The curse of “The Irish Dragon” Paul Felder continued at UFC on ESPN 12

The curse of “The Irish Dragon” Paul Felder continued at UFC on ESPN 12 after Dan Hooker suffered a unanimous decision loss to Dustin Poirier.

Every fighter who has defeated Felder has gone on to lose their next fight, as the following graphic from ESPN shows. Check it out below via Twitter.

https://twitter.com/espnmma/status/1277090139328491520

As the graphic shows, the five fighters who defeated Felder in the UFC would go on to lose their next fight. Hooker lost to Poirier, Mike Perry lost to Donald Cerrone, Franciso Trinaldo lost to Kevin Lee, Ross Pearson lost to Trinaldo, and Edson Barboza lost to Tony Ferguson.

Felder himself took notice of the peculiar stat and commented on it on his own Twitter.

The curse continues 👀

— Paul Felder (@felderpaul) June 28, 2020

The curse continues

In Felder’s last outing earlier this year at UFC Auckland, he lost a razor-thin split decision to Hooker in one of the best fights of the year. Felder said he was hanging up his gloves after the fight, but he has maintained that he could return to the Octagon again for another big fight. Although Felder is not a top-five ranked fighter, he could still get an elite opponent if he does decide to come out of retirement because of his popularity among fans and the fact he has close ties to the UFC considering his job as a color commentator.

The Felder curse is just bizarre, but then again, these things happen in MMA. From time-to-time, we get these strange statistical anomalies, and this would certainly qualify as one. Then again, maybe it says something about Felder that these guys all go on to lose their next fights after fighting him. Felder is always a really tough opponent, so perhaps all the damage these fighters are taking against him is taking its toll.

Do you believe in the curse of “The Irish Dragon” Paul Felder?