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UFC Middleweight Uriah Hall shared that it was a bullying experience from childhood that eventually turned him to MMA.
Bullying in schools is a social evil that spreads like an incurable disease in all parts of the world, and most people, while growing up, have been a victim of bullying. There have been many such instances where kids, young adults, and even grown men and women have tried to take their own lives after being severely bullied.
Although fighters are not usually associated with being bullied, they too were kids once, and many of them had to suffer a great deal while growing up because of bullying. One such example is UFC middleweight Uriah Hall.
Speaking to ESPN, Hall revealed how badly he was bullied in school and how MMA saved his life.
Uriah Hall recounts terrible memories of being bullied
As a 13-year-old kid, Uriah Hall had to move to the United States from his birthplace of Jamaica. Already struggling to acclimatize to the vastly different culture in the US, Hall joined a school where the other kids would regularly bully him and he would get into fights even without knowing how to fight, just because he couldn't stand being bullied. Hall wasn't just subjected to verbal bullying, it also got physical.
On his way back home after school one day, Uriah Hall was dangerously beaten up by one of the bullies. Recounting the horrific incident, Hall said that he was on the school bus along with a bunch of other kids when the bully got on the bus and called him "ugly". Hall chose not to respond to the insult and he got beaten up for that.
"He literally beat the living daylights out of me," Hall said.
The beating was so bad, Hall recounted, that another bully had to intervene. The trauma that he suffered took a heavy toll on Uriah Hall. Hall locked himself inside his room all day long and didn't want to go to school to face his tormentors anymore.
It got so bad that Hall even contemplated suicide. It was then that his mother decided to take him to a therapist who told Hall that he suffered from a lack of confidence.
Hall's mother then decided to put him in a martial arts training center, and the rest, as Hall rightly said, is history.
MMA saved his life by instilling confidence in him to face his demons. Uriah Hall is now set to face Anderson Silva this weekend in a middleweight encounter at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.
