Daniel Cormier believes Dan Hooker entered UFC Fight Night 287 with the wrong mindset.
Hooker (24-15 MMA, 14-11 UFC) was finished by the debuting Salahdine Parnasse (24-2 MMA, 1-0 UFC) in the first round of Saturday's UFC Fight Night 287 main event at Accor Arena in Paris. The setback marked the 36-year-old's third in a row.
Going into the fight, Hooker explained how he's happy to be gatekeeping the UFC's top 10 lightweights
, which Cormier questions."When people generally hear that they're a gatekeeper or put in that position, they're mad," Cormier said on his YouTube channel. "They're upset, and they fight that with all that they can. Dan Hooker seemed to be embracing that and said, 'There've been a couple losses, and then moving your way down
the rankings, I'm more than happy to play the role that I'm in right now, and the role that I'm in right now is gatekeeping the top 10 of the UFC's lightweight division.' Me personally, I think there's too much acceptance, too much comfort in that.
"We have guys that are willing to fight anybody, anytime. Kevin Holland comes to mind. Kevin Holland never says or never will accept that he's a gatekeeper. He will always fight to win, and he will always fight anybody. But just because you fight anybody doesn't mean you almost have to accept that if they beat you, they're just going to go forward and you just continue to tumble. Your intention should always be to stop the tumble, to stop the losses, to stop the suffering. It's suffering. Losing hurts in any way. You cannot accept that. When you hear a fighter do that, it just isn't good because you do that before the fight, and then the fight goes in the way that it did. That's not good. That's really, really not good for Dan Hooker. So I'm very interested to see what happens with him going forward."
Hooker is on a three-fight losing skid for the first time in his career. "The Hangman" was also the one to welcome Michael Chandler to the UFC – a fight which like Parnasse, resulted in a first-round TKO setback.
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC analyst: 'Too much acceptance' in Dan Hooker embracing gatekeeper role
