When in December 2016 Ryan Hall became the winner of the contest The Ultimate Fighter 22 —the reality show about fighters UFC— was presented as one of the great promises of the moment. After his victory in the contest, he chained two other victories, but in his third fight in the UFC faces were seen against Ilia Topuria at UFC 294. Hall could do little against the current featherweight champion, who defeated him by TKO in the first round on July 10, 2021.
Since that setback—despite having achieved a victory a few months later against Darrick Minner—, ‘The Wizard’ has gone through an ordeal of injuries. For him it all began precisely before the duel against the Hispanic-Georgian. “I tore my hip right before that fight and I didn’t know how much that had affected me. really. At that time, I had already been doing combat sports for seventeen years,” says the American fighter in a interview in Just Scrap Radio for BJPENN.
In it, he has recently revealed that since his last fight against Minner in December 2021 He has undergone surgery up to nineteen times due to various injuries that have kept him away from the UFC cage.. “I tore my anterior cruciate ligament, had to be treated for a plantar plate injury, relapsed again and had to undergo fixation surgery Tigh Rope on the ankle,” explains ‘The Wizard’.
However, not all procedures went well and some had to be repeated. “The ACL got infected, so I had two septic arthritis. With the ankle surgery, I was actually allergic to hardware that they put me in some way, so it had to be redone,” he explained.
In fact, of those nineteen operations, five are shoulder surgeries – he also suffered a tear in his shoulder – and another five are knee surgeries. It has been a long sports break accompanied by a lot of frustrationalthough despite everything the UFC fighter always knew that he would fight again. “There was a period of time when I had daily pain, but “I have never lost hope of returning.”he confesses.
His forecast is to return at the beginning of 2025, although according to what he stated for bjpenn, It is not clear if he will remain at featherweight or drop to bantamweight. At the moment, Hall has only lost in the UFC against the champion of the 145-pound division, so he believes that He has a lot left to prove.