Kiwi UFC lightweight contender Dan Hooker has spent the last month enduring the seemingly endless fanfare coming from upcoming opponent Islam Makhachev's camp and his ardent base of supporters, as they prepare to square off at UFC 267 in Abu Dhabi.
Fresh off his dominant win over Nasrat Haqparast at UFC 266 in Las Vegas, Hooker accepted the bout against the fifth-ranked lightweight as an injury replacement and will fight on just 34 days turnaround to register back-to-back pay-per-view appearances.
Amid an eight-fight win streak, the Russian's hype train has been at full steam, with mized martial arts pundits quick to anoint him as the second coming of Khabib Nurmagomedov, his compatriot - widely considered the sport's 'GOAT' - who retired undefeated last year.
Comparisons aren't unreasonable. Makhachev, 30, has sliced through the lightweight division with a brand of overwhelming grappling dominance that is unmistakably Khabib-esque.
Even 'The Eagle' himself has dismissed Hooker's chances on Fight Island, calling the fight '99 percent' in favour of Makhachev.
Manager Ali Abdelaziz inists Hooker only has a 'puncher's chance', while Javier Mendez - head coach at the famed American Kickboxing Academy - has predicted a lopsided victory for his pupil.
As far as Hooker is concerned, such posturing is simply an indication of insecurity.
"To me, it's a sign of weakness" Hooker tells Newshub. "It's showing that I put a fear in him, that they feel they need to come out and justify these kinds of things.
"That's like the way that I view it. I'm not at all intimidated by these statements.
"This is his show, I'm just coming here to spoil the party."
One of the promotion's hottest properties, Makhachev's performances over the last two years have made life difficult for UFC matchmakers, who have struggled to find top-tier competition for the surging fighter, currently boasting a record of 22 wins and just one loss.
While he sees the strengths in Makhachev's game, Hooker - who'll enter the bout as the biggest betting underdog of his career - doesn't see any exceptional cause for concern, insisting Makhachev should fret at the prospect of sharing an Octagon with him.
"A lot of people are scared to fight them, but I don't know what he's done that would make me kind of fear him," Hooker notes. "Who has Makhachev ever sent to the hospital, whose bones has he ever snapped in half?
"I feel like he should be more afraid of me than I am of him. Am I worried about getting held down for a couple of rounds?
"The worst-case scenario is that I get food poisoning the night before and he lays on top of me for two rounds."
There's no mystery surrounding Makhachev's gameplan against Hooker - or any of his opponents, for that matter.
His unapologetic modus operandi will be dragging the Kiwi to the mat as soon as humanly possible, where he'll look to quickly advance through Hooker's guard into a position where he can unleash his mounted striking or work for a submission.
With 10 knockouts among his 21 career wins, Hooker's reputation as an eight-point striking specialist, capable of switching his opponents' lights off at any given moment, will always precede him, but his resume of victims also testifies to his grappling ability.
As elite as that aspect of Makhachev's game may be, Hooker - after spelling out Makhachev's go-to grappling sequence in a manner Russell Crowe would a maths equation in A Beautiful Mind - notes its predictability may well spell its own downfall.
In his most recent victory against Haqparast, the Aucklander showcased his lesser-seen offensive grappling to excellent effect, turning a few rivals' heads in the process.
As Hooker points out, defensive grappling will be the order of the day against Makhachev, but he's confident his superior versatility will pose too complex a puzzle for the Russian to solve.
"Same things that make you strong make you weak," he says. "He's a specialist and they come in with this unwavering confidence - that's what his coaches and his team are trying to instill in him, but what happens when he can't get me down?
"What happens when he does get tired, what happens when I start picking him off? Then that confidence starts to shatter.
"Because he's such a specialist and his game is ironclad, his game is so specific, because he's such a specialist, there's obviously weakness in that.
"Obviously, I believe that I'm a more well-rounded fighter, and I can pick and choose the tools to utilise to take the fight where I want to take it."
Any win over Makhachev would be enough to lift the sixth-ranked Hooker back into the title picture, and he believes an emphatic one could open a path directly to the winner of the title fight between champion Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier, leapfrogging whoever emerges from a Justin Gaethje-Michael Chandler showdown.
Either way, Hooker has relatively little to lose, after further endearing himself to the promotion by not returning home from his last win and backing up on such short notice against such a dangerous opponent.
Realising what he'd given up by eschewing his MIQ voucher to keep Makhachev on the stacked pay-per-view card, the UFC will fly his wife and young daughter out to join him at Las Vegas, where they've been set up with accommodation.
While the odds are seemingly stacked against him, Hooker sees nothing but opportunity, when the Octagon door is locked on Sunday.
"Because of everyone's perspective on this fight, it's a great opportunity to shut people up, really, and that's my favorite thing in the world - to make people eat their own words," says Hooker.
"There's so much hype and there's so much attention. It's a great opportunity to prove where you lie in the division, and to prove that you're in that absolute top echelon and that you're there for a very long time.
"I've experienced both victory and defeat at the top echelon of the division, this is just really a time to establish myself forever.
"I don't feel like that was my run. I feel like I've learned those lessons, I've experienced these lessons.
"This is my opportunity to etch my name in the elites of the division for a long time."
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