Uriah Hall retired from MMA back in August. Hall left mixed martial arts in August after suffering consecutive defeats to Sean Strickland and Andre Muniz.
Hall is 38 years old and has a professional record that consists of 17 victories and 11 losses. Hall had a tough time in the past couple of years – but he was on a 4 win streak just 2 years ago with victories over Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman.
But his time in UFC left a sour taste in his mouth having seen how the athletes are treated with the influencers and even ring girls out earning the athletes. Hall explained:
“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 continued.
“Cause you’re going out there and fighting and you’re putting your brain cells on the line and f—king ring card girls are making $70,000, which is utterly f—king ridiculous. So yeah, there’s some s—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.”
Majority of the criticism ring girls have received to date originates in conservative ideas. Khabib Nurmagomedov famously dismissed them as useless:
“I don’t want to offend anyone, ring girls are the most useless people in martial arts. What is their function? I have a question, you can show it is the second round that is on the screen.”
“There are people who understand martial arts and they are walking. This is my personal opinion Do they develop the sport? Or they help people to see it is the second round now? I realise that it is a history. History knows many mistakes. We read history to avoid mistakes of the past in the future. If we look in the history it says they are useless. That is my personal opinion.”
He also explained he was uncomfortable seeing them in front of his father. The girls didn’t take too kindly to that.
In recent history Khmazat Chimaev piled on these comments by sharing the following on social media:
Regardless of how conservative you are or aren’t the truth is that many of them outearn the talent who is putting their lives on the line in the cage. UFC has been adamant to keep the athletes down as to not compromise their sizable profit margins. On any given night, UFC athletes receive under 20% of profits an event brings in which is fairly atrocious.
UFC is also keeping the new generation of stars down by refusing to negotiate and often benches athletes who try to hold out for free agency or a better deal.
As is, there’s a big number of guys coming in from Dana White’s contender series. They make it into the org on these minimal contracts and are bound by them.
Paulo Costa recently explained he signed one of these horrible deals and as a result earned about $50,000 for his five rounder against Israel Adesanya.
Considering UFC is as successful as it is perhaps it’s not so unrealistic to expect that the men putting their lives on the line are treated more fairly than the eye candy.