Dan Hooker seems so nice for a bloke who could kill with his bare hands in so many different ways.

There is not a hint of snarling thuggishness about the clean-cut 31-year-old as he emerges from an intense training session at the UFC campus here.

“When you come here there’s no fighting over lunch or anything silly like that,” he says with a laugh.

“You’re always going to catch those sorts of blokes, you know, think they’re tough guys, in fight gyms but not here. Because what you need to succeed at this level is to act as a professional sportsman. Treat yourself as an athlete.”

And Hooker is the epitome of professional, relocating here from his native Auckland — where quarantines made competing even more difficult — to give himself his best shot at what he craves most: the world title.

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“The facilities are pretty incredible,” he says, “There’s a whole nutrition team, makes your meals, tests you daily, there’s physios so you’ll recover quicker — the best physios in the world are here, and they know how to put you together — and there are strength and conditioning coaches.

“They treat it like an NFL team treats its players.”

UFC also controls its fighters but Hooker doesn’t have a problem with the organisation he first joined in 2014.

“If the ultimate goal is to be the best fighter in the world, you have to be in UFC,” he says.

Currently ranked sixth in the lightweight division, Hooker faces one of his greatest tests this weekend in Russian Islam Makhachev, who is currently ranked fifth and has 20 wins against just a lone loss.

Makhachev grew up in a remote part of Dagestan with Khabib Nurmagomedov, the recently retired UFC lightweight champion and one of the sport’s biggest names. Khabib, who was never defeated, now trains the 29-year-old Makhachev.

“It’s a big fight and it’ll be an exciting fight,” Hooker says.

“It’s an opportunity to move my way back towards the title and people will be watching because he’s Khabib’s protégé. There’s a lot of eyes on him, and he’s got an eight fight win streak, and a lot of momentum so he’s got a lot of heat coming in.

“But I look at it like I look at everything I do: an exciting challenge. It’s like a new puzzle I get to figure out. There comes a time in the UFC when you’ve had enough fights, you have enough experience that you’re confident in your abilities and you know what you can do.”

Hooker also knows there will be no surprises with Makhachev, who fights much like his mentor, Khabib.

“He is a specialist. He specialises in using strikes to set up take-downs, press you against the cage and take you down and control you from there from top position,” he says.

“That is his game, doesn’t matter who he’s fighting. He’s going to do the exact same thing, therefore it’s a lot easier to predict.

“That has been approach from day one, whereas the approach I’ve come from is to be great at all those disciplines and if you’re better at something, then I can move my chess pieces around and change it up. I just believe I’m a more well-rounded martial artist.”

Not that Hooker can’t mix it up. His five round bloody brawl with Dustin Poirer was considered the best fight of 2020 by many observers.

But, as with each of his 10 losses (against 21 wins), Hooker took away an important lesson.

“He’s a very fun man to fight and I got caught up having a bit too much fun,” he says.

“I felt like I was the more skilled fighter but I made the mistake of getting sucked in to the style of fight he likes. He likes to exchange. He lets you hit him just so he can hit you back.

“But I had to ask myself, do I want to be known as an exciting guy who gets into these brawls, or do I want to be champion of the world?

“That’s the fork in the road I was at. Just being a fun guy is not what I want to be known for. Your whole approach to the sport has to change and that’s what I have done. Where I was then to where I am now, I’m a totally different fighter.

“And to tell you the truth, I feel like I’m in my prime now.”