Chase Hooper is back on the schedule. The Seattle-area fan favorite meets Chris Padilla at lightweight on UFC 335, December 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, the promotion’s final event of 2026. Heavy.com confirmed the matchup through multiple sources after Connected MMA first reported it.
Hooper drops onto a stacked card. Charles Oliveira vs. Diego Lopes, Sergei Pavlovich vs. Alex Pereira and Joe Pyfer vs. Bo Nickal are all on it, along with Brandon Moreno vs. Charles Johnson, Maycee Barber vs. Carli Judice and Quentin Pasley vs. Junior Tafa. Neither Hooper nor Padilla is ranked, and both are angling for a top-15 spot in 2027.
Hooper’s long road
Hooper, now 27, has been a UFC fighter since 2019, and his path in was unusual. He won on the Contender Series in 2018, but Dana White decided he needed more seasoning and handed him a developmental deal. That got him access to the UFC Performance Institute, and the UFC’s own matchmakers picked his regional fights. He went two wins and a draw in that stretch, signed for real in 2019 and choked out the early doubts with a first-round win over Daniel Teymur in his debut as “The Teenage Dream.”
The early years were rough. He was building a striking game in front of a live audience, and he couldn’t string wins together. After Steve Garcia knocked him out in 2022, though, he ripped off five straight, including wins over Jim Miller and Clay Guida.
Then the floor gave way twice. Alexander Hernandez stopped him by knockout in the first round last summer, just as Hooper was knocking on the rankings door. Lance Gibson Jr. knocked him out earlier this year. Hooper stopped the slide against Mitch Ramirez with a first-round rear-naked choke, though he came in heavy at the weigh-ins for that one.
Padilla’s quiet run
Padilla is four years older than Hooper and spent a decade on the regional scene before the UFC came calling in 2024. He collected multiple titles out there and earned his contract by beating UFC veteran Justin Jaynes for the UNF belt.
He took his UFC debut on short notice against prospect James Llontop and choked him out in the first round. Against Rongzhu, he closed the Chinese fighter’s eye with an elbow and won by doctor stoppage. Last year he added Jai Herbert and Ismael Bonfim. Earlier this year MarQuel Mederos was the step up, and the night turned strange. Padilla was announced as the decision winner, then a scorecard error surfaced and the result was corrected to a majority draw. He was furious, by the account in the reporting, and then went out and submitted Nasrat Haqparast with an arm-triangle choke with one second left in Round 3, a fight he was already winning on the cards.
That makes him 5-0-1 in the Octagon, which is a better UFC résumé than his name recognition suggests.
Sal’s take
This is a bad draw for Hooper, and I mean that as a compliment to Padilla. Hooper has been knocked out three times since 2022, twice in his last three fights, and he’s facing a guy who has finished Llontop and Haqparast on the mat and Rongzhu with elbows. Hooper’s best path is the one everybody already knows, getting a grip and hunting the back, but Padilla has three submission-or-stoppage finishes of his own and no reason to fear the scramble. The Hooper name will pull casual money. I’ll be waiting for the line to open, and if Padilla shows up as an underdog against a guy who just missed weight, I’m taking the man who’s 5-0-1 and still annoyed about a scorecard.
