Hooker 47-48 Felder
Round 1 - Hooker maintained the distance like expected and worked Felder's lead leg well, also mixing it up with a jab.
Round 2 - A more even round, Felder found more success in the exchanges and finished the round the stronger of the two.
Round 3 - Hooker looked the more accurate fighter as round wore on and had significant success with his jab late on to take an otherwise even round.
Round 4 - Felder started the round very strongly and connected consistently, whilst Hooker looked more static and less active than in previous rounds.
Round 5 - Similar to round four, Felder started strongly and had the greater success landing, and the round was already far beyond Hooker for the takedown to make any difference.
Rounds 1 and 3 to Hooker, rounds 2, 4 and 5 to Felder.
One thing that is somewhat annoying about these is how the commentators set a narrative that can easily take hold in the mind of people who perhaps haven't seen many fights or are biased towards one fighter. For example, they shout about the takedown in round 5 and imply that it constitutes "doing something" to take the round, but a round is 5 minutes, and you can't simply ignore the other fighter's work for the first 3-4 minutes, and Felder was certainly the more active of the two and had greater success in the striking.
As much as I like him as an analyst, I also think Dan Hardy was a bit reckless in how he kept going on about how the numbers in terms of strikes landed were so close over the five and how it's difficult to judge for that reason. Instead of that, it's better to look at each round it isolation. It might seem a relevant statistic on the surface, but if one fighter has been consistently outstruck over two rounds and the majority of his own came in a third round, they're still down 2-1, however it looks on paper. This certainly was a close fight but that's even more reason to delve into each round rather than keep looking at the bigger, relatively unclear picture.
Going back to the fight, Felder can be proud of that one. Like I said in a previous post, he's very durable and would look to close the distance. He did exactly what he needed to and deserves to headline another event at some point.
Hooker, to me, is certainly a good fighter but a bit overrated. If an opponent is moving back or looking to keep it in the centre, he can be very difficult because those leg kicks and combos will eventually land and will wear on an opponent. He struggles a bit under pressure, however, and somebody like Gaethje would be a nightmare for him.
