What happened to Ryan Hall?

This is what the MMA community has been dying to know, with The Ultimate Fighter 22 non-competition champion for the last 3 years.

‘The Wizard’ has three wins in the UFC after beating Artem Lobov to win TUF22but that streak was broken when he met future UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria in 2021.

The first-round knockout loss to Topuria drastically halted Hall’s momentum and was a turning point, not only for his professional career, but for his overall health.

“The most serious and unfortunate health issue I have ever experienced in my life,” Hall said. Cole Shelton of BJPenn.com from his long layoff from the UFC.

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Hall said he had undergone 19 surgeries under general anesthesia since his last fight – a rebound victory over Darrick Minner in December 2021 – tearing his ACL in the following years, and after numerous surgeries, the jiu- jitsu wasn’t out of the woods yet. .

“I had to repair a plantar plate, fell again and had to have a tightrope surgery like Pat Mahomes and a few other people had,” Hall said. “The ACL got infected, I had to suffer from some septic arthritis. The tightrope, I was actually allergic to the material they put in my somehow, so I had to do it again. It was interesting, but in the end, it.”

As for injuries, Hall said he was “completely bulletproof” for 15 years until his training camp for Topuria, where he tore his hip just before the fight.

“Fixing all that has been huge, too,” Hall said of his latest injury, a torn shoulder. “It’s been interesting because more than half of the surgeries I’ve had have been like, ‘Oops, we missed that one, let’s do it again.’ I’ve had six elbow surgeries and five knee surgeries. As a patient, you cannot control doctors and medical staff. »

Six fights in six years and an incredibly long road to recovery later, Hall, 39, hopes to make his return to the UFC in early 2025.

“There was a time when I was in pain every day, but being on my back, I never lost hope of coming back.”

While he may not have had the best striking in his prime, you don’t find many UFC fighters with better jiu-jitsu than Ryan Hall, who is known for his heel hooks.

Hall once submitted three opponents back to back via heel hook (two of which came on The ultimate fighter) as well as BJ Penn, becoming the first fighter to harness the UFC legend in 2018.

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