On Sunday night, Uriah Hall takes on Ron Stallings in Boston.
Hall, aka “Prime Time,” has been steadily gaining fame- and wins- since he began his career in 2005.
Here’s what you need to know about the 30-year-old Jamaican native.
1. He Won His 1st UFC Fight in 2013
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His breakthrough was in New Jersey’s Ring of Combat competition, where he earned a middleweight title.
He won against Chris Leben, known as “The Crippler,” in December of 2013 at UFC 168.
As a youngster, he enrolled in karate, but also credits watching martial arts moves in video games and movies with honing his skills.
“…I played video games and I watched a lot of martial arts movies including Van Damme and I was just a big fan of the whole kicking and cool texture of it. With the combination of that including Tekken which is the best fighting game ever, I was just going hard and training in my kitchen and practicing moves over and over until I got it,” he told Mmamania.com.
2. He Was on the Reality Show ‘Ultimate Fighter’
He used a spinning hook kick against Adam Cella in the seventeenth season of the reality show that Yahoo Sports called, “arguably the most violent televised knockout in combat sports history.”
Hall told Yahoo, “That’s my favorite technique…It’s a little bit of an unorthodox move. If you have good speed and good whip, you can catch someone, and it’s really deadly. I love to use that technique, and just from being in the ring with him, I’d seen how he would drop his hand a little bit.”
UFC President Dana White told MMAjunkie.com, “Every guy Uriah fought wound up in the hospital. The first fight to get into the house, he breaks the kid’s arm. Then he knocks out Adam Cella with an incredible spinning high kick, then he knocks out Bubba McDaniel and then Dylan Andrews had a broken nose. That’s never happened in the history of TUF.”
3. He Was Bullied As a Teenager
The abuse was so bad that he thought of committing suicide.
“The bullying just got to a point where it’s like, I gotta wake up tomorrow and look forward to this again? I don’t want to deal with this s**t. I just didn’t want to do it anymore, man,” he told Fox Sports.
After Hall enrolled in Tiger Schulmann’s karate school and classmates realized this, they stopped their bullying. He now has a second degree blackbelt.
4. He Grew Up in New York Where MMA Isn’t Legal
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He was born in Jamaica, but came to Queens, New York as a teen.
Ironically, MMA is still not legal in New York, s fact that Hall hopes to change. He told Fight Line, “I want to be that guy or one of the guys to carry (the sport of MMA). The first option is to make it legal in New York. I feel I would be a good representative and hopefully can get others to view it differently.
5. He Hopes That People See MMA Fighters as Intelligent
In an interview with FightLine, he said,
I don’t want people to look at (MMA or myself) as having no intelligence. People acting like I am not intelligent drives me nuts. We need to educate people about the different parts of the sport. It is hard for people to understand that this isn’t a blood sport based around blood and gore.