Ryan Hall recently revealed that the extended layoff after his last MMA fight was the result of multiple surgeries in a relatively short space of time. Hall was originally an elite BJJ competitor before he decided to try his hand at MMA, and he was able to find just as much success in that sport too. He won Season 22 of The Ultimate Fighter and with an impressive 5-1 professional record, he started bringing his unique style to the biggest league. Ryan has been criticised by some for his reliance on rolling to set up his elite leg attacks, but it’s also given him a number of wins in the UFC.
In fact Hall’s professional MMA record is currently 9-2 and his sole loss in the UFC came against the current featherweight world champion, Ilia Topuria. He did bounce back from that loss just a few months later, finishing off 2021 with a decision win over Derrick Minner. Hall has been absent since then though, and he’s now coming up on three whole years without an MMA fight. It was public knowledge that he’d dealt with some injuries, as an ACL tear forced him to withdraw from ADCC 2022. Apparently it wasn’t just that one major injury though, Hall recently revealed that he has gone through more in the last three years than many fighters will in their entire careers:
“Basically, the most serious unfortunate health stuff that I have ever experienced in my life. I’ve had 21 general anaesthesia surgeries since that fight, sorry 19, there were two prior. I got fallen on, tore my ACL, had to fix a plantar plate, got fallen on again, and had to have a tightrope surgery the one that Pat Mahomes and a couple of other people have had. The ACL got infected, had to have a couple of septic arthritis. The tight rope, I was actually allergic to the hardware they put in me somehow, so had to have that re-done. It’s been interesting but on the back end of it.”
Although Ryan Hall has had a huge number of surgeries in just three years, he explained that they weren’t all for separate issues:
“Getting that all fixed as well has been huge. It’s been interesting because more than half of the surgeries I have had are ‘Oops, we screwed that one up, let’s do that again.’ I had six elbow surgeries and five knee surgeries. As a patient, you can’t vet doctors and medical staff. There was a period of time when I was in daily pain, but being on the back side, I never lost hope that I’d be back.”
The full interview with Ryan Hall was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of BJPenn.com:
