Chase Hooper One Step Closer to UFC Championship Bout

-Shane Mercer

Chase “The Dream” Hooper scored a big win at UFC Fight Night: Holm vs. Viera.  He got the TKO victory over Felipe Colares in the third round of their featherweight bout.  MILLIONS connected with Chase after the fight and he sent us a short video that we used to create the video above.

Here are the questions and his answers:

Shane: Can you walk us through the fight all the way to the third round ground n pound finish?

Chase: Yeah, so the fight went crazy good. Everything felt perfect going into it. Everything from like my favorite guy to wrap my hands. He wasn't on the list of people that were going to be wrapping. So I was just like, hey, give me whoever. And then, that guy walks into the room and I knew it was going to be a good night. The wraps felt great, the warmup felt great. All the pieces were just lining up and I felt really confident going into it and I was just trying to be in the mentality of just kind of giving it my all and full steam ahead, not really holding back. It's kind of been an issue in the past and yeah, I just kind of scrambled, scrambled wherever the fight went, just kind of kept it going. 

Until we were both tired going into the third, my coach told me, hey, be on top of this round. Stop getting thrown by that –and I switched up a little bit, took him down, got a nice double leg, got some other takedowns here. Just kept scrambling, found a position where he was getting a little tired and then beat them up and they stopped the fight and it didn't feel like I got any less time in than 15 minutes, I was super exhausted after. But, happy to not have to go another what, three minutes and, happy with the win and obviously happy with that bonus check. So, good night all in all.

Shane: Who do you want to fight next and where do you see your career going from here?

Chase: Yes, so I never really plan the next person who I'm going to fight, at least not this close after. We'll kind of see what UFC hits us with as far as names go. We'll see whether it's at 45 or 55. I'm going to go to the UFC Performance Institute. They'll run like tests on you to tell you, like physically for your body type and for how much weight you walk around with and all that normally. Like what division is the most intelligent to be in so that way I'm not just cutting a ton of weight or being way too small, so we'll kind of see. 

But like I said, kind of going into this fight, I've been training for the past 11 months, not just for this fight but for the next 3, 4, 5 and just trying to really keep that skill set up and just prove that I deserve to be in UFC and just be ready for those fights as they start to ramp themselves up opponent-wise, skill level-wise and all that. And yeah, I'm pretty much ready for whatever. Whatever UFC tells me to do, I really don't have much of a choice, so I'm looking forward to it. 

Shane: Do you have a message you want to share with your fans?

Chase: So, I guess my message for the fans would just be, thanks for all the support over the years. Like I get a crazy amount of positivity from the MMA community, which is really hard to come by, especially with the internet just in general, people always want to rag on you. But I get a crazy amount of positivity, a ton of great people that I've met kind of over social media or fans of the events and stuff. And I just kind of want to thank everybody for all that support and just the positivity and  kind of sticking with me through some of the rougher fights so that I can kind of get to this point where I'm able to show off my skill set properly and give people a show that they deserve. 

Shane: What's your experience been like on the MILLIONS platform?

Chase: Yes, so it's been great using the MILLIONS platform here. I always want to do merch, but I like in the past, I've never wanted to deal with trying to have boxes of stuff and trying to ship it out to people and MILLIONS makes it so much easier for me to be able to provide that stuff for the fans so that they can kind of help support me and hopefully rep stuff that looks super cool. It's super easy to use and we can also connect with them in the video side of things. And yeah, I've been really enjoying the platform and like I said it just makes everything easier. 

I've always got a ton going on with fight stuff, training stuff that it would be so hard to try and manage all of making all the shirts, getting them, like shipping them to people and like all of that stuff and MILLIONS just puts all that together. It makes it so easy for you and like, I don't even have to think about it. I just get to put out cool designs and just let the people enjoy them. So yeah. 

You can support Chase on his fight journey by shopping for his merchandise.  You can also keep up to date on his latest news and competitions by regularly checking in on the MILLIONS blog.  You can also follow Chase on Instagram @choop556.