He has earned five of his 11 wins by submission and is constantly looking to improve his grappling and wrestling game. Hooper is looking forward to this matchup against Garcia and facing a new test with a style he hasn’t experienced much.
“I’m actually looking forward to this fight because I get to fight a left-handed guy,” Hooper said. “I have some tricks that I like to use against left-handed guys, and fighting a taller guy, it’s going to be fun. He’s somebody closer to my height, so I can show that side of it and not just fight like a stocky right-handed guy like I’ve always been doing.”
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Even though Hooper wants to show off some new things, he understands the importance of sticking to what you know and continuing to build on that, which in this case is his grappling. But come Saturday night, he hopes to use his cardio to push the pace and watch Garcia break.
“I think just pushing the pace a little more and being able to break somebody in the Octagon would be nice,” Hooper said. “I don’t have that Khabib (Nurmagomedov) or Islam (Makhachev) style of fighting, but when you’re pushing the pace and you can tell you’ve broke a guy, it’s a good feeling, and that’d be a nice one to have on Saturday night, for sure.”
