Dan Hooker: Lack Of Crowd Led To Tony Ferguson Losing At UFC 256

Dan Hooker says the lack of an audience was a significant factor in Tony Ferguson’s defeat against Charles Oliveira at UFC 256.

‘El Cucuy’ looked way off the pace as he tried to rebound from his UFC 249 loss to Justin Gaethje this past weekend. Oliveira was able to dominate the grappling exchanges for 15 minutes to pick up a decision victory but Dan Hooker believes the fight would’ve been very different with a crowd.

“It’s pretty obvious to me what’s happened… (Tony)’s a crowd fighter, he draws energy from the crowd,” Hooker told Submission Radio. “Under those big moments, under the pressure, 10, 20, 30-thousand people there, you can’t tell me that doesn’t change the environment of the situation. And Charles Oliveira, to me, he’s a fighter that traditionally doesn’t do very well under the pressure of those big fights. You look at any big fight he’s had in his past, and he freezes, or he’ll crumble under the pressure of those big fights. So, to me, that’s what it was. Tony wasn’t awake. Tony didn’t look like he’d been riled up. And Charles Oliveira was in the zone, in his element, and freely doing his thing.”

“You can’t tell me that doesn’t change what you’re doing. Everyone is awesome at doing their day job, but it’s like, if you had to do your day job with 20,000 people there, yelling, screaming, getting you hyped up. It’s just the whole – I’ve been through it, I’ve been through it before. I fought twice this year. Once in my hometown in front of a sold-out stadium of my countrymen, and then flying over to Las Vegas to the APEX where those two fought, and it’s dead, it’s quiet. I was the same. I like the crowds, I function well, and I love the pressure. I feel like it just builds. But, it’s the whole week. Open workouts, weigh-ins. When you got the crowds there, you can draw energy from it and it gets you going, or it makes fighters cramp up and freeze.

“Everyone’s got world champion training partners. That’s a thing, there’s a name for it. World Championship training partners. They’re the guys that will kick the arse of the biggest name fighter in your gym, but he struggles to compete in an amateur environment, he struggles to compete in like an in-house gym fight. You see them freeze. You can’t tell me that same thing doesn’t apply at the highest tier of the sport and it’s interesting that we’re just seeing that now. It definitely to me would have changed how that fight played out.”

Hooker is not overly impressed by Oliveira and insisted nothing the Brazilian did was “amazing”, he said.

“I’m only one man, I only have my opinion. My opinion is that Charles Oliveira is still a p*ssy,” Hooker said. “Nah, I’m just having a bit of a laugh. He’s just not – he’s a bit whatever to me. He didn’t do anything amazing. He just did some basic fundamental stuff to Tony Ferguson, and Tony Ferguson had no real answer for it. To me he just hadn’t been drilling his fundamentals for a while, and it’s a game of improving your fundamentals and working on them. That’s just the way I saw it. It’s not like I was so impressed with the amazing stuff that Charles Oliveira was doing.” (Transcribed by MMA Fighting)

Do you agree with Dan Hooker? Is Tony Ferguson suffering due to the lack of crowds?