Bobby Green is back.
The 37 year-old lightweight veteran kept himself in the win column by smashing 155-pound wrestler Grant Dawson in the UFC Vegas 80 main event last weekend at APEX in Las Vegas, and will likely replace “KGD” in the division Top 10 when the official UFC rankings are updated on Tuesday morning.
No. 9-ranked Dan Hooker will be waiting to greet him.
“Dawson’s, legit, bro, that kid’s a problem, that kid’s a problem. And then for Bobby to go out there and clean him up the way that he cleaned him up, that’s a heap of momentum,” Hooker told Submission Radio. “Beating number 10, he’ll probably be number 10 by the end of this week. And like, that’s it, you wanna fight people that have heaps of momentum. You wanna fight people that get you excited. I don’t think too much about it. Now I have a manager. I have to message him before I start calling people out. But yeah, I just straight away called after that performance, I was just like, would love to fight him.”
Like Green (31-14-1, 1 NC), the 33 year-old Hooker (23-12) rebounded from consecutive losses to win back-to-back fights, which includes a victory over a ranked contender. This seems like pretty easy matchmaking, depending on how quickly “King” wants to turn things around after his latest win.
“People call it a resurgence, if you will, but it’s just, the level of experience you have from going through all of that and still being in the game and still getting better is a million times better than a guy coming in who’s undefeated and who’s never been tested and stuff like that,” Hooker continued. “You can’t tell me that that guy has a shot against… like, you wouldn’t put a young kid who’s 10-0 against either me or Bobby Green. Like, they’d just get cleaned up. Cleaned up with just sheer experience. So, it’s like that sheer experience. If you don’t get disheartened, you don’t get knocked down by the difficult times, like, look how much better you become as a fighter.”
For more results and fallout from UFC Vegas 80 click here.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania