Dan Hooker defeated Paul Felder in his previous UFC outing
The ‘Paul Felder curse’ seems to be real and still kicking
One of the questions that Dan Hooker faced from Ariel Helwani recently was regarding the ‘Paul Felder curse’.
While this isn’t the official name for the sequence of events, it is rather extraordinary. Somehow most of the fighters who have faced Felder lost their next clash. Digging deeper into all this, anyone who beat Felder also ended up losing their next clash.
Edson Barbosa was the first victim as he lost to Tony Ferguson after beating Felder. Ross Pearson, Francisco Trinaldo and Mike Perry were the other three to lose after defeating Felder.
They can now add another name to that list, and it is of Hooker. The New Zealand star’s previous fight was against Felder and he defeated the American a few months back.
Hooker was beaten by Dustin Poirier at the latest UFC Fight Night event, and the Kiwi lost the final three rounds of the fight after a great start.
However, he didn’t seem to take this curse seriously.
The Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Tony Ferguson curse has played off really well. The pair have been set up to meet five times in the promotion but something or another cancels the bout.
This time, it was the coronavirus with Ferguson ending up facing Justin Gaethje for the interim Lightweight title.
El Cucuy lost that bout and it sees Khabib and Gaethje battle it out for the undisputed title.
Hooker, for his part, laughed off the talk of the curse while speaking with Helwani. He even suggested that Helwani was trying to “jinx” and it seems that it worked.
Felder hasn’t fought since losing to Hooker, and it will be interesting to see if he does return for another go in the Octagon.
The 35-year-old also tweeted that the curse is continuing and claimed he would “come out of retirement” to fight one of Poirier or Hooker.
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