Recently retired Ultimate Fighter alumni Uriah Hall is the latest fighter to call out the UFC on the subject of fighter pay.
Debuting on the promotion’s long-running reality series more than 10 years ago, Hall looked to be the next big thing in the UFC’s middleweight division. Unfortunately, ‘Prime Time’ never lived up to the reputation he had established during his run on TUF’s 17th season. In August, Hall opted to hang up his gloves following a disappointing loss to Andre Muniz via unanimous decision.
Hall will now try his hand at boxing when he faces famed (NFL) National Football League running back player, Le’Veon Bell as part of the Jake Paul vs. Anderson Silva undercard on October 29th. Taking part in a virtual media day to promote the highly-anticipated boxing pay-per-view, Hall was asked about his views on the long-debated issue of fighter pay.
“Listen, the UFC opened my career and extended my career. I made a great deal and everybody’s contract is different. There’s a lot of things that aren’t fair. I don’t think certain things are fair to athletes and for [Jake Paul] to speak out on that, kudos to him but is anything done yet? Nope. How far can we take it?
“You don’t have to go too much into details but I know people that are making [$10,000 to show, $10,000 to win], which is ridiculous,” he said. “Cause you’re going out there and fighting and you’re putting your brain cells on the line and f*cking ring card girls are making $70,000, which is utterly f*cking ridiculous.
“So yeah, there’s some sh*t that’s just not going down but compared to this it’s okay. You know your worth as you get older in your career, I think, especially when you put a lot on the line for it and some people feel like they deserve more. At one point, I felt like I deserved more and I had to fight for that.” (h/t MMAFighting)
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Uriah Hall Believes the UFC Operates Like a Monopoly
Uriah Hall’s biggest wins inside the Octagon came against fellow TUF alumni Chris Leben, former Bellator MMA champion Gegard Mousasi, Anderson ‘The Spider’ Silva, and Chris Weidman. The latter two were back-to-back victories with Hall scoring a fourth-round knockout of middleweight legend Silva on Halloween night in 2020.
Six months later he met former middleweight titleholder, Chris Weidman, at UFC 261. That night, ‘Primetime’ earned the distinction of being the only fighter in UFC history to win a fight without throwing a single offensive maneuver as Weidman broke his leg just 17-seconds into the contest.
“As much as the UFC will give you an opportunity, what I learned from that is it’s like a monopoly,” Hall said. “They pick and choose. It’s like who can we take? For certain people that they don’t want to take, they slowly dismiss them. It’s business at the end of the day. Same thing in this sport. It’s business.
“Yeah Jake might say all that sh*t but it’s just to stir up Dana [White],” he added. “Is he doing it because he really cares or is he doing it because of the media? I don’t f*cking know. But it’s business and that’s why a lot of these guys talk about money first and everyone’s going to listen. But it’s business.”
