UFC 226’s Uriah Hall explains what he learned from January weight-cutting scare

UFC middleweight star Uriah Hall was supposed to battle Vitor Belfort back in January. Unfortunately, this plan was derailed when Hall experienced severe health complications due to his extreme weight-cut down to the middleweight division’s 186-pound limit. In the wake of this harrowing twist, Hall even admitted to having seizures and a small heart attack.

Now many months removed from this ordeal, Hall is in the midst of another weight cut down to 185 pounds, as he’s scheduled to battle Paulo Costa on the UFC 226 undercard this Saturday. While he admits his January health troubles were scary, he seems to be quite relaxed with respect to this current cut, as he’s gotten a handle on his diet, and expects that to make things much easier.

“You’ve just got to know your body, and it happened in a way where I just learned from it,” Hall told MMAjunkie. “It didn’t have to happen, but the fact that it happened made me realize I need to pay attention to certain things.”

“It’s scary overall, but I wouldn’t say that gave me a big change in my outlook on life,” he continued. “It was more like a wakeup call to pay attention because you’re getting older, and as you’re getting older you have to pay attention to certain things with your body – especially when you’re competing.”

“It’s like a car: You’ve got to keep fine-tuning it, you’ve got to put that right fuel and you’ve got to change the oil and all that stuff.”

Hall also divulged that, were it not for his disastrous January weight cut, he might not have learned of several allergies that he has. These allergies, he said, made it difficult to digest food, and therefore, to healthily shed pounds.

“I learned I’m allergic to a lot of things, a lot of foods,” Hall explained. “What a lot of people didn’t realize was I had stomach problems, which made it hard for me to digest food. So I ended up cutting more weight than normal because I couldn’t digest. That whole week, I was struggling to even digest and I was accumulating more water weight.”

“But just taking away certain foods, and experimenting with eating certain things, realizing I’m bloated from this or this or this … but the weight’s been really good, the camp’s been amazing.”

Catch Uriah Hall back in action this Saturday when he battles Paulo Costa at UFC 226.

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 7/4/2018.