend of Pimblett’s who died by suicide.
Hooker was asked about Pimblett at Wednesday’s media day for UFC 325 and briefly addressed the feud, citing an alleged incident between Pimblett and McGregor as evidence of Pimblett’s character.
“I’m a thumbs up, thumbs down guy,” Hooker said. “[Pimblett is] thumbs down. This guy talks, talks, talks, talks, and then he gets caught on his shit and he just turns into a victim, he goes into victim mode straightaway. Like, he’s talked shit.
“Is that common knowledge that he talked shit about Conor McGregor and then Conor McGregor drove around to his house? Drove around to his house and he sat outside in his car calling the bloke and Paddy refused to come outside. That tells you all you need to know about a guy.”
Hooker is referring to a story that circulated around 2022 in which McGregor was in Liverpool and allegedly confronted Pimblett at his home over a social media beef.
According to Pimblett, he had heard McGregor was in the city and was told the fighter and his associates made a commotion at someone’s house, but it wasn’t his and the two have never had an up-close interaction. Pimblett claims he would happily have confronted McGregor or at the very least used door camera footage for social media content.
Watch Pimblett’s response from a 2022 podcast below.
One thing Hooker knows for sure is that he wasn’t impressed by Pimblett’s performance against Justin Gaethje in this past Saturday’s UFC 324 main event. Gaethje defeated Pimblett by unanimous decision to claim an interim lightweight title in a bout that was high on action, but also garnered criticism from some veterans for a lack of technique.
Hooker argues that Pimblett didn’t look close to being a championship-level fighter.
“Dogshit,” Hooker said. “He talks an awful lot of shit for someone that fights like that. If the only thing coming out of that fight is that you’ve got a good chin—coming from experience—you fought like shit.”
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