You can’t blame Hooper for feeling this way. He is making his UFC debut before the age of 21 and he’s doing it on the biggest card of the year in Las Vegas. That’s a pretty wild idea for most 20-year-olds.
“I think about that every now and again,” he said. “For most people my age, the most stressful part of their day or their every couple months is taking a final for a class or working their part-time job while I’m here living a pretty boring life up until I step in a cage and some other guy tries to hurt me as much as he can in 15 minutes.”
Well, that part sounds exciting.
“The rest of it is pretty boring.”
There is peace in that routine, though, and the reality that all that work and repetition is to show up on one night and deliver the goods for 15 minutes or less. Yeah, it’s stressful, but it can be glorious as well. And despite his youth, Hooper appreciates that. He also loves the competition.
“I think at this point I’m pretty deep in here and there’s no going back,” he said. “I’m seeing how far I can take it, and I’m a competitive guy. I like to see how I stack up against other people. I’m sure everybody will walk past a guy on the street and be like, ‘I wonder if I can beat that dude up.’ And I want to take that to the extreme and be like, ‘That jacked dude over there that’s been preparing for three months, I wonder if I can beat him up.’”