LAS VEGAS – Chase Hooper feels no need to aim for the big dogs, at least not yet.

The 22-year-old UFC prospect doesn’t want to rush his career, as he notched another win under the UFC lights this Saturday. Hooper (11-2-1 MMA, 3-2 UFC) stopped Brazil’s Felipe Colares in a third-round TKO on the preliminary card of UFC Fight Night 206. The victory marked Hooper’s third win and finish in the UFC since joining the promotion in December 2019.

Despite looking good and picking up a big win on Saturday, Hooper is not keen to single out any opponent and doesn’t see fit to make any major leaps in his career at the moment.

“I’ve never been one to call people out,” Hooper told reporters at the UFC Fight Night 206 post-fight press conference. “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.

“I’m just going to go back and look at the things I did right, look at the things I need to improve on. 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.”

This was Hooper’s first fight since losing to Steven Peterson at UFC 263 back in June 2021. Hopper felt he proved he belonged in the UFC with his win over Colares, as he previously felt he didn’t belong, admittedly suffering from “imposter syndrome.”

“I showed a lot of improvements and I proved a lot to myself out there,” Hooper said. “Just, you know, really working that confidence and not necessarily see myself as like 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 of like, ‘He’s got to fight me, not the other way around,’ and I feel like that was a huge step up for me tonight. Obviously, I’ve been working on the wrestling, I’ve been working on the grappling and the striking, and just my fight IQ overall. I feel like I earned my spot for the evening on the UFC roster.”