Instagram – Paul Felder
It was another hard night at the officer for Paul Felder, who walked away from his main event against Dan Hooker with a loss and some serious physical damage.
Paul Felder and Dan Hooker engaged in five gnarly rounds of brutal rock’em sock’em fury at UFC Auckland, ending in a razor thin split decision win for hometown favorite Hooker (watch the highlights). Neither man made it out of the cage intact though, leading to this rather interesting photo showing Dan and Paul chilling at the hospital together in matching ambulance stretchers.
His manager Brian Butler-Au at Suckerpunch Entertainment also shared this video of Felder getting an ovation from backstage staff as he’s taken out of Spark Arena to the ambulance.
”As he was being wheeled to the ambulance he looked at me and said ‘The tradition stands, win or lose I go the the hospital,’” the video caption stated.
Not that the hospital trip seemed to bother the bruised and battered Felder much.
In an Instagram story, Felder stated “I can’t tell what my face looks like right now, but it doesn’t look good. I feel like I look kind of like Action Bronson—is that his name?—because it’s so swollen.
Felder: “I can’t tell what my face looks like right now, but it doesn’t look good. I feel like I kind of look like Action Bronson?”
…lol, I can see it pic.twitter.com/CIykeIprzr
— Robert Joyner (@robnashville) February 23, 2020
“Hopefully, I’ll be out of the hospital tomorrow morning,” he finished. “Just staying here for precautions. Face is definitely broken, but we’ll get that fixed. My boy Jared Gordon’s had a few of these. He seems okay.”
And just one more bit of social media making Felder’s hospital trip seem more fun than we imagine it really was: this shot from Suckerpunch entertainment of Paul and his corner munching on pizza and donuts in his hospital room.
But it’s pretty clear that Felder and Hooker went through a physically damaging war. “The Irish Dragon” didn’t qualify his ‘broken face’ statement, but it certainly looks like he suffered a fractured orbital in the first round … which the maniac then fought with for the next twenty minutes. And as Paul pointed out, he does seem to end up getting transported to the hospital. A lot. His fight with Edson Barboza was another war, it just seems like dogfights are his specialty, and that’s not a good specialty to have.
Following the loss to Hooker on the scorecards, Felder declared “That might be it for me.”
As much as we love watching him fight, that may not be the worst idea in the world.