New Ryan Hall interview

Ugh. Hall may prove to be a great MMA fighter. But a win over Maynard at this point (or rather, last year) doesn't say a whole lot about his skills. Hall's apparent unwillingness to promote himself (at all?) isn't going to endear him to the UFC. A bright guy like Hall should understand he has to sell himself a bit, at least until he's better established himself in the MMA world.

Oh and god damn he's verbose. Never say in one sentence what you can say in ten.

Anyone know who's teaching at 50/50 regularly now?
 
bigkick said:
Ugh. Hall may prove to be a great MMA fighter. But a win over Maynard at this point (or rather, last year) doesn't say a whole lot about his skills. Hall's apparent unwillingness to promote himself (at all?) isn't going to endear him to the UFC. A bright guy like Hall should understand he has to sell himself a bit, at least until he's better established himself in the MMA world.

Oh and god damn he's verbose. Never say in one sentence what you can say in ten.

Anyone know who's teaching at 50/50 regularly now?
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Hall is very marketable for an undercard fighter, as is self-evident by any hidden metric the UFC would choose to look at (google searches, social media followers, etc.). This interview confirms exactly what I've assumed, which is that he's not fighting because he's turning down fights, rather than some UFC-driven blacklisting.
 
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Hall should be an attorney. He answers questions the way he doesn't have to answer them. You are god damn right the UFC has offered him fights. But because they were not top 15 Hall tured them down . You are 33 man just fight.
 
Was at Pride GP 2000 said:
Hall should be an attorney. He answers questions the way he doesn't have to answer them. You are god damn right the UFC has offered him fights. But because they were not top 15 Hall tured them down . You are 33 man just fight.
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I'm a Ryan Hall fan and I agree with the fighting part. He needs to just fight whoever the UFC gives him, even if, its mostly lower level guys, so what. He needs to build up MMA fight experience anyway. Plus, like you said, he's 33, he's not really a young guy anymore to be starting high level MMA.

Plus, Hall have to remember the UFC wants exciting fighters, grapplers aren't necessary exciting in UFC opinion, look how they treat Demian Maia and he is more of a known name to casual fans than Ryan Hall is and the UFC drags their feet with giving him a title match late in his career. Ryan Hall shouldn't be picky and I'm a Ryan Hall fan.
 
2008 said:
I'm a Ryan Hall fan and I agree with the fighting part. He needs to just fight whoever the UFC gives him, even if, its mostly lower level guys, so what. He needs to build up MMA fight experience anyway. Plus, like you said, he's 33, he's not really a young guy anymore to be starting high level MMA.

Plus, Hall have to remember the UFC wants exciting fighters, grapplers aren't necessary exciting in UFC opinion, look how they treat Demian Maia and he is more of a known name to casual fans than Ryan Hall is and the UFC drags their feet with giving him a title match late in his career. Ryan Hall shouldn't be picky and I'm a Ryan Hall fan.
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the UFC seems to prefer to sort out its mid-tier ranks by having guys just rumble it out, and gradually promoting the winners. Hall beating Artem Lobov and then earning an extremely gameplan-heavy win vs Gray Maynard is not going to allow him to avoid this gauntlet.
 
I’m a hall fan and always wait for his next fight. It seems as if he is wanting to get top 20 fights without running the gauntlet. He just needs to rack up a few wins then they will put him in there.

The problem also, I don’t think guys want to fight him. It seems to me that they will just shut him down Schaub style and make it a boring ass fight.
 
Nobody wants to fight him and he seemingly wants to fight nobody. Plus his fights are boring. It’s a recipe for being cut from the UFC.
 
Can confirm that in the gym Ryan does things that I've never seen anyone else do ever.

Frustrating situation. I totally understand where he's coming from.

I hope we get to see him fight soon.
 
If he doesn't get any MMA fights will he consider competing in BJJ again?
 
yetanother said:
If he doesn't get any MMA fights will he consider competing in BJJ again?
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My guess is no. He left the BJJ scene with some frustrations, and he doesn't speak very fondly about the current scene.

Personally I think he would do well on the scene right now, especially the sub-only scene. He's been very good at the current meta-game for years. He's got insane heel hooks, back attacks, brabos, guillotines, kimura trap subs, and all the other stuff that's really hot in no-gi right now. Not to mention his pressure passing is pretty insane. In the same way Gordon Ryan's passing gives him an edge in these sub-only comps, I think Ryan Hall's passing would give him an edge too. Especially at those lower weights where clean passing isn't as common.

I don't think it interests him very much though. I think he got into BJJ before he even knew there were tournaments for it, and his goal was always to compete in the UFC at some point. I could be wrong but I think that's the case.

I just hope to see him compete in some form or fashion this year.
 
Dogstarman said:
The problem also, I don’t think guys want to fight him. It seems to me that they will just shut him down Schaub style and make it a boring ass fight.
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I actually don't think he'd be that easy to shut down.

