“The main thing was the patience my friends had with me because there were moments where I was like, ‘I don’t want to f****** hear this!’ and they still stuck with me, because they knew,” said Hall, an appreciative laugh for all his friends endured chasing his words. “There were things that I didn’t see, and they were patient.
“And my mother, God bless her, she said to me, ‘I know you lost that fight, but you don’t know what God was protecting you from. You have to pay attention.’ That’s the best thing my mom taught me is that in the worst situation, there is still a lesson.
“It took me a while to figure out what I had learned, but I learned that I’ve never been in the fire before,” added the 37-year-old veteran. “I lost the fight, but I feel like I won the battle with myself because by round two, round three, I was like, ‘I’m done. I can’t see this mofo, he keeps hitting me, and I’m taking all this damage that is making it worse.’”
He soldiered on then, and he’s soldiering on now as well.
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“I’m not done — that’s the headline,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not done! It’s not over until I win.”
In the 11 months since that fight with Strickland, Hall also discovered that he suffers from a form of beta thalassemia, a collection of blood disorders where red blood cells struggle to produce oxygen, which results, in Hall’s case, in his tiring quickly.
He thought about not disclosing the diagnosis — “No one gives a f**k!” he said with a laugh when telling me — but he found strength in learning about the issue and addressing it properly while still wrestling with thoughts of calling it quits. By refusing to allow this long-standing condition to be a crutch or a ready-made excuse for coming up short, it reinforced his drive to get back in the gym, back in the Octagon, and back into the thick of the title chase in the middleweight division.
Muniz insisting that he wanted to wait to face Hall when their original engagement in April was postponed didn’t hurt either.
“He’s trying to utilize this opportunity to get to where he wants to go,” he said of the Brazilian submission specialist, who has earned eight straight victories, the last four of those in the UFC, and the last three by way of first-round armbars. “He posted some video about ‘hard work beats talent,’ and it’s like, ‘M*****f***** I’m talented and I’m a hard worker; you can’t beat that.’
“He’s in for a rude awakening and I’m looking forward to it,” continued Hall. “He thinks I’m an easy fight, that’s why I was like, ‘Okay, it’s personal now.’ You’re going to wait for me when you had an opportunity to fight someone else and get paid? No problem.”
