Preview: UFC 290 ‘Volkanovski vs. Rodriguez’

Lightweights

Jalin Turner (13-6) vs. Dan Hooker (22-12)
Odds: Turner (-275), Hooker (+230)

After the last few years, it's nice to see Hooker finally head into a fight with some momentum. For years, Hooker's career was marked by a slow and consistent rise; initially signed to provide some local flavor for a card in Auckland back in 2014, "The Hangman" hung around as a mid-tier featherweight until a move up to 155 pounds unlocked a ton of things. That move up came at the same time Hooker was channeling what was a formless style into a more applied pressure game, and so Hooker worked his way up the ladder to the point that he had an entire card built around him as the headliner, as he beat Paul Felder in Auckland to cap off one of the UFC's last cards before the pandemic. A few months after the win over Felder, Hooker went tooth and nail with Dustin Poirier for a five-round barnburner of a main event, and while Poirier walked away with the win, Hooker showed enough to suggest he could sneak into the title picture - or at the very least hang around as a top-five to ten lightweight for years to come. Instead, Hooker's career felt somewhat aimless for the next two years. Hooker was tasked with welcoming Michael Chandler to the UFC, and while there's no shame in losing to Chandler, it was a particularly poor performance that saw Hooker look completely off his game before suffering a first-round knockout. And while Hooker eventually rebounded with a win over Nasrat Haqparast, that momentum was lost almost immediately when Hooker took a quick turnaround fight against Islam Makhachev and got quickly run over. For some reason, Hooker decided the answer from there was to cut back down to featherweight, where things went just as poorly against Arnold Allen - but after a rough two years, a November win where Hooker outclassed Claudio Puelles was a reminder that a lot of Hooker's issues have been down to level of competition.

Up next for Hooker is Turner, and this seems like the right type of challenge for each man at this point. Turner stood out as a prospect immediately upon making it onto the greater radar; if nothing else, his 6-foot-3 frame stands out as a particularly gigantic lightweight. But through his first few fights in the UFC, there wasn't a ton of evidence either way as to whether Turner would sink or swim in deeper waters; he acquitted himself well in a particularly tough debut against Vicente Luque, but Matt Frevola rode his wrestling early and often for what looked like a repeatable win over Turner. But then things finally clicked; initially Turner was scoring the expected quick knockouts over less athletic competition, but he eventually showed some skill as an offensive grappler. Once Turner was knocking out and finishing historically stout fighters like Jamie Mullarkey and Brad Riddell, it became apparent that Turner was on the verge of becoming a problem for the lightweight division at large. A March loss to Mateusz Gamrot was both a setback and a promising sign; it was a nip-tuck affair that Turner easily could've won on the scorecards thanks to some big moments of offense, and if nothing else it was impressive that he was able to keep up against one of the sport's most relentless wrestlers. Both fighters are around the same level, but this does read as a tough fight for Hooker, particularly since this is the rare opponent that will come into this fight with a longer frame; if he fights with pressure, Turner reads as the harder shot-for-shot hitter, but attempting to win this from range takes Hooker out of his usual game while also providing little safety against such a long opponent. Hopefully these two just march forward and make this much more of a coin flip, but the lean is that Turner can find an easier path to a finish; the pick is Turner via first-round knockout.

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Volkanovski vs. Rodriguez
Moreno vs. Pantoja
Whittaker vs. Du Plessis
Turner vs. Hooker
Nickal vs. Woodburn
The Prelims