We haven't seen it in his UFC fights really but if you can see some of his pre-UFC fights you can see it. But his wrestling and top game is very respectable. I think he can actually take down a lot of guys at 145.

I guess we will see eventually.
 
Obviously he’s a smart guy. I think he’s doing the right thing wanting to fight up in the rankings rather than crush cans. Like he mentioned, anyone on any night can win. He feels he warrants a ranked opponent so why take chances crushing cans? That won’t raise him in the rankings. A loss to someone with a wild haymaker could set him back big time or for good. Seems he doesn’t fight for the money, so why not wait and just keep honing his skills.
 
closequarters said:
Obviously he’s a smart guy. I think he’s doing the right thing wanting to fight up in the rankings rather than crush cans. Like he mentioned, anyone on any night can win. He feels he warrants a ranked opponent so why take chances crushing cans? That won’t raise him in the rankings. A loss to someone with a wild haymaker could set him back big time or for good. Seems he doesn’t fight for the money, so why not wait and just keep honing his skills.
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I think Ryan Halls needs to build himself up first(fight experience wise) before he gets tougher ranked opponents, this includes fighting 4, 5 'cans' before asking/getting top 15 guys. Obviously, Hall is a grappling talent but he might get smoked if he fights a no. 8 in the rankings guy or something similar.

Look at Doo Ho Choi, that guy is clearly tough and talented, but keeps asking for top 10, top 5 rank guys and loses in soul crushing fashion, twice so far, and it doesn't help that he's cocky too. I don't want Ryan Hall to get too cocky and over confident. Hall is very green by UFC standard's.
 
Classic dilemma. Ryan doesn't want to fight lower ranked guys, top ranked guys don't want to fight him. Probably because they don't want to fight lower ranked guys, especially one who has shown pretty boring (to the average fight fan) game plans in both of his previous UFC fights.

Another thing to consider is where the FW division is at these days. They have a nice crop of rising talent in that division like Choi, Zabit, Bektic, and Volkanovski and the way you push those guys is feed them fading stars like Lamas and Swanson and see if they can get over the hump. That's how the top 15 is going to sort itself out over the next year, and Ryan doesn't really have a role to play in that narrative. He's not interesting enough as a long term contender to give him a name fighter when you could give that same guy to one of the hot prospects, and he's too risky as a fight to match against those prospects because their lack of experience could lead to a momentum-killing loss against a very unorthodox fighter.

Honestly, I think his best bet is to try and fight a mid level name on a losing streak who can't really afford to turn the fight down. Michael Johnson would be a good one, Gilbert Melendez or Dennis Bermudez would also be solid options. A fight he won't get and doesn't really deserve but that would be interesting to me would be Darren Elkins, but in any case at some point if he wants to be a fighter he just has to fight.
 
2008 said:
I think Ryan Halls needs to build himself up first(fight experience wise) before he gets tougher ranked opponents, this includes fighting 4, 5 'cans' before asking/getting top 15 guys. Obviously, Hall is a grappling talent but he might get smoked if he fights a no. 8 in the rankings guy or something similar.

Look at Doo Ho Choi, that guy is clearly tough and talented, but keeps asking for top 10, top 5 rank guys and loses in soul crushing fashion, twice so far, and it doesn't help that he's cocky too. I don't want Ryan Hall to get too cocky and over confident. Hall is very green by UFC standard's.
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In Ryan’s mind, he has built himself up. He explains why pretty thoroughly in the interview. Whether he is right or wrong, that’s up to the UFC, I guess.
 
Uchi Mata said:
Classic dilemma. Ryan doesn't want to fight lower ranked guys, top ranked guys don't want to fight him. Probably because they don't want to fight lower ranked guys, especially one who has shown pretty boring (to the average fight fan) game plans in both of his previous UFC fights.

Another thing to consider is where the FW division is at these days. They have a nice crop of rising talent in that division like Choi, Zabit, Bektic, and Volkanovski and the way you push those guys is feed them fading stars like Lamas and Swanson and see if they can get over the hump. That's how the top 15 is going to sort itself out over the next year, and Ryan doesn't really have a role to play in that narrative. He's not interesting enough as a long term contender to give him a name fighter when you could give that same guy to one of the hot prospects, and he's too risky as a fight to match against those prospects because their lack of experience could lead to a momentum-killing loss against a very unorthodox fighter.

Honestly, I think his best bet is to try and fight a mid level name on a losing streak who can't really afford to turn the fight down. Michael Johnson would be a good one, Gilbert Melendez or Dennis Bermudez would also be solid options. A fight he won't get and doesn't really deserve but that would be interesting to me would be Darren Elkins, but in any case at some point if he wants to be a fighter he just has to fight.
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I agree 100% with everything in this post.
 
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