Dan Hooker’s controversial backyard brawls are back - and this time it’s the ladies being invited to scrap it out for a whopping $50k.
The UFC star is doubling down on his no-rules fight night, where two fighters go head to head for just one minute.
“Alright, we’re gonna let the girls play next,” Hooker said in a video posted to Facebook alongside fellow UFC star Israel Adesanya. “We’re gonna find out who’s the baddest b***h in town.”
Adesanya added in chat about the incentive: “50k, one minute - or just as long as it takes to finish these b*****s in his backyard.”
Hooker even joked about vetting potential fighters by asking for a record: “Send me a little video of you doing something illegal so I know I can trust ya.”
The last time Hooker hosted one of these underground-style scraps, things turned controversial.
One of the blokes was a senior Mongrel Mob member wearing an ankle bracelet, which obviously caught a bunch of attention.
Boxing Coaches Association president Billy Meehan didn’t hold back when telling RNZ’s Checkpoint that it’s “straight-out thuggery” and warning someone could seriously get hurt.
They're just like absolutely smashing each other, and we're going to see somebody get seriously hurt, if not killed.
"It's got to be sanctioned by a sanctioning body. They're not even advertising where they're holding this, so the police obviously don't even know."
But Hooker reckons the haters are just having a cry.
"There's a few lefties having a sulk, but once everyone watches the full 45 minutes and sees the respect for the fighters, since when did putting gloves on in the backyard and having a punch up become illegal?" he said on the ‘Ariel Helwani Show’ following the backlash last month.
For Hooker, the idea brewed from watching Bahamian-American mixed martial artist and professional boxer, Kimbo Slice’s backyard scraps on YouTube back in the day.
He told The Rock’s Morning Rumble he thought to himself: “I could make it better.”
“It would be so cool to watch live, because start to finish, I knock 30 fights out. I would knock the whole tournament out in an hour.”
Hooker is showing no sign of slowing these backyard brawls down. The real question now is how to keep it all above board and make sure everyone walks away in one piece.
