As the layers peel back, it is becoming easier to justify why Dana White snubbed Arman Tsarukyan for the lightweight title fight. Dan Hooker didn’t walk away from his loss to Arman Tsarukyan feeling beaten in the usual way. There was no simple acceptance, no neat bow tied around the defeat. Instead, there was irritation and, as it turns out, a broken nose that very few people knew about until now.

Months later, that missing detail is suddenly reshaping how fans view both the fight itself and Dana White’s decision to keep Tsarukyan out of the lightweight title picture.

Appearing on The Ariel Helwani Show, Hooker was asked why the Tsarukyan loss still left a “bad taste.” At first, he brushed it off, explaining that he didn’t even fully process the defeat right away. He said he tends to compartmentalize losses, especially when another fight comes quickly.

But then he circled back to the real issue, “And it was f— when this c— f—headbutted me at the weigh-in and broke my f– nose. It pi— me right off. But it’s like you can’t, you can’t get emotional at that stage of the fight. Man, I was fuming. Like I wanted that back, but you just have to brush it off.”

Helwani, visibly surprised, pressed him on the injury itself. Hooker confirmed it was medically documented, “They scanned me after the fight. They took me to the hospital and scanned me after the fight, and they were like, ‘Oh, you got a fractured nose.’  I was like, there was no way in there. That had absolutely nothing to do with the fight.”

He even added that he wasn’t angry at Tsarukyan personally, calling it what it was and moving on, but the situation itself left him baffled. When asked whether the broken nose affected him inside the Octagon, ‘The Hangman’ was clear: physically, no. Mentally, yes.

When Helwani asked if he considered not fighting, Dan Hooker didn’t hesitate: “F— no.”

That context casts the fight itself in a new light. Tsarukyan dominated once the bout hit the mat, eventually securing an arm-triangle choke in the second round. On paper, it was a clean, elite win. But now fans are forced to ask: how much did that weigh-in incident alter the mental landscape before the opening bell?

More importantly, it gives sharper meaning to Dana White’s stance. The UFC CEO previously confirmed that the headbutt factored “a hundred per cent” into Arman Tsarukyan being left out of the interim title fight at UFC 324.

But Dan Hooker’s admission reframes that decision. This wasn’t just trash talk or posturing. It was an act that caused a documented injury, and had the fracture been worse, the fight might not have happened at all. However, as ‘The Hangman’ gets ready for his next outing at UFC 325, he’s also taking shots at the entire sport of MMA!

Dan Hooker goes off on the “god-awful sport” of MMA

With the promotion barely catching its breath after UFC 324, the Octagon is already heading to Australia for UFC 325, headlined by Alexander Volkanovski vs. Diego Lopes. Sitting in the co-main event is Dan Hooker, set to face Benoit Saint-Denis. On paper, it’s a high-stakes, crowd-pleasing fight. Verbally, though, Hooker has taken things in a very different direction.

In a recent interview with Engage, Hooker delivered a scathing, almost existential critique of MMA itself, with “Once I finish this stupid career, I’d actually like to make some money, that’d be cool. I’d like to get into business and investment when I actually have time, and I’m not distracted by this f—— god-awful sport. ”

The lightweight star also said he believes that if he had spent the same time building a business or investing instead of fighting, he’d be much wealthier today and would have avoided a lot of the long-term physical and mental damage that comes with the sport.

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As such, Dan Hooker’s confession does more than add an asterisk to one fight; it exposes the fragile margins this sport often ignores.

A fractured nose at a weigh-in, brushed aside in the moment, now helps explain why the UFC drew a hard line with Arman Tsarukyan and why Hooker himself sounds increasingly disillusioned. His words aren’t just about one loss or one opponent; they’re about the accumulation of damage, frustration, and choices that define a fighter’s career.