Dan Hooker has gone from fighter to promoter.
This past weekend, ‘The Hangman’ hosted a single-elimination super heavyweight tournament in, of all places, his backyard. The event consisted of 32 fighters battling it out in 60-second boxing matches with MMA gloves, all of them competing to win a $50,000 grand prize.
As expected, the backyard brawls produced some pretty nasty knockouts, including an especially brutal face-plant KO that you can check out below:
During an interview with The MAC Life, Hooker offered some insight into what inspired him to host such an event.
“I was just at a Thailand event,” Hooker said. “I got brought over to just kind of host. I had nothing to do with organizing it, or matching it, or getting the fighters, and I saw the format of 32 fighters and how to win — one-minute fights — and I thought a super heavyweight event in New Zealand would be absolutely incredible. And then three fights into it, I was standing there and I said, ‘I knew this would be a good idea.’”
Initially, Hooker released snippets from the fight card on social media, but you can now watch the full event on YouTube.
“It ran smooth. Not a single issue,” Hooker added. “We knocked out 30 fights in an hour. No serious injuries. We had one fighter hurt his arm punching someone else, and that was the most serious injury we had for the day. So everyone got home to their family safe. …
“Of course I had judges, of course I had medics. Of course, I had medics who checked all the boys and had that all cleared, had all the right things in the right places. And everyone did an incredible job. … We had the rules checked and cleared, we asked the right people that needed to be asked, and I knew that after the event, I would have to answer to the combat sports community in New Zealand.
“Of course, I had all those things in place. The matchmaking — 32 guys, the range of skills … There were huge discrepancies coming into the tournament. I think the lightest coming into the tournament was 95 kilos, and the heaviest was 205 kilos, so obviously they can’t fight each other. You match them in the first round, similar to weights, so by the time it goes up, you’re getting experienced, skillful fighters, the weights become a lot closer to each other. And going into it, experienced guys fighting experienced guys, less experienced guys, or bigger guys fighting the bigger guys.”
Dan Hooker promises more backyard fights following criticism from pundits
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many within the combat sports community bashed Hooker’s backyard scraps, but the criticism has only encouraged ‘Hangman’ to put on more events like it in the future.
“Now you’ve challenged me,” Hooker said. “I was going to leave it, but now there are people trying to stop me – now I am honourbound and forced to pursue it. I’m just a man with an iPhone and a dream. I didn’t know it would go that good, so we’ll do another one definitely this year.”
