Our mate Dan ‘Hangman’ Hooker paid a visit to The Rock HQ to yarn to the Morning Rumble, mainly about the viral controversy that is his backyard scraps.
If you missed it, Dan hosted 32 men in his Auckland home for a ‘backyard scrap’. The fights lasted a minute each, all of them dusted in under an hour, and the winner went home with $52k prize money.
The main question begged, how did this all come about? Where the hell did the idea come from?
Dan said he got some inspiration from Kimbo Slice backyard street fight videos. He didn’t even “watch any kind of martial arts” leading up to his event, just the pure wrath of backyard fights.
Not long ago, Dan was invited to a crazy Russian fight show in Thailand to “host and kind of party… and act like an idiot” (which Bryce said he nailed).
Dan saw how the format was run “and how I could make it better”, and there it was, the beginning of Dan Hooker’s backyard scraps.
The event has gone viral, with over 300 million views across platforms, and has drawn a lot of controversy. So much so, that a police chopper hung around for a few hours in the air.
Dan wasn’t so stoked about this, posing a fair question: “My taxpayer dollars are keeping that in the air, can I at least get the footage?”
It was non-stop laughs in the studio, with him whipping a hilarious story about his friend named ‘Fight Dog’ who sported an ankle bracelet during the fight, using this as a ‘rehabilitation physical activity’.
Despite getting clearance from his parole officer, he got in trouble, and was locked up temporarily. Don’t worry, he’s since been released.
Dan couldn’t believe this: “You think a guy like Fight Dog sits around… holding hands with everyone singing Kumbaya and that’s therapy?”
It’s been a while since Dan has fought, as he went out with a hand injury earlier this year, but said he’s tracking for late September/early October.
When asked about a potential matchup, he gave a classic Dan Hooker answer: “Couldn’t care less mate.”
Despite the fact that people that rank below him have been calling him out, he’s not phased because “I don’t even really watch UFC anymore so like half of them I don’t even know.
“They’ll say ‘Ohhh Marvin called you out’ and I’ll say who's that?”
Fellow Kiwi fighter Israel Adesanya got into an altercation outside a pie shop earlier this year, where a punter tried to ‘one outs’ him.
Bryce suggested that while this was de-escalated pretty quickly, if it was Dan in that scenario, it wouldn’t quite go the same way.
Dan’s response was simple: “I’d make him swallow his teeth.”
The team even tried to tee up a Producer Mitch vs Dan fight, and while Mitch tried to backpedal with a “oh god no, oh no no no”, Dan was very open to the idea of getting Mitch in the next backyard scrap.
He was even kind enough to give Mitch the opening round vs Fight Dog, labelled as ‘Fight Dog vs Fight Pussy.’
We always love having Dan in, and we can’t wait to see his return!
