The New Zealander doesn’t worry about scorecards away from home, either: “It’s between me and the other man. [In the end,] he knows who won, and I know who won. I never care about judges.”
So, what would he say to that other man if they were standing next to each other right now?
“Good luck!” Hooker laughs. “He hasn’t said a bad thing. It’s a difficult fight, because he’s a nice guy. I enjoy s**t-talkers as much as the next person, but he seems like a stand-up bloke, so I’d shake his hand and wish him luck for the contest.”
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Typical of fighters from the City Kickboxing stable, Hooker never expects to end a fight in a certain way, believing instead that a finish is the result of doing everything correctly and systematically breaking down his opponent.
“If I’m putting on that master class performance, then I’m confident that the finish will come. Finishes aren’t something you chase. You get yourself in trouble when you start chasing them.”
He continues, “I want this to be a perfect performance. It’s what keeps me in the gym, keeps me accepting fights. It’s why I want to fight the best guys in the world. It’s the same as with golf, where the ultimate goal is to get a hole-in-one on every hole. That’s the ultimate goal: perfection. That’s what I’m chasing in the Octagon.”
