Chase Hooper taking ‘The O’Malley Approach’ to rising through the ranks

Chase Hooper bounced back from a bad decision loss in his last fight to win decisively against Felipe Colares at UFC Vegas 55. Not only did Hooper dominate Colares for much of the fight, he ended up finishing the bout via solid ground and pound with two minutes left in the third, earning a $50,000 performance bonus.

Following the win, Hooper credited the 11 months off with a level up in skill, which brought about a new feeling of confidence.

“My first few fights I felt like I was being walked out to my execution,” Chase told Daniel Cormier in the cage. “But in the back tonight I felt great, everything felt on point and I’m glad it showed out here.”

Hooper expanded on that thought during the UFC Vegas 55 post-fight press conference.

“I showed a lot of improvements and I proved a lot to myself out there,” Hooper said. “Just really working that confidence and not necessarily seeing myself as the young guy and underdog in all these situations.”

“The guys that I’m fighting have just as much anxiety about stepping in there with me as I do with them. So it’s trying to shift that mentality from ‘He’s got to fight me, not the other way around,’ and I feel like that was a huge step up for me tonight.”

“I’m just going to go back and look at the things I did right, look at the things I need to improve on,” Hooper said. “The past 11 months I haven’t just been training for this fight, I’ve been training for the rest of my career. I’ve been training to be good enough for the next three or five fights. So it’s just continuing to make those improvements and wait for that call from the UFC.”

“Hopefully, I impressed the only people that matter in this sport right now and that for me is Dana White, Sean Shelby, Mick Maynard. Those are the guys that keep my bills getting paid and allow me to live this lifestyle that I do.”

As for who he wanted next, Chase Hooper didn’t say a name … rather, he suggested he’d like to follow Sean O’Malley’s path and just take things slow.

“I’ve never been one to call people out,” he said. “The O’Malley approach is always a great one: fight the lowest ranked guy for the highest amount of money on the highest spot on the card.”