interview<\/a>.<\/p>\nOn the topic of Gaethje\u2019s age, Pimblett compared him to Hooker, another veteran, and crudely insulted Hooker\u2019s grappling skills, saying, \u201cDan Hooker couldn\u2019t grapple a f*cking rapist off his ma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, Hooker hasn\u2019t taken kindly to that comment. He subsequently took to social media to respond, sharing video of a previous encounter with Pimblett to call out \u201cThe Baddy\u201d for changing his attitude.<\/p>\n
\u201cAin\u2019t said shit when we were face to face, bitch,\u201d Hooker wrote. \u201cI thought we were mates, but you\u2019re not a very good mate, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
The invective from Hooker didn\u2019t stop there as he wrote another tweet, adding, \u201cIt\u2019s on [sight], you fat bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pimblett later kept the trash talk going in his own social media response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThought we couldn\u2019t be mates \u2018cause I\u2019m ranked above you,\u201d Pimblett wrote. \u201cYou took a hypothetical joke about how bad your grappling is and responded by talking shit about my mate who committed suicide? Now that\u2019s lowest of the low and on [sight] is fine by me you\u2019re utter dogshit at fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hooker and Pimblett both occupy spots in the MMA Fighting Global Rankings<\/a>, with Hooker at No. 7 and Pimblett tied for the No. 11 spot. Should Pimblett defeat Gaethje for the interim belt, the expectation is that he will face undisputed champion Ilia Topuria. However, with Topuria currently taking time off to deal with personal and legal issues, the door is open for the UFC 324 main event winner to defend their title at some point, and the Hooker-Saint Denis winner might just sneak into that spot with an impressive performance at UFC 325.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Hooker already has a future opponent in mind after taking a stray shot from Paddy Pimblett. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-402291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}