Uriah Hall may be forced up to light heavyweight after UFC-St. Louis weight snafu, ABC boss says

Uriah Hall was headed to the weigh-ins for his scheduled middleweight bout against Vitor Belfort at UFC Fight Night 124 when he fell ill and reportedly fainted.

Hall never made it to the scale for the St. Louis event. Instead, he was transported to a local hospital, where he spent more than 48 hours.

Hall’s bout against Belfort was scratched from the event at Scottrade Center. UFC President Dana White lashed out at Hall during his post-event media scrum.

“The guys at the UFC (Performance Institute) said he’s the, what’s the word – he doesn’t take it serious,” White said. “He doesn’t take his training serious, he doesn’t do what anybody tells him. He does his own thing. A week before the fight, he went to L.A. and was hanging out in L.A. in clubs and stuff. So, not good.”

White then suggested Hall move up to light heavyweight. According to Mike Mazzulli, the president of the Association of Boxing Commissions, Hall, who has spent the majority of his career at middleweight, might not have a choice to fight anywhere but at 205 pounds in the future.

“The ABC does have the ABC registry and we will post that Uriah Hall won’t be able to fight at that weight (185 pounds),” Mazzulli told MMAjunkie. “There will be notes on the registry that state that he missed the weight and that he can’t fight at that weight.”

Hall spoke about the situation that landed him in the hospital – and in hot water with White – a few days after the event.

“It was a harder cut than normal because the injuries I had didn’t allow me to really cut the weight properly,” Hall said during an Instagram Live Q&A. “I neglected my safety and my health, which was the dumbest thing to do. I will never do that again. Your health is important.

“It was an injury that I ignored and it just caught up to me. My body was just not responsive to it. I definitely wanted to clear the air. I’m getting better, following doctor’s orders, getting checked up.”

The injury that Hall ignored put his life in danger, he said.

“The doctor even said, even if I made weight, I probably would’ve died the next day because my body wasn’t having it,” said Hall. “Like I said, I’m never going to ignore my health again. I did it for the fans, I did it to get paid, I did it to make sure I showed up, but at the end of the day, man, your life is not worth it.”

Hall’s point about health being important is one Mazzulli mentioned, as well. But Mazzulli’s thinking, which echoes that of California State Athletic Commission executive director Andy Foster, is that health and safety can’t just be something fighters think about during their weight cuts. The execs’ thinking is health and safety should be built into fighters’ lifestyles for the sake of their immediate health and career longevity. Mazzulli provided an example from the world of boxing.

“I always have this meeting ahead of time with these kids and I go over all this stuff, and I discuss Bernard Hopkins,” said Mazzulli. “And my question to you is, Bernard Hopkins walked around when he was a champ at 170 pounds. I remember sitting down to dinner with him and he had a boiled chicken. He wasn’t even booked to fight, and he fought at 168. Now, is there a correlation between the length of his career and dehydration? Absolutely. Look at heavyweight: Heavyweights can fight until they’re 50 – there’s a huge correlation to that.”

One idea that could have been explored to avoid putting Hall in a spot in which he had to sacrifice his health in order to make weight would have been to move the fight to 195 pounds, a weight division approved by the ABC in July 2017.

In the wake of Hall’s weight cutting-related health issues, some have wondered if the early weigh-ins, which have resulted in an increase of fighters missing weight, are to blame. Mazzulli thinks it’s something much simpler than that.

“I go back to the education aspect of it,” said Mazzulli. “We have to change the culture (of weight cutting), and we’re not going to change the culture overnight.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 124, check out the UFC Events section of the site.