Jamahal Hill on return at UFC 300 after injury – “My Achilles is not an issue, it’s not a problem at all”
Former UFC light heavyweight champion Jamahal Hill will make his long-awaited return to competition at UFC 300 in April, less than a year after undergoing surgery for a ruptured Achilles.
Hill’s injury occurred during a basketball game between several fighters that took place ahead of UFC 290 in Las Vegas, Nevada last year. As a result, the then champion vacated the title which was later won by former middleweight champion Alex Pereira.
This past Saturday at UFC 298, UFC CEO Dana White announced that Hill would return to challenge Pereira for the belt in the UFC 300 headliner on April 13.
On his YouTube channel, Hill reacted to some of the comments and concerns that fans have had after the announcement.
“The reaction to this has been kind of a mix of things and there and whatnot,” Hill said. “There’s been a lot of outrage, a lot of disappointment and things like that. To be honest, it’s crazy to me because for the most part a lot of these people are the same people that have spent the better part of a year or however long calling me ‘cry baby,’ but it’s crazy to see how a card can be stacked—the main card literally has a former champion or champion in every single fight and some even facing former champions. In every single fight in the main card, each one of the prelims is worthy of being its own separate main event and people are crying. Like, let’s really be real. It’s really, really crying because you had unreal expectations for something.
“Granted, I feel Dana did overstep with some of the comments that he made, but he had every intention on delivering on those comments. As you know, anybody who’s followed the UFC for some time, whenever Dana tries to tell you he’s trying to deliver something, he wouldn’t talk like that if he wasn’t trying to deliver something that you people would feel is mind-blowing or otherworldly. Instead, you got one of the most technical, guaranteed banger of a fights that you could ask for at this time with serious implications in historically one of the best weight divisions in the UFC. And people are complaining.”
Another area the former champ addressed was the injury which sidelined him and forced him to relinquish his belt.
“Another one of the big questions has been my health, ‘he’s rushing back’ and things like that,” Hill said. “No, I’m not rushing back. I’ve been training, I’ve been sparring, I’ve been at a full go now for a few weeks now. There’s been no setbacks, nothing hindering anything. When I’m saying full go I mean this is me doing everything full speed, full-on like I would when I normally train, so there’s no concerns.
“My Achilles is not an issue, it’s not a problem at all. I’m just ready to go.”
