New Zealand MMA fighter Daniel 'The Hangman' Hooker feels sorry for Mark Hunt, who was pulled from a scheduled fight in Sydney, but also understands why the UFC did so.
The 43-year-old Hunt was pulled from his fight against Marcin Tybura on November 19 after the publication of an article on Australian website PlayersVoice which detailed his struggles with fight-related health issues.
The article quoted the Gold Coast-based resident as saying he has been slurring his words and suffering severe memory lapses.
Hunt was clearly frustrated with the decision and has slammed UFC boss Dana White on social media, saying he is fine to fight.
Hooker spent lots of time with Hunt and speaking to Brendon Telfer on RadioLIVE's Saturday Sport, he said he has never noticed the heavyweight suffer from any symptoms.
"According to Mark, the comments he made were taken out of context somewhat from the journalist that interview him and he believes there is a grudge the UFC has against him," Hooker told RadioLIVE.
"He is saying he is medically fine and medically fit to fight but you can see where the UFC is coming with them looking out for his safety so there are two sides to every coin and especially in this case.
"I haven't noticed anything coming from Mark or any symptoms or changing over time.
"With this next event with it being so close, I think UFC just want to be more careful and take him to the States and have a specialist review his specialists."
Fighters' health in the sport of mixed martial arts has been under the spotlight this week after Brazilian Daniel Lima was involved in a disturbing scary pre-fight weigh-in ahead of Pancrase 290.
Lima could barely stand on his own in Tokyo, Japan, to weigh-in for his strawweight bout with Daichi Kitakata, and needed two men to help carry him up to the scales. Lima missed weight by 0.4 kgs.
He explained after he had to cut 7.2 kgs in two days before the fight.
Hooker admitted he has seen things like this happen in MMA, but it would never happen in the UFC.
"Say if that situation happened in the UFC, we have doctors present at weigh-ins and if you are showing serious symptoms like that, 100 percent the UFC they wouldn't allow somebody to fight under those conditions.
"Outside of the UFC, in the past, I have seen this sort of thing maybe five years ago. Not in New Zealand, in internationally in Asia.
"So I have seen this kind of thing before in the past and personally I thought we were past this kind of thing. I thought people were taking this much more seriously now."
Hooker said he suffered a knee injury a couple of weeks ago, but intends to fight again before the end of the year.
He last fought in June and defeated Ross Pearson in Auckland by KO.
